Your heart has a powerful mission and your heart has a powerful mood. Weighing just ½ of a pound it pumps enough blood to fill 81 tanker trucks = 650k gallons in one year. Your heart is discharging more fluid in the next minute than your kitchen sink at full blast. As your heart fulfills it’s physical mission it will beat 36,792,000 times this year alone! When you reach 70 yrs old your heart will have beaten 2.5 billion times.
Just as your heart has an amazing physical mission it has an amazing and fascinating emotional mission. When my daughters have received awards at school for academic accomplishment or good behavior there is something so powerful in my heart that is beaming with joy! On the contrary when somebody cuts me off and steals my parking space there’s something very powerful in my heart that promotes actions that are not very Christ-like. Emotions are so powerful that the heart is capable of completely sabotaging our lives.
The Bible never says we are to follow our hearts. In fact the Bible is very clear that we are to guard our heart. Guarding the heart protects us from its ability to destroy our future.
Prov 4:23 Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. NIV
Prov 4:23 Be careful how you think; your life is shaped by your thoughts. Good News Translation
Prov 4:23. Above all else guard your heart it affects evrything you do. NLT
The idea of following our hearts or letting our conscience be our guide is simply not Biblical. We are completely capable of making wrong decisions with a clear conscience and feeling justified as we sin.
1 Cor 4:4 My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. NIV
Renewing your mind and guarding your heart positions you to be free and to help others be free as well. If we allow the devil to fill our heads with stress, worry, anger, unforgiveness, low self esteem then he can make us physically sick by controlling our minds. He doesn’t have to tie us up for us to be bound. Jesus desires for us to be free from these limitations. Even struggles are opportunities for us to demonstrate victory if we have our hearts and minds right.
With God’s help we can know more about what’s going on inside our hearts and be established in the strength and maturity of Christ. David cries out for God to search him and know him in a very well known portion of Scripture.
Ps 139:23-24 Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. NIV
One day while reading this I realized that David had said something very interesting at the beginning of this chapter that almost negates what he’s saying at the end.
Ps 139:1-4 O LORD, you have searched me and you know me…before a word is on my tongue you know it completely.
If God has already searched him and knows him so completely that before a word is spoken God is aware that it’s coming then why does David ask him to search his heart? David wasn’t asking God to search his heart for God to know. David was asking God to search his heart so David would know.
Any time somebody calls you on the phone and says to you that they need directions to your house what is your first question? WHERE ARE YOU?!?! I can’t guide you in if I don’t know where you are to begin with. After Adam sinned God walked into The Garden and asked, “Adam where are you?” God wasn’t asking Adam because God didn’t know where Adam was. God was asking Adam because Adam needed to know where Adam was. If God was going to begin guiding man back home then man must first admit where he is with God. We aren’t even capable of knowing where we are on our own.
Here are a few verses that speak of man’s heart and how desperately we need a Savior to save us from ourselves.
Matt 16:24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. NIV
Gen 8:21 “…Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood…(NIV)
Jer 17:9 The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it? NAS
Prov 21:2 We justify our actions by appearances; God examines our motives. (MSG)
Ps 51:10 Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. NIV
God has given us three primary resources for help; the Word of God, the Spirit of God, and the people of God. Let’s devote ourselves to the greater purposes of God as we surrender more completely to Him every day that we have the privilege of living on this earth as part of his plan to cause all humanity to flourish!