Do You Trust Your Heart?

Do you trust your heart?

How many of you have ever based decisions on what your heart tells you to do?  "I'm going to go with my heart on that one". Or maybe you said you had a "gut feeling" about it?

Let’s turn to Matthew 26:31-35

“Then Jesus said to them, “You will all fall away because of me this night. For it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’ But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee.”

Peter answered him, “Though they all fall away because of you, I will never fall away.” Jesus said to him, “Truly, I tell you, this very night, before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.” Peter said to him, “Even if I must die with you, I will not deny you!” And all the disciples said the same.”

Do you think Peter was lying to Jesus when he said he would not deny him?

Peter truly thought that he would never deny Jesus. He probably felt it in his heart. But when the time actually came, Peter's strength and resolve disappeared. What happened?

Do any of us really want to sin? Do we wake up in the morning and say "today would be a good day to sin against God." I hope not.

We begin each day with good intentions, right? We know in our hearts that we do not want to sin. What happens?

Here's the problem. We're putting all our trust in our heart, but our heart is deceptively evil.


Jeremiah 17:9 teaches us "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick."

Let's go back to that night in the Book of Matthew. Jesus and the apostles Peter, John and James went up to Gethsemane so Jesus could pray. Jesus asked the three men to keep watch while he prayed. Do you think any of those three men desired to fall asleep? Do you think that in their hearts they believed they would obey Jesus? The three apostles were deceived by their hearts. They fell asleep. Not once, but twice!

I believe in my heart that all of us in this room have good intentions. But I know in my head that under the right circumstances, all of us will fall into sin. All of us will be betrayed by our hearts.

Does that mean we can never trust our hearts? Not at all. But what it does mean is that without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, our hearts are not reliable to lead us towards what will honor God. The Spirit will guide our hearts, but only if we listen.

We've all done something bad that we've regretted later. At that moment when we fell, we knew it was wrong. We knew we should not do it. That knowledge of good and evil is the Spirit within us guiding us. Unfortunately, our sinful nature can sometimes shout a lot louder and convince us to ignore what the Spirit is telling us.

The Spirit doesn't always speak to us in a loud voice. Most of the time it's a soft whisper. A little nudge. We give it a lot of names. Intuition. Gut feeling. Wisdom. But all of those names imply that it is our own doing. But it isn't. It isn't us, it's the Spirit within us.

We are born into sin. Unbelievers have no choice but to sin. The Spirit does not dwell in their hearts and they will be deceived into an eternal life in hell.

But when we are saved, that changes. When we are born again and receive the gift of eternal salvation by faith alone in Christ we now have the ability not to sin. We still have the ability to sin, but we have the Spirit within us guiding us towards the sinless life. If we listen.

So what can we do to make the Spirit's voice in our hearts louder than our sinner's voice? We feed it. We feed the Spirit and starve the flesh.

“But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” (Galatians 5:16 ESV)

How do we feed the Spirit?

We pray. We attend church regularly. We attend home fellowships.

These are all good things, but it really isn't enough. To truly feed our Spirits we must study our Bibles every day. Not just read the Bible, but study it. Meditate on the verses. If you are doing a daily reading plan, read through the passage once, then read through it and find any parts that jump out at you and pray about those verses and how you might apply them to your life. Or maybe you found a verse that you don't understand. First write down what you think it means, and then check it against a good study Bible. (You MUST have a study bible! If you don't have one, you can always look up the verses on line, but unless you know which sites to trust, you can find yourself the victim of false teaching.)

Find out what the meaning is behind the verses so you can understand them. You can't apply Scripture to your life if you don't understand it.

Everything that lives on this earth must be fed to survive. Feed your spirit a healthy diet of God’s Word and watch it grow.