Trust your heart...

           I can’t even count how many times I have heard this. It is one of our culture’s favorite slogans. And, it seeps into me as well. As a Christian, I should dismiss it as utter garbage. Really, as a basis for decision making, our hearts are horrible guides. I heard a Dee Brestin on the radio this week and she said something I have not stopped thinking about since. She said our hearts are “idol making factories”. It is not that we come to Christ and are immediately perfected. There is a process called sanctification where we learn how to deliver our flesh to the cross. It is a struggle. One that takes the power of God in us to overcome. While on this earth we have to keep our eyes fixed or they will wander. It is so easy for us to get distracted. Honestly, I feel like I forget about the battle sometimes. It is easy to think I make right decisions just because... well... I’m a Christian. It sounds incredibly self-righteous to word it that plainly, but I think it’s true. I say a quick prayer in the direction of what my heart wants and then go ahead and make the decision I wanted to. No searching out the will of God or returning to the Word or listening to sound council... What I have really done is followed my heart instead of my Lord. Right?  And, then we wonder where He is and why it all ended so wrong. Here is why...

Jeremiah 17:9
The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?

Genesis 4:7

...sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.

Psalm 40:12

For troubles without number surround me; my sins have overtaken me, and I cannot see. They are more than the hairs of my head, and my heart fails within me.

Psalm 19:12

But who can discern their own errors? Forgive my hidden faults.

1Peter 5:8
Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.

Our hearts are so overwhelming at times. They are strong inside of us. Our emotions threaten to overtake us at times with any number of things...depression, grief, desire, fear... And, outside of us there are threats as well. There is someone who lies in wait for us to “listen to our heart”. What easy targets we are when we turn our eyes away from Truth and look at what we feel or want instead. And, he rejoices to trip up anyone he can. So, the solution? Something else Dee Brestin said that I find incredibly Biblical. “Stop LISTENING to your Soul and SPEAK truth to it instead!” 

Psalm 119:11
I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.

Proverbs 3:5
Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.

How much heartache could we avoid in the long run if we learned how to do this? I’m not saying I think it’s easy. Our hearts are “desperate” for a reason. Augustine put it this way, “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee...” And, the Bible says, “He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart...” (Ecc 3:11) Wonder why we feel things so deeply? Because, there is a hole in every human heart that is the very breadth of eternity! It was meant to be filled by God Himself! So, is the depth of our emptiness and depravity when He is not in it!  And, so is the depth of our wandering feelings when we forget to look at Him. I wonder if my decisions would be so hard to make if I measured them by the truth while standing filled with the fullness of God... But, again, everything He gives us to do requires utter dependence on Him.