In 1988 the Swedish pop group Roxette released a song “Listen to your Heart”, and there are many songs out there that encourage you to “just follow your heart, do what your heart tells you to do!” I am sure we have all had friends to tell us this.Without a doubt you have heard people giving advice to others or people have given you the advice to “just follow your heart man!”I remember a time in my life that I did “just listen to my heart” and it cost me. I could list numerous examples of this in my life and I am sure we all can. Well, there is a problem with listening to our heart and I want to show you what the Bible says about the heart.
Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” In other words, the scripture says the human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is? Or the heart is hopelessly dark and deceitful, a puzzle that no one can figure out. Our hearts are inclined toward sin, since the time we were born into this world. We must be careful with this inclination to follow your heart.
Look at King David, a man after God’s own heart, and look what messes he got himself into by listening to his heart. Let’s look at Psalm 51 where we see David pleading for mercy, forgiveness and cleansing from God. This is the account where one of David’s friends, the prophet Nathan, went to David after David saw Bath-sheba bathing and David had to have her for his pleasure. Well, David committed adultery with her and then had her husband killed to cover it up. So needless to say David was in a mess for listening to his heart! As we read in Psalm 51:10 David was crying out, “Create in me a clean heart , O God; and renew a right spirit within me.”
We must ask God to cleanse us from within , cleaning our hearts and spirits for new thoughts and for new desires. Right conduct can only come from a clean heart and right spirit. If you find yourself in a mess, and you just think what you have done or said in the past is too much for God to “want” to forgive you, I have some good news! God can and will forgive you of ANY sin. While God loves us and forgives us, he doesn’t always erase the natural consequences of our sins. In other words, we all have scars, scars that have resulted from bad decisions by “just listening to our hearts” when the Bible tells us that our hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked. Oh yeah! The good news! Turn to 1 John 3:19-20
“And hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before him. For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.”
Wow! This overwhelms me and this gives me hope! Even though my heart condemns me,
GOD IS GREATER THAN MY HEART!!! Praise God for this promise that set me free from being in chains of guilt and depression all because my past. Especially after I began dedicating my life to tell others about Jesus, my heart was condemning me! I knew it was the devil using every means to keep me from preaching God’s Word. When I read this verse in 1 John 3:20, the Lord freed me from self pity and doubt about what God could do to use me for the building of His Kingdom! Every day, before I even look at another human being in the face, I cry out to God in my quiet prayer time and ask God to search my heart and to clean it up from wrong desires and wrong motives that I battle daily. Thank you God for your Grace and your Mercies are new every morning! Listen to your heart ONLY when God is sitting on the throne of your heart!! Amen
Take time to worship the Lord and listen to the words of this song as you worship Him from the inside out!
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