Are you looking for your center? Your core? Your personal headquarters? It's your heart!
Locating our hearts is major!
The problem is that there is a lot of clutter and debris doing its best to distract us from following our hearts. Clutter like ...
Busyness ... it's hard to hear our hearts and follow the things that spring up when we are too busy to listen to what is doing in our hearts. Remember Martha? Luke 10:38.
Voices ... there are lots of voices these days. The media, friends, enemies, family, the devil, our own voice and if we aren't careful we let those voices drown out God's voice in our hearts.
Guilt ... two kinds of guilt—true guilt and false guilt. True guilt is legitimate; our hearts are condemning us because we are disobeying God and His Word and our heart knows it. This type of guilty conscience demands our repentance and a contrite heart to "go and sin no more." We apply 1 John 1:9 and Hebrews 4:16 to our lives and the blood of Jesus continually cleanses us from all sin. Then we are free to live from our hearts—no guilt!
False guilt is the type of guilt the devil throws on us to discourage, condemn, overwhelm and destroy us. It's a lie—but it's paralyzing nonetheless and we have a difficult time living out of our hearts if we are listening to false guilt. We need to stand in 2 Corinthians 5:21 and declare the reality that through Jesus' blood we have been made the righteousness of God in Christ ... end of story, amen!
Fear ... another biggie. Through fear of man, fear of losing our security, fear of living by faith, fear of loss, fear of just about anything the enemy robs us of the ability to truly live from and follow our hearts. We find our fear in our heads, checkbooks, in the potential loss of our creature comforts and personal desires dominate our decision making and we live in obedience to fear of "what if" rather than living by faith out of our hearts.
God's wisdom for all the issues of life can easily flow from our hearts. Everything God does in and through us comes from the heart. Everything. It's so simple. It's so interesting. It's a bit challenging.
Beth
