Don’t Listen to Your Heart

Don’t Listen to Your Heart June 30, 2015

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Does your heart ever wander to dark places? Mine does. Some days, it tells me everything I’ve done wrong, everything I can not do, and show me in detail all of my imperfections. I’m left with nothing. Maybe this happens to you?  I know it does. 

But here’s the thing about our hearts.  They have sociopathic tendencies.  Jon Bloom writes:

What does your heart tell you?

Please don’t answer. Your heart has likely said things today that you would not wish to repeat. I know mine has. My heart tells me that all of reality ought to serve my desires. My heart likes to think the best of me and worst of others — unless those others happen to think well of me, then they are wonderful people. But if they don’t think well of me, or even if they just disagree with me, well then, something is wrong with them. And while my heart is pondering my virtues and others’ errors, it can suddenly find some immoral or horribly angry thought very attractive.

The “follow your heart” creed certainly isn’t found in the Bible. The Bible actually thinks our hearts have a disease: “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). Jesus, the Great Physician, lists the grim symptoms of this disease: “out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander” (Matthew 15:19).

I don’t know about you, but this explains a lot.  Your heart will take you down the wrong road.  Mine’s taken my life on detours I thought I’d never return from.

Bloom goes on to write:

Our hearts were never designed to be followed, but to be led. Our hearts were never designed to be gods in whom we believe; they were designed to believe in God.

So stop listening to your heart.  In fact, half the struggle of life is learning when to tell it to shut up.

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