Check Your Heart Before You Wreck Your Heart

Look around you.  There’s strife, turmoil, conflict, animosity, you name it.  The world has been in a state of division and distrust since the very beginning of time.  Adam and Eve ate the apple.  They believed God was holding out on His blessing for them.  They didn’t trust that God was good at being God.

How often do we do the same?

It can be difficult to step aside and let God be God.  Years come and go, but the character of humans has been relatively consistent.  We often desire to control our own destiny.  We’re encouraged to “reach for the stars” and make a name for ourselves.

Taking the strengths, talents, and even the weaknesses God has given you to make yourself a better person and fulfill your potential isn’t a bad thing.  However, it can be easy to get lost in the mindset that our will and our plans are far greater or better than what God has planned for us.  Just like Adam and Eve, we don’t trust that God is good at being God.

Simply acknowledging that we cannot do it on our own and we desperately need God is the first step.  We experience this moment of surrender and say, “God, I trust that you know best.  I trust that you are fighting for me, and all I have to do is be still and let you do your thing.”  Yet we find ourselves not even an hour later asking, “What the heck, God?  I trusted you would help me.  I trusted you’d provide for me!  Where’s your blessing?”

When the life we envision doesn’t match the one God has planned, or when things don’t go our way or in our timing, we let the enemy convince us that God isn’t working on our behalf.  We let the enemy convince us that God doesn’t know best.  We let the enemy convince us to listen to our hearts and trust in ourselves and mankind to get to where we want to be.  We let the enemy convince us that God isn’t a good God.

This leads us down a very dangerous path.

Have you ever been told to listen to your heart?  There are even songs about it!  “Listen to your heart… when he’s calling for you…” Yet being told to listen to your heart is probably some of the worst advice you’ll ever get.  Jeremiah 17:9 tells us, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”  We cannot and should not listen to our hearts because our hearts are big fat liars.  We are not wise or intelligent enough in our own strength to be able to discern what is good and bad for us.  What is in our heart flows out of us, and if we aren’t being vigilant, or asking God to search our hearts and create in us a new heart and clean spirit, then we will travel down a road that leads to hurt, pain, and destruction.

Proverbs 21:2 says, “Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the heart.”  Matthew 15 elaborates on how evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander… all these things come from our hearts.  The Bible even goes as far as saying the things in our hearts are what defile us.  Poison us.  Impair us.

Yet we still think we know what we want and what’s best for us. We think we know ourselves well enough to make good decisions.  We think we are good at being god.

Can I tell you something?

God never asked us to do His job.  God never put the pressure on you to figure out how to live your life.  God never asked you to save yourself.

He sent His Son to do that.

We weren’t created to carry that weight.  Can you feel the heaviness lifted off of you?  You don’t have to know all the answers.  You don’t have to do life on your own.  You don’t have to figure it all out and know every little detail.  You don’t have to be god.  God is telling you, right now, “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).

Although we, and all of humanity, have been struggling to establish our own steps for years, God sent someone to do something about it.

Jesus.

What a relief.

Jesus came to bear the weight of your sin and shame so that you didn’t have to do it yourself.  He gave His life so you could be made new and whole in Him.  God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit created you in Their likeness, and They know you intimately.

God is omnipotent (all-powerful).  God is omniscient (all-knowing).  God is omnipresent (all-present).  He is above all, knows all, and is with all.  You can live freely knowing that God is faithful, He holds true to His promises, and He is really good at what He does.  Will you allow Him to remove your heart of stone and death, and give you His heart of flesh and life?  Will you open your heart, mind, and soul to align your desires with His?  Will you commit to Proverbs 3:5-6, and simply trust in the Lord with all your heart and not lean on your own understanding, acknowledging Him in all your ways and believing that He will make straight your paths?

He knows you.  He loves you.  He wants what’s best for you.  Trust Him.