‘Follow your heart’ – to train wreck
One of the prevailing themes in today’s culture is “Follow your heart”. Can we look at this?
I am not a dietician, but a pastor. Nothing I share is to be taken as physical medical advice or counsel. I am a pastor and I share from the Word of God about matters that impact our spiritual health. There is a major difference between nourishing our body as opposed to our hearts and minds. In Mark 7:18-23 Jesus tells us, “So He said to them, “Are you thus without understanding also? Do you not perceive that whatever enters a man from outside cannot defile him, because it does not enter his heart but his stomach, and is eliminated, thus purifying all foods?” What comes out of a man, that defiles a man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornication’s, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile a man.” Proverbs 23:7 tells us, “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.”
As we live our lives apart from God, without the guardrails of Scripture, without the direction of the Holy Spirit, we set ourselves up as our own authority — even as our own God. When we realize our desperate need for a Savior from our sin, when we surrender and submit our will to Jesus Christ, and when we place our trust in Him and His commands about how to really experience life, we find that many of the ways we have thought, and therefore act, are wrong and selfish. This is the reason that, as I shared yesterday, we must empty and restock the “pantry of our mind”.
If what is in the pantry of our heart lifts us up, satisfies our selfish wants and desires, then “follow your heart” is leading to a train wreck. If, on the other hand, our minds are focused on the things of God, the design of God and the purposes of God for us, then “following your heart” would be following God. John 10:10 says it this way, “The thief comes to steal, kill and destroy; but I (Jesus) have come that you might have abundant life (life like it was intended to be).
So, what is in the panty of your mind? And more importantly, who is stocking it?
Pressing on,
Ron Tipton, Senior Pastor
