Help for Our Hearts

The Bee Gees sang, “How can you mend a broken heart?” Elvis lived down at the end of Lonely Street at Heartbreak Hotel. Bruce Springsteen said that “everybody’s got a hungry heart.” Tom Petty was tired of people dragging his heart around. And Selena Gomez sang that the heart wants what it wants.

But here’s the problem with our hearts. They can lead us in the wrong direction. In fact, the Bible tells us in Jeremiah 17:9, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; Who can know it?” (NKJV). The Message puts the same verse this way: “The heart is hopelessly dark and deceitful, a puzzle that no one can figure out.”

Jesus, showing the potential darkness of our own hearts, said, “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies” (Matthew 15:19 NKJV).

Our hearts are dark. Our hearts are evil. And our hearts can mislead us. That’s why we need to let our minds step in and help us.

Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37 NKJV). The Hebrew word for soul would be closer to our use of the word heart. It speaks of something deep inside a person.

Our love for God needs to be emotive and intelligent. One doesn’t cancel out the other. We need to love the Lord with all of our hearts. We need to love God with our emotions and our intellect. And we need to love God with our strength. We need to love Him with our time and resources, with everything that we have.

As Christians, the objective is not to focus on our hearts. It is to focus our hearts on God.