Guarding Your Heart: Seeking God's Guidance Over Feelings

1. "Follow your heart. That sounds like good advice, doesn't it? Sounds like, oh, that's so sweet. Follow your heart. I love that advice. I'm here to tell you why this is actually really bad advice. In fact, let's look at this. Okay. This is what the Bible, because we always going to start at the Bible, right? What does the Bible say about this? This is what the Bible says about the heart. You want to read this with me? This is exciting. In Jeremiah, it says, the heart is deceitful, deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? So in a world where we're being taught, follow your heart. The Bible says the heart is deceitful. Can anybody relate to that? The heart can kind of lead you astray a little bit." [02:33] (44 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


2. "Feelings aren't a fruit of the Spirit. Okay, what do I mean by that? I mean that there's fruits of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, right? Feelings, not on there. You know what is on there? Self-control. Okay, your feelings are great sometimes, and yet feelings can be deceitful. Feelings can lead you astray. Feelings can take you the wrong direction. So I want to struggle with this today and talk about this with you. This has been such an interesting thing for me in my life. I would call myself a recovering emotional addict, okay? So I used to feel like if I felt it, it might not have been the right thing for me. And I'm like, it must be true, so I got to go with it." [05:07] (35 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


3. "David cries out to God. He says, my God, why have you forsaken me? But then read what he says in the next verse down, still in Psalm 22. It says, You are enthroned as the Holy One. Pause there. Enthroned, meaning sitting on the throne, meaning I feel these things, but they're not on the throne. You are. God, you are sovereign. My feelings aren't a fruit of the Spirit. My feelings are just indicators, but you are the one that sits in the throne of my life. You get the driver's seat. Yet, you are the one Israel praises. In you, our ancestors put their trust. They trusted and you delivered them. To you, they cried out and were saved. In you, they trusted and were not put to shame. Yet. Yet. Yet." [08:58] (52 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


4. "The goal isn't to not feel, but to remember the yet in the midst of the feelings. What does that mean? That means go ahead and acknowledge it. I feel this way. I'm disappointed. God, I feel like I'm in anguish. God, I don't understand why you would let me go through this yet. Your ways are higher than my ways. Yet you are God and I am not. Yet you are good. That makes the difference. That's how we can become a person that has the heart of God. Don't deny those feelings, but find the yet." [10:23] (33 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


5. "Faith isn't even faith until it has to be. What do I mean by that? Well, it doesn't take a lot of faith for me to walk on this stage and believe it's going to hold me. If there's one or two more hurricanes and I keep eating the way I did, I don't know. But for now, okay, I walk on this stage knowing it's going to hold me. That's not a big stretch of faith. But it does take faith to look at a circumstance that does not seem like it's going to work out and say, I still put you above my feelings, God. If the diagnosis is as bad, if the job falls through, if the relationship falls to the pits, to still say, but God, you are first. That's putting feelings behind faith where they belong." [14:27] (38 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


6. "Worry is just as much of a self-focus issue as pride. And worry puts feelings in the place of faith. Again, we're not denying things can be scary, but it's putting me at the center of that. Worry can be hard in those situations. I was also going to say that sometimes when we're successful, that might be just as hard because you get a false sense of security, don't you? Anybody living in this day and age can know that. Things can change on a dime, right? You don't know. And there's nothing to put your trust in except the word of God." [15:45] (34 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


7. "The second thing is this. We acknowledge the places we put feelings in the place of faith. The second one is this. You got to guard your heart. We read this already. Guard your heart, right? Guard your heart. What does that mean? What does that look like? Well, a lot of times I think for us, it can look like, allowing certain people to have access to our heart that were never meant to have access there. What do I mean? I mean, it's okay for everybody to have a ticket to the show, but not everybody gets like a backstage pass. What do I mean? I mean, you get to choose and sift the voices that get residence in your head." [17:01] (37 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


8. "I don't want you to mistake this message and think, well, those feelings I have, are those bad? No, there's some feelings you're feeling because your spirit is being touched to do something, to see something, to find the heart of God and to make a difference. How do we discern those things? Well, if I do these things that I feel, is it going to make my life better? Or is it going to make others' lives better? I can make my life better. I can make a litmus test for that, right? We find the heart of God. What does David further say in Psalm 51? I love this because we could take so much from this. It says, my sacrifice, oh God, is a spirit, a broken and contrite heart. There's that word again. You, God, will not despise." [21:09] (51 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


9. "See, being broken isn't bad. Being broken is the start of healing. Scripture says, a broken spirit, a contrite, a broken heart, God will not despise. One of my spiritual mentors used to say, you know, I think when we talk about spiritual maturity, we think of it as levels. Like I'm going to get more spiritually mature. And then I know more scripture. And then I'm better at not sinning. And then all these things. He goes, getting closer to God is getting more broken. Why? Because when I get closer to God, how can I bring anything? How can I compare except to see that he is holy and I am not? He is God and I am not. He is powerful and I am not." [23:58] (49 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


10. "The broken things in your life, you've despised them. No, those may be the very things God is going to use to make a difference in your life and in others' lives through you. Sometimes the greatest breakthroughs I've had have come on the other side of pushing through pain when he was all I had, he was my reality, he was my very next breath. We have to guard our heart, not feel our feelings, but to live in the yet. To pray, God created me a clean heart. I want you to use me. And I know in my sinful self, you can't, but he can shape broken things. He is the potter, right? What does a potter do? He shapes the clay into something beautiful. He can do that in us. He can do that through us." [25:35] (64 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)