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FOLLOW YOUR HEART
Often the advice is given, “follow your heart.” And a great many
people are doing just that. In doing this people only achieve a touch of
fleeting happiness. What is worse they never arrive at lasting joy and peace
with God. The Bible has much to say about the human heart. None of it good.
For instance the Bible says, “The heart is deceitful above all
things,
and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 179). It also says,
“Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful; and the end of that mirth is
heaviness,” (Proverbs 14:13).
A person who follows their heart only heaps trouble to himself. The
Lord Jesus said: “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders,
adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies,” (Matthew
15:19). In addition to displeasing God, evil thoughts of all sorts produce
sorrow to others and to self. Murders bring joy neither to the victim, his
family nor to the murderer and his family. Adulteries and other sexual sins
often ruin marriages, result in diseases, consume savings, break up families
and do harm to children. Stealing, lying and blaspheming God only bring
sorrow to all affected by these things. So why do people continue following
their hearts? The answer is found in Jeremiah 13:23:
“Can the Ethiopian
change his skin, or the leopard his spots?
then may ye also do good,
that are accustomed to do evil.” People cannot stop doing these sinful
things! They go on following their own deceitful and desperately wicked
hearts. All this brings more sorrow to them while here on earth – and stores
up judgment in the world to come.
“Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit
within me,” - this was the prayer of the Psalmist,
(Psalm 51:10).
God is able to give sinners a new heart as He said in Ezekiel 36:26:
“A
new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and
I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an
heart of flesh.” Such a supernatural work must be accomplished by God.
Men cannot change their hearts. They are in bondage to them. Obedience to
wicked hearts only produces fleeting pleasure followed by emptiness and
sorrow. The only solution is to be “born again.” This new birth is necessary
for salvation. It includes receiving the new heart mentioned above. The Lord
Jesus said, “Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again,”
(John 3:7). Only God can do this. Your will cannot bring it to pass. The
Bible makes that clear in John 1:13 where we read:
“Which were born, not
of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”
Stop trusting in yourself, in religion, in your works or in your
attempts to be obedient to the Bible. Only God can birth you into His
family. You are shut up to that fact. |