USGN Article  - November 2003
Terry & Barbi Franklin
Written by Barbi Franklin

Follow Your Heart?

In a recently written book, that is highly popular in the Christian community, men are encouraged to follow what is in their heart – teaching that their heart is basically good.  This is a departure from what the Bible teaches.  Even as believers, we dare not trust our heart.

These days, the problems we face are more than likely that we DO follow our hearts rather than God’s heart!  In fact, the Bible says that “our hearts are deceitful above all things and beyond cure” (Jer 17:9), and that the battle we face is between our flesh and the Spirit (see Rom 8 and Gal 5:17), not between our flesh and our hearts.

I remember hearing a T.V. soap opera in the lobby of my doctors office.  A mom was explaining to her very young son why she and “daddy” were divorcing.  She said, “It’s like I’m in a forest and I’m trying to find my way.  My compass is my heart, and my heart is telling me I need to leave your daddy.”  What a sad compass to trust!  Even well meaning Christians follow their hearts, but as the Bible teaches, they are misguided.  What we as Christians should be doing is following God’s Word and His Spirit!  …regardless of who may or may not agree (“the fear of man brings a snare” Proverbs 29:25). 

Jonathan Edwards, a great theologian from a previous century wrote,

“ . . . it is a mysterious thing which has puzzled and amazed many a good Christian, that there should be that which is so divine and precious, [namely] the saving grace of God and the new and divine nature, dwelling with so much corruption, hypocrisy, and iniquity, in the heart of the same saint.”

Another great man of faith, Charles Spurgeon, in commenting on Jeremiah 17:9, said,

            “There is within our nature that which would send the best saint to hell if   sovereign grace did not prevent. There is a little hell within the heart of every             child of God . . .”

Let’s be about searching for God’s heart and mind, not finding our own!  It’s humanism that teaches us to “find ourselves”.  What we find in ourselves, at best, brings confusion.  What God gives to us is peace, love, joy, and pure satisfaction because of the atonement of Christ and the indwelling of the Holy Sprit.

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