Follow Your Heart

 

Hey everyone and Happy August.

I hope you’re enjoying your summer and staying cool. It’s almost time for the kiddos go back to school. Hopefully, you’ve been able to do something fun together as a family. Where I live, we are still in the midst of a heat wave with triple digit temps for the past several weeks. Indoors as much as possible for me!

 

This month I want to share a lesson entitled: Follow your heart.

Should you follow your heart? Is your heart intelligent enough to lead you?

Below are 3 key points that I will discuss:

1. What is my heart?

2. What are some of the consequences of following my heart? What happens when I do?

3. If I’m not supposed to follow my heart, then what am I supposed to do with it?

 

First of all, what is my heart?

The heart that I’m referring to today is not the organ in your chest cavity that is responsible for keeping you alive…. although we need to take care of that one too. The heart that I will be discussing actually intertwines with our physical heart. When our heart is broken, our physical body also feels the effects of it…. it’s all interconnected.

So, the heart I’m referring to consists of your mind, will and emotions. Which is directly related to your thoughts, feelings and how you choose to respond based on those thoughts and feelings.

I wrote a blog a couple months ago entitled You’re the CEO which discusses how important mind management is. Our lives are a direct result of how well we manage our mind which spills over into our emotions and what we decide to do.

Emotions are to be felt. That is totally healthy, but we can’t stop there. They must also be processed and sometimes we need to override them if they’re going to lead to an outcome that we don’t want.

Letting your emotions rule you and staying in your feelings is not a good place to be. Just because you feel it doesn’t mean you should act on it.

By nature, our heart is selfish, it can’t be trusted and will always want to be gratified. It wants to be in charge and lead us around and tell us what to do.

Our heart thrives on feelings, the thrill, the rush, the excitement, the right now, the I don’t care who it hurts, or I’ll pay the price later.

Your heart wants the easiest, most exhilarating and pleasurable experience possible even if it only lasts a few moments, even if someone gets hurt, even if that someone is you. Your heart doesn’t like to wait for anything!

There’s no such thing as patience, weighing the options, looking at the pros and cons, being rational or using wisdom, when it comes to your heart.

Your heart wants it all and it wants it now! Even if you haven’t earned it, can’t maintain it, can’t afford it or if it belongs to someone else. Your heart and your flesh will never tell you no. Your heart will betray you every. single. time.

 

2. What are some consequences of following my heart? What happens when I do?

 

Scriptural Reference:

For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. (Matthew 15:19 ESV)

9. “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is? 10. But I, the Lord, search all hearts and examine secret motives. I give all people their due rewards, according to what their actions deserve.” Jeremiah 17:9-10 (NLT)

 

One of the first people that followed their heart was Eve. She believed a lie and decided to override what God told her not to do…we see how that turned out. We’re still feeling the effects of her and Adam’s decision to this very day!

 

Here are some practical examples of following your heart:

A. You heart will cause you to lie to yourself by saying just this one time won’t hurt, nobody will know, nobody will see me.

B. Your heart will have you believing empty promises, excusing toxic behavior, and developing soul ties with manipulators, tricksters and time wasters.

C. Your heart will make you ignore red flags and warning signs from God and the people who truly care about you.

D. Your heart will make you call lust love and spend years doing life with people that should have never made it past the first date.

E. Your heart will convince you that your entire existence is connected to one person. It will have you searching for your identity in them and being loyal to disloyal people.

F. By following your heart, you will make poor decisions that lead to years of consequences and regret. You will end up forfeiting the plan of God for your life if you don’t change.

 

3. If I’m not supposed to follow my heart, then what am I supposed to do with it?

First of all, we have to give it to God.

As a child I joined the Baptist Church in my hometown. I distinctly remember the pastor saying, “give the preacher your hand but give God your heart.”.

At the time, being so young, the whole “give God your heart” statement didn’t register with me but I’ve since lived a little and boy do I wish I gave God my heart a lot sooner.

