Thought for the Day 26/04/21 - Listen to your heart?

 AUDIO

The world we live in is pretty much addicted to following your heart ... 'do what you FEEL', it says ... 'just live in your moment'.

It causes a fair bit of life-lurching for a lot of people to be making life up as they go along like that - doing what they feel from moment to moment.

Nonetheless, in some ways following your heart has done us some good ... it depends where following your heart is going to lead you really, doesn't it?!

When your heart gives you longings for love, for community, for home ... that's great!

There is no doubt a sense that our Maker has embedded within us a desire for things that are great and part of the big old design-plan for human beings.

But 'follow your heart' is bad counsel and bad advice for people whose hearts are broken, and  whose hearts have been damaged by sin.

The problem is made worse because there's a real sense in which we are strangers to our own hearts: we aren't good at understanding our motives, nor discerning where our longings are actually leading us. Our hearts hold potential for deceit ... even for deceiving ourselves!

And those longings of broken down hearts, although we may not find it easy to admit this, often point us into self-destructive places.

That's the point of our Verse for the Day

Jeremiah, the seventh century B.C. prophet of Jerusalem and of Exile had spent time studying people and listening to God, living through times that demonstrated the effects of bad choices. 

As a result he'd got a very firm grip on this issue, and he wrote about this in our verse for the day. (It's totally short and to the point!)

"The heart is deceitful above all things 

    and beyond cure.

            Who can understand it?"

                             Jeremiah 17:9

Pretty straight stuff!

Now let's wind that out and get to grips with what Jeremiah's actually saying in this context because sound bites like this verse can be badly misunderstood.

Here's what God was saying through Jeremiah to those people addicted to following their hearts in his day:

There's a guaranteed recipe for a SAD life

Firstly, trusting in humanity makes for a sad life

"‘Cursed is the one who trusts in man,

who draws strength from mere flesh

    and whose heart turns away from the Lord.

6 That person will be like a bush in the wastelands;
    they will not see prosperity when it comes.
They will dwell in the parched places of the desert,
    in a salt land where no one lives."

                                                      Jeremiah 17:5-6

There's a guaranteed recipe for a GLAD life

 

Secondly, there is a FAR better way!

"‘But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,

    whose confidence is in him.
8 

They will be like a tree planted by the water
    that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
    its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
    and never fails to bear fruit.’"

                                           Jeremiah 17:7-8

To some extent that's an observable phenomenon across cultures and over long passages of time.

And so Jeremiah is amazed at the choices his people have made by following their hearts into trouble ... and THAT is when he bursts out in near desperation in the words of our verse for the Day:

"The heart is deceitful above all things 

    and beyond cure.

            Who can understand it?"

                             Jeremiah 17:9

The Point

The prophet's observation of his people making bad choices as they followed their hearts rather than their God has led to a dramatic situation of being conquered and carried off like slaves.

Heart-following has led into sadness, trouble and grief, and it's clear to Jeremiah that's an observable, repeatable phenomenon.

The converse is equally true, that following God not your broken  heart leads to blessing and to life, so that means it is almost inexplicably daft to just live your life following your heart.

As Jeremiah says: who can understand the human heart in the folly of the choices it makes?!

The Takeaway

Your heart might make a very good poet, but it makes a very poor compass ... or counsellor ... for life. And that's why God's given us His Word and His Spirit.

His Word is useful for teaching us, rebuking us, correcting us and training us in righteousness so that the one who follows Him may be throughly equipped for every good work. Check that out in 2 Timothy 3 verse 16.

His Spirit, promised beforehand to the disciples of Jesus was sent to lead us into all of the truth ... (John 16:13) ... and following Him is very different from following our own broken heart.

Following your heart commits your journey to a terrible guide, but committing your life to follow the Lord as your Guide swaps your broken heart for a new and reliable one with a healthy set of longings from God.

As the Psalmist writes in Psalm 37:4

"Trust in the Lord and do good;

dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.

4 

Take delight in the Lord,
    and he will give you the desires of your heart."

See ... THAT's when you can follow your heart ... when God has given it a new set of healthy  and wholesome desires!

But if those are not the desires you are following, you are still stuck in the incredible folly of following a very dodgy compass, of following a sin-broken heart.

And as the people of Jeremiah's Jerusalem illustrate, that is never going to end very well.