The Heart Wants What it Wants
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Perhaps you have heard the phrase, “The heart wants what it wants.” It was recently popularized in a song by Selena Gomez (don’t judge me – I have teenage daughters) but comes originally from a quote by Emily Dickinson, which in its entirety is, “The heart wants what it wants - or else it does not care.”
I bring this up because recently I found out a couple whose wedding I had officiated were getting divorced – her heart had changed. The next morning, I found out about another couple I know; his heart had changed. I could easily name 10 couples over the last 20 years that this is the exact scenario. Almost all of them were what anyone would describe as committed believers; involved in various things at church, some even in full time ministry. These were not casual “One-of-four Sundays a month” sort of people.
Most of us have heard statistics about how the divorce rate within the Evangelical church is no different than outside the church, and that may or may not be true. But whatever the statistics are, my anecdotal evidence from the last 23 years of ministry is that marriages are falling apart at an ever increasing rate, for a myriad of reasons, and that is deeply disturbing (or should be anyway). What is worse is that it is another evidence to the broader culture that American Christians can talk the talk, but often do not really want to walk the walk.
While I am sure there are many factors creating this tsunami of marriage collapse, let me throw one thing I think is near the root of the problem: the heart wants what it wants, or so we are led to believe.
What I mean there is that both in the teaching of the church and even more so in the broader culture we are bombarded with messages that at their core say something to the effect of, “You need to be happy, your heart needs to be satisfied, and your life should be great and what you want it to be. If it is not, then you need to make whatever change you think you need to make so you can be happy.”
Whether as simple as Burger King’s old slogan. “Your way right away,” or as insidious as the prosperity gospel preached in many churches, or something in the middle where we teach young teens to “follow their heart,” the message is about the same – go with whatever you feel at the time and let your heart be your guide.
The problem here is that we all have a heart problem: Jeremiah 17:9 tells us that the heart (apart from Christ) is deceitful and desperately wicked. But even once a person comes to Christ, repents of sin and puts their faith in His death and resurrection for the forgiveness of sin, we still have a heart condition. Now the promise of the New Covenant in Jeremiah 31 is that our hearts of stone would be replaced by hearts of flesh, and 2 Corinthians 5:17 clearly tells us that in Christ we become new creations, but yet our hearts are now caught in the tug of war between the old desires and the new desires (Romans 7). The heart, the seat of who we are in our will and emotions, must still be daily submitted to Jesus lest we be led off into all sorts of things that are in the end painful for us and hurtful for others.
The heart may want what it wants, but only if what it wants is in conformity with the revealed will of God in Scripture should we let it have its way! Anything else is to let the heart lead us to disaster.
Proverbs 4:23 (NLT) Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.