Handling our Hearts

A recent email from a new visitor got me thinking today about how we handle our hearts. As I found myself thinking about being single and yet living well in spite of unanswered longings, it got me thinking again about how I handle my desires for anything really. I mean, what about that grand desire to be a published writer…or to own my own really hip and successful coffee house…or to get the Lauren Graham style award for hippest and hottest woman in her 30s…or the desire to be heard and validated merely for where I’m at in my journey today. The list could go on and on and be as simple as desiring a new pair of really cute and expensive shoes…

What do we do with this little thing called desire?

In the Christian realm, I’ve long sat under teaching that promotes the attitude that desires are wrong if not sinful. The underlying message: Whatever your heart desires can’t be good. Is that wrong teaching? Well, to be fair, it does say in Jeremiah 17:9, “The heart is more deceitful than anything else and desperately sick—who can understand it?” However, I think we’ve often taken this verse out of context. If you read Jeremiah 17 (if not the entire book), the Lord is making a statement about the condition of Israel’s sin…after their hearts had followed after other gods or idols.

What we fail to talk about here is something much deeper…that the heart is made for worship. If the heart is not being filled with worship of God Himself, rest assured it will worship something else! In Jeremiah, the Lord is identifying a heart condition that has chosen to worship other things and not Him. And yet, it’s not the end of the story! If you follow this story closely, you’ll find Him making a statement later on in Ezekiel about a permanent solution to this kind of heart condition: “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws” (Ez. 26:25-27; similar comment in Ez. 11:19)

To me, it sounds like there’s hope for my heart and its desires. Sounds to me that the solution He’s offering will permanently take care of this condition. The solution: Jesus’ death on the cross, covering my sin, and enabling my heart full restoration. My heart has been fully redeemed and bears the blood-stained stamp of Christ. My heart is new…restored…clean.

So, if that’s true of my heart, why do I often still find myself wrestling with feeling that my desires are somehow wrong?

Again I’m reminded of James 4 which identifies the causes of fights and quarrels among the people of God – he says that they come from “your desires that battle within you” (4:1). What we often do with this verse is insert the word “evil” before desires. (FYI: I believe the NLT version uses “evil” to describe desires – that’s actually a bad translation.)

What James is alluding to is not the fact that desire was evil to begin with. Heart desires are not wrong. It’s not wrong, for example, to desire to be loved. It’s not a bad desire to want to be accepted. It’s not evil to desire security. What James is speaking of is the way we go about trying to make those desires happen:

“You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.”

I take great hope in dealing with my heart as James basically points us to identify our heart longings (not evil but good) and where we might have gone astray by worshipping other things. The following has been a really helpful picture of discovering the trail of how the normal desires of daily living take control of the heart. It’s taken from Paul David Tripp’s Helping Others Change which is the workbook that enhances his book Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands:

1. Desire: “I want.” Nothing wrong here yet.
2. Demand: “I must.” The desire is no longer an expression of love for God and man, but something I crave for myself.
3. Need: “I will.” Something desirable is now seen as essential. I am convinced that I cannot live without it.
4. Expectation: “You should.” This is where my relationships begin to be affected. If I really believe that this is a need, then it seems right to expect that you will meet my need if you really love me.
5. Disappointment: “You didn’t!” Here the anger breaks out and becomes personal. You are standing in the way of what rules my heart.
6. Punishment: “Because you didn’t, I will. . .” I respond to you in anger (silent treatment, hurtful words, vengeance, or violence.”

In identifying maybe where my heart has gone astray, I find that this enables me to once again yield myself over to the Lord and draw near to Him as James exhorts. In doing this, I’ve discovered how much the Lord delights in showing me that my longings or desires are good…and to entrust the working out of my desires to Him and not my own sticky hands…