Accepting Jesus as Savior is the first step but we have to take it a step further with the way we choose to love him. God clearly instructed us to love him with ALL of it! (heart, soul and mind)

Matthew 22:37 (ESV)

And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

 

The only way we can navigate through life successfully is to make sure our love for God is solid and we use every fiber of our being to do it.

Most of us are taught to give our heart to another person, a love interest or our spouse but what happens when that person shatters it in a million pieces, what then?

Our heart is not healthy or whole enough in and of itself to share with anyone.

God is not trying to be the dictator of our lives but he knows what it takes to avoid the pitfalls and traps that come with letting our heart be in control.

There is not one time that I followed my will, my way and my heart that I didn’t live to regret it and ended up paying a price that wasn’t worth it, not one time!

 

After we give our heart to God, secondly, we must ask Him for a clean and renewed one.

Scriptural Reference:

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Psalm 51:10 (ESV)

Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the heart. Proverbs 21:2 (ESV)

 

We sin daily and most of the time, there will be a tug of war between what we want to do and what we should do.

Temptation and the opportunity to yield to it happens every day, none of us are exempt. So, we need to routinely ask God for a clean heart. And when we do sin, because, unfortunately, we will, repenting and doing it quickly is key.

 

And the third thing that we MUST do with our heart is… guard it.

Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. Proverbs 4:23 NIV

Yes, we are to love God with all our heart, repent and ask Him to clean/renew our heart but the majority of the work is on us!

When you guard something, you are protective of the access given to it, you are careful where it goes, what it does, who it’s with and what it’s exposed to.

For those who are mothers, you know that newborns need extra attention and special care. New moms are sleep deprived because of feeding their baby every couple of hours. Especially for first time moms, they can’t sleep for watching the baby to make sure they’re breathing and are okay.

Think of your heart like this…. it’s a newborn that will never grow up! You will always be the primary caregiver and the only one you can entrust your heart to is God.

Everything we have done and will ever do flows from our heart. So, if we don’t like the results we’re getting or where our life is headed, then we have to look within.

We must have a routine heart check and there’s only one person qualified to reveal our heart to us and transform it…God.

Everything we think, feel or choose to do should be filtered through the word of God and our relationship with Him. We should be consulting him FIRST.

 

Proverbs 3:5-6 (MSG)

Trust God from the bottom of your heart; don’t try to figure out everything on your own.

Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go; he’s the one who will keep you on track.

 

I’ll close today with this:

Our hearts are not able to discern good from evil or right from wrong.

And it will disappoint us every single time.

It’s a terrible leader and very poor decision maker.

Your heart will lead you down a path that only the mercy of God can rescue you from, ask me how I know.

I followed my heart well into my mid 40’s because I was sure I knew what my heart needed better than God. Let me assure you…I was 100% wrong!

There are things and people that I am living without today that I couldn’t see my life without a few years ago. Not only am I making it, but I’m happy, thriving and experiencing God’s best!

So, take it from me, fully giving your heart to God is not a loss, it’s definitely a win/win. Try it! I promise you’ll be glad you did!

 

Your Affirmation:

I would like to leave you with my Lesson Learned in the form of an affirmation to say to yourself this month:

There is nothing good in my flesh.

My heart will deceive me and cannot be trusted.

My heart is a terrible leader and poor decision maker.

My life flows from my heart and it’s my job to guard it.

I choose to fully yield my heart, soul and mind to Christ.

 

Please feel free to leave a comment if this blog resonates with you. I would love to hear your thoughts and will be sure to reply too!

Thanks for coming back again this month and hanging out with me…I’ll see you in September!

Journal and Greeting Card Giveaway: The first 10 people to leave a comment will receive a copy of my Party of ONE journal and a Party of ONE greeting card so that you can pay it forward. You will be contacted via email if you are one of the winners. You must reside in the USA.

You are celebrated and appreciated my fellow Party of ONE!

God’s best always,

Leslie