Category: Gospel

  • “Follow Your Heart? Not Biblical Advice 

    follow your heart or follow God - which path will you choose

    There’s a common piece of advice out there. It simply says “Follow Your Heart!”

    It sounds so simple, so warm and fuzzy. It sounds incredibly wise. After all, if you truly follow your heart, what could possibly go wrong? It’s the key to enjoying life.

    There’s only one problem with it. It’s absolutely ungodly advice.

    Here’s what the Bible teaches about the condition of the human heart.

    “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can know it? Jeremiah 17:9

    We are fallen beings with a sin nature. Left to our own devices, we will choose anything over the God who loves us. We’ll pick darkness over light more often than not. We’ll choose short-term pleasure over long-term growth. We will hurt others to get what we want.

    Following your heart is dangerous. It leads straight down the broad highway to hell and destruction. It promises things that can never be sustainably delivered.

    Our fleshly nature is flawed. We need to be guided by the Holy Spirit and the Word. The LORD is our Creator, Jesus our redeemer and the Holy Spirit our indwelling guide. God loves us to an unimaginable degree, and He knows far better what is good for us than we do.

    Even after we’ve been born again, we struggle against our flesh and the desires of our hearts. Paul put it this way,

    For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. Romans 7:15-18

    Believers must trust the Spirit to guide us. We need the Word to teach us and the church to hold us accountable.

    In the path of righteousness is life, And in its pathway there is no death. Proverbs 12:28

     “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is narrow, and the way that leads to life is constricted, and there are few who find it. Matthew 7:13-14

    Don’t follow your heart. Let His path guide you. Allow Him to change your desires into the desires of His heart, He will never lead you astray.

    May the Lord guide your steps.

    Be blessed 

    Kevin 

    SUMMARY

    This devotional challenges the popular but unbiblical advice to “follow your heart,” contrasting it with Scripture’s warning that the human heart is deceitful and cannot be trusted as a guide. It calls believers instead to be led by the Holy Spirit and the Word, walking the narrow path of righteousness rather than the broad way that feels natural but leads to destruction.

    KEY POINTS

    The heart is deceitful (Jeremiah 17:9) and even believers wrestle with their flesh, as Paul describes in Romans 7 

    “Follow your heart” sounds wise but actually leads down the broad road to destruction (Matthew 7:13-14) 

    True guidance comes from the Holy Spirit, the Word, and the church, not from fleshly desire

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  • The Gospel – the best news you will ever hear

    You know the silence that falls right before you open an envelope, or pick up the phone, when you have already braced for the worst. Most of the time the news matches the dread. But every now and then it does not. Every now and then you brace yourself and find out the test was clear, or the debt was settled, or the answer was yes, and for a second you just stand there rereading it, because good news that size is hard to trust on the first pass.

    That mix of disbelief and relief is about the closest thing I know, in ordinary life, to what the Bible calls the gospel.

    The word itself simply means good news. But you cannot understand why it is good until you understand the news that came before it, and that part is not pleasant. Scripture does not soften it. All of us, every last one, have fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). Not just the people we point to on the news. Us. Our sin is not a smudge to wipe off. It is a debt we cannot pay, and the wages of that debt are death (Romans 6:23).

    If the story stopped there, it would just be bad news, true and unbearable. But it does not stop there.

    Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures. He was buried, and He was raised on the third day, according to the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). That is the gospel in its smallest form, four facts that changed everything. And Paul will not let us read past the cost of it without feeling it. God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). Not after we cleaned ourselves up. While we were still enemies. He paid a debt He did not owe, for people who could never repay Him.

    Here is where the gospel parts ways with every other religion and every self-improvement plan you have ever tried. It is by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, so that no one may boast (Ephesians 2:8-9). You do not earn your way into this. You do not balance the scales with enough good deeds to outweigh the bad. The debt was already paid. The only question left is whether you will receive the gift.

    As many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name (John 1:12). That word receive is doing a lot of work. It is not a transaction you negotiate. It is a gift you open. Faith is simply reaching out your hand and taking what Christ already purchased at the cross.

    And what happens next is not a slight improvement. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature, the old things passed away, behold, new things have come (2 Corinthians 5:17). You are not patched up. You are remade. Rescued from the domain of darkness and transferred to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom you have redemption, the forgiveness of sins (Colossians 1:13-14). That is not a metaphor for self-help. That is a change of citizenship, paid for in blood, sealed by an empty tomb.

    Some people can tell you the exact day they stopped bracing for bad news and finally believed the good news was real. I hope you have a day like that to point back to as well, the day you stopped trying to pay a debt you could never settle and simply received what Christ already finished.

    If you have never reached out your hand for that gift, today is a good day to start. Tell Him you know the bad news is true of you, and ask Him to make the good news true of you too. He has already done the hard part.

    If you have already received it, do not let the wonder of it go stale. Read those four facts from 1 Corinthians 15 again slowly. Let them surprise you the way they did the first day.

    Hallelu Yah (Praise God)

    Be blessed,

    Kevin

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