Oh, you’ve heard it before. You probably read it on a candy heart recently. Or maybe you’ve even said it once or twice.
“Follow your heart.”
“Trust your heart.”
“Listen to your heart.”
Bad news, folks. We have heart problems. Yep. The diagnosis is pretty serious, too. Just look at Jeremiah 17:9, which says, ” The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” And then there’s Hebrews 3:10, which says, “…’Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known My ways.” Hebrews 3 goes on to warn against unbelieving hearts that are hardened by sin’s deceitfulness and turn away from the living God.
God is testing our hearts. Proverbs 17:3 says, ” The crucible for silver and the furnace for gold, but the LORD tests the heart.”
What’s more, the consequences of our heart condition can be eternal. Consider Luke 10:25-28:
On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”
He answered: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind;’ and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ “
“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”
Hebrews 3:7-8 says, “…Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts…”
So how do we keep from being hard-hearted, disobedient and sinful? Love God. Listen to His voice, and trust Him. Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight.”
To keep the sinfulness away, it also helps to memorize Scripture and meditate on it. As Psalm 119:11 says, “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.”
What’s more, we need to love each other and encourage each other. Hebrews chapter 3 goes on to say, “But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.”
Today, on Valentine’s Day, let’s pray for soft hearts that love the LORD completely. Let’s pray for hearts that fully trust in the LORD. Let’s pray for hearts with God’s word written all over them.
Let’s thank God for His grace and mercy and goodness. And let’s pray the words from the third verse of one of my favorite hymns, “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” by Robert Robinson:
O to grace how great a debtor
daily I’m constrained to be!
Let thy goodness, like a fetter,
bind my wandering heart to thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
prone to leave the God I love;
here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
seal it for thy courts above.
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Starlight Writer 
