Follow Your Heart
For some people I know, “Follow Your Heart,” is something like a life mission statement. They’ve had too much of being told that you need to think things through, or being told what others think you should do, or feeling like you need to make others happy with your decisions. And so they come to a realization that the most holistic way to live their life, that is faithful to themselves is to follow their heart.
There is something really authentic about that way of life. So often our actions and our desires are not in alignment. So often we act in a way that we feel like we must, even though our heart is telling us something else. Following your heart brings your actions and desires in line with one another. It allows you to live authentically.
But there’s one problem with this way of life. What if your heart is wrong? What if your heart is leading you to a bad place? What if your heart is lying to you? What if your heart is sick?
The prophet Jeremiah tells us what God thinks about the human heart. He writes, “Thus says the LORD… ‘The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?’” (Jeremiah 17:9) God says that the human heart is crooked and incurable; that it cannot be trusted and that there is nothing we can do to change that.
And when we think about our lives, we begin to see that this is true. My heart tells me to eat ice cream every night. My heart tells me to stay in bed and not bother going to the Y. My heart tells me I have a right to be angry at a friend because of the way they treated me. My heart tells me I should linger with a second look at a beautiful woman who isn’t my wife.
I know that I am not called by Jesus to act in line with these things that my heart is telling me, but I want to live an authentic, holistic life, where I am not divided in person. I don’t want my actions and my desires to be out of alignment. I want them to match up! So what can I do?
The prophet Ezekiel held out a promise, which has been fulfilled in Jesus Christ, when he wrote: “Thus says the Lord God: … I will give you a new heart.” (Ezekiel 36:26). The truth is that when we follow Jesus, he gives us a new heart and he changes our desires. And the more we pursue him, the more our desires conform to his.
This Sunday, we’re going to dig into this subject a little deeper and I’ll share some times where I have seen this to be true in my life. Times when I have discovered that as I have delighted in Jesus, the desires of my heart have lined up with the desires of His heart (Psalm 37:4). I’d love to see you there at 9 or 10.47!
Ellis