Live Free with Josh Howerton - Don't Follow Your Heart | Ep. 347 | Tuesday, June 4, 2024

Episode Date: June 4, 2024

Ever have good intentions but make a bad decision? The advice to “Follow your heart” is a great example. Culture, friends, and leaders share this idea with good intentions, but it often leads to bad decisions. So what do we do? Come to Jesus and ask for a new heart to follow Him. For more information, visit lakepointe.church/dailydrive

Thanks for tuning in to today's Daily Drive with Lake Point Church, a daily dose of God's word for your morning drive. When the word, not the world, becomes the majority of your week, your life will start to change. For that reason, our prayer is that God will speak to you through today's devotional. For more digital content to feed your faith, visit lakepoint.comit. And now let's dive in to today's devotional. Hey, welcome to the Daily Drive. If we haven't met, my name is Carlos, and I get to be a part of the pastoral team here at Lake Pointe. And we get to hang out this week for a few minutes every day as we dive into the Word of God.

In today's verse verse verse 24 to 40. But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the sadducees, that's Jesus. They gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer asked Jesus a question to test him, teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law? 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. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like this. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

And on these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. Hey, let me ask you this today. Have you ever done something with a good intention but later you realized it was a bad idea? Like if at some point, you know, somebody in a dating relationship and they decide to break up that relationship, but they don't want to hurt the other person's feelings. And so when he or she breaks up the relationship, they say something like, hey, it's not you. It's me. Good intention. Bad idea. Like, that might not actually help. Or if you're a guy and you have a female friend who seems like she's put on some weight and her stomach looks a bit more pronounced than usual, don't you ever make the mistake of. asking her, are you pregnant? Or when's the baby do? Good intention, bad idea. Or if you're sick or some part of your body kind of hurts and you start Googling all the symptoms and Google tells

you in 10 seconds that you're going to die in five days because you have the worst possible sickness in the world. Probably not true. Again, good intention and trying to find information on what's going on with your body. Very bad idea to Google it. Last one. If you ever get an email from a Nigerian prince who just happens to have millions and millions of dollars and is looking for somebody in your corner of the world to share his inheritance with, all you got to do is respond to that email with your social security number and your bank account, and you respond by clicking that link or sharing your information. Maybe you had a good intention in your heart, but that's a very, very, very bad idea.

And I start here because today when the Word of God speaks about the heart, it says, man, you need to love God with all your heart. That's what's most important above anything else. Love God with all your heart. Now, the world says, man, you don't need to love God with all your heart. That's not as important. What's most important is you need to follow your heart. Now, this is probably the most cliche yet popular. explicit and implicit message that you'll find in the last 10 to 15 years in pop culture,

music, movies, shows for kids, inspirational, motivational, self-help books, podcasts, and graduation speeches, and more. And just to give you a quick example, let me quote you some of our modern-day quote-unquote profits. Steve Jobs famously said once, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to be. become everything else is secondary. Walt Disney famously said,

Let your heart guide you. It whispers. So listen closely. The great theologian Beyonce said once, I don't have to prove anything to anyone. I only have to follow my heart and concentrate on what I want to say to the world. I run my world.

Follow your heart. And the idea of following your heart might be something that is shared with a good intention today, but from a logical, sociological, theological, and simply from a biblical view, it's a bad idea. So let's talk about this, several things here. Number one, on a very logical and practical level, what happens when you're not sure where your heart is leading you towards?

Like, what happens when the desires of your heart actually contradict one another? Like, I feel a desire in my heart to get in shape, and at the same time, I feel a desire in my heart to eat chocolate, mint, ice cream. Those two things are true right now. Which one do I follow? Or another example, somebody might say, I like being married, and I want to stay married. I just do not like the person I'm married to. Which part of my heart should I follow? If I'm supposed to just, quote, unquote, follow my heart,

How do I know which desires or aspirations or feelings do I go with? And also, what happens when my heart wanted something yesterday, but that's something that it doesn't want today anymore? And if you think of the implications of this, is it really wise for your deepest desires in your heart to always be the main driving factor in your life? And is that truly the best way to live on a purposeful, intentional, moral, healthy, happy life. Today, sociology would say no.

Anecdotally, many will testify as well. No. And now, the Bible doesn't say follow your heart, but it does say this about your heart. Let me just read you, Jeremiah chapter 17, verse 9. The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? Jesus says in Matthew chapter 15 verse 19 that out of the heart comes evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. And so honestly, based on what we just read, here's something that our culture would never say, but the Bible certainly does. If you follow Jesus, you need to not only choose to not follow your heart,

you need to learn how to disobey your heart. there will be many things that your heart will want you to follow that you need to simply say no to because your identity is not based on what your heart says but it is based on what your God says. If you follow Jesus, you don't follow your heart. You follow Jesus and Jesus is Lord of your heart. Your heart doesn't get to guide your life. Jesus does. Your heart doesn't get to tell you what to do.

Jesus does. Your heart will not guide you to find true purpose and meaning. Jesus does. If you follow your heart and what Jesus said is true and your heart is really deceitful and is really the source of evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, and slander, you will be led to deceit. Evil, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, and slander. I am very aware that that is not romantic, inspirational, encouraging, or perhaps even politically correct, but it is biblically correct. Now, when God gives commands, he doesn't give commands because he loves rules.

He gives commands because he loves you. When God says, don't. He means don't hurt yourself. And when God speaks through Jesus, he brings good news. So let me share this good news with you. There was this one sermon where Jesus is teaching. on the heart and he's speaking about cutting your hand if it causes you to sin and then cutting your arm if it causes you to sin and today we usually interpret this teaching as a call

to be radical about quote amputating your sin and yes this is true we should be radical with cutting off sin in our lives but there's more Jesus is saying here in this same teaching Jesus also says that if somebody sees a woman and lusts out of after her. They already committed adultery. Listen to what Jesus says, in their heart. Now, a lot of people miss this, but what Jesus is saying is you can go ahead and you can cut your eye, but you can still sin with your hand. You can go ahead and cut your hand, but you can still sin with your tongue. And just like that, you can keep cutting member after member of your body, but that wouldn't solve your main issue. Why? Because,

Because your core issue is your heart, which means that in order to get down to the root issue of your sin, you would actually have to cut your heart. And Jesus says, I can do that for you. The good news of Jesus, the good news of the gospel, is that even though your heart is deceitful, and according to Jesus, the source of evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness and slander, Jesus gave up his own heart when he was crucified on a cross in your place for our sins. Listen to this so that he could spiritually cut your heart, go to the root issue of your sin, and then offer you a new heart. This is literally what

the prophet Ezekiel prophesied years before Jesus. This is Ezeko chapter 36, verse 26 is 27. God says this, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. Listen to this. It will sound familiar. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my loss. The world says, follow your heart. The word says your heart is deceitful. Be careful. But when you put your trust in Jesus, he gives you a new heart and what you do with your heart. now is you love the Lord with all of it. You surrender your heart to his guidance.

You train, you surrender your heart to his lordship, his care, his commandments, his wisdom. You train your heart in godliness. You offer your heart in worship. That, Jesus says, is the most important thing you can do. We'll see you tomorrow. Thanks for tuning in today. For more biblical teaching and worship,

join us for our church online live weekend services on Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 9.30 and 11 a.m. Central Standard Time. For more information, visit lakepoint.com. Church slash daily drive.