Don’t listen to your heart..when it’s calling to you. There is something else you can do

Ya’ll know the old 80’s song by Roxette entitled “Listen to your heart?”

“Listen to your heart
Take a listen
When he’s calling for you
Listen to your heart
Take a listen
There’s nothing else you can do.
I don’t know where you’re going
And I don’t know why,
But listen to your heart
Before you tell him goodbye.

Listen to your heart
[Repeat until the end]

Take a listen to your heart
Take a
Take a listen to your heart.”

It has been remade about a dozen times. It is honestly a very catchy song about not telling a guy goodbye but listening to your heart but the lyrics are obviously complete garbage. Our hearts lead us astray according to Scripture. Everyday we have to battle with “listening to our hearts.” My heart tries to lie to me everyday. Whether it be discontentment, depression, bitterness, loneliness, it attempts to lead me astray and away from the path of righteousness. I listened to a Paul Washer clip on depression and it helped me immensely. He said “Preach to your heart, don’t let it preach to you.” Wow. When your evil heart attempts to lead you away from holy living, or into the depths of despair, you preach to it. You give it the Word of God. Don’t fall for its trap. Even though we have been given new hearts after regeneration, we still follow after the flesh and our hearts will lead us stray.

“ The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Jeremiah 17:9

Sometimes they can lead us into questioning our own salvation because of a particular struggle with sin.
1 John 3:19-20 really helped me with this-

“We will know by this that we are of the truth, and will set our heart at ease before Him, ²⁰ that if our heart condemns us, that God is greater than our heart, and He knows all things.”

Our hearts can still condemn us. But God is greater than our hearts! His Spirit will confirm to us that we belong to Him.

”The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God,” Romans 8:16

What is your heart preaching to you right now? Doubts of salvation? Discontentment? Discouragement or depression? Don’t let it win. As John Owen says when your heart begins with these kinds of thoughts “Remember not to believe.” Preach to your heart. Don’t let it preach to you.

 “My flesh and my heart may fail,
But God is the ^[a]strength of my heart and my portion forever.” Psalm 73:26