Follow Your Heart

 December 23, 2023

“Follow your heart” is bad advice. We often hear it at high school graduation ceremonies or at teenage birthday parties, but no matter the good sentiments, it’s still bad advice. The Bible tells us that “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). Obviously, I can’t speak for everyone else, but I can say without question that trusting my heart to lead me in the right direction would be a huge mistake! Almost without exception, when I’ve done that, it has ended in disaster. 

“What about love,” you ask? Linda still laughs at how I told her when we were dating that I studied her like a book. She liked my eyes; I thought about the kind of person I would want to raise my children. Sure, the heart was part of it all; I’m not a complete nincompoop. But I used my head when I chose the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. I’m glad I did; I’ve seen too many marital train wrecks to trust my heart. My heart is too easily swayed by my greed or lust or compassion. Either I will be led astray by the things that catch my eye, or the charlatan who has a good sob story. 

Christmas Eve is almost upon us. We’ll worship, sing “Silent Night” in the flickering light of candles at midnight. It will be very moving. And it will be tempting to leave it at that, head to home and bed to wake on Christmas morning with all that holy emotion fading with the rising sun before the glitter of wrapping paper, gifts, and dinner. If I fail to guard my heart, fail to bring it into submission to a mind that chooses to follow Christ, my heart will inevitably wander, not necessarily into abject sin, but more likely into the grey wasteland of a watered down, anemic Christianity that has all the earmarks of faith and faithfulness, but without any of its power.

Tonight, I choose with my mind to make my heart bend the knee before the Christ who came to save me not only from my sins, but from myself.