Don't Follow Your Heart
If you've been in church for any number of years, you may have heard that Christians are supposed to go "against the flow," or in other words, we are called by God to a different standard than society around us.
As much as learning new truths, we need to remind ourselves and remember old truths. Our faith is founded on right beliefs. Repentance means to change your way of thinking. Right beliefs, or "orthodoxy" is the practice of conforming to the way the faith has been passed down to us, and the pattern of Christ set for us by the early Church. We need to continually return, remember and remind ourselves of these foundational truths.
One of these foundational Christian truths is that we put our faith in Jesus, and renounce our self reliance. Ray Ortlund recently posted online: "Let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed, lest he fall" (1 Cor 10:12). A spirit of self-assurance is disaster.
So if you want to be a Christian, don't adhere to the old adage: "Follow your heart." Don't follow your heart, follow Christ's heart. You can be certain that without the Holy Spirit's intervention, they are going in two very different directions.
Here's why you can't follow your heart. Without the gospel, every one of us are:
1. Blinded by Satan
If our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. -2 Corinthians 4:3-4, 5
2. Calloused by Sin
For in his own eyes he flatters himself too much to detect or hate his sin. -Psalm 36:2
3. Decieved by Selfishness
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? -Jeremiah 17:9
Scripture is filled with enough ancedotes, that a thorough study will make you never want to trust your own heart again.
