Today I wanted to talk about the heart, how the heart can lead you astray and make you believe things that aren't true, how our emotions can change the reality of the situation. Recently, I have had to remind someone constantly to not let their emotions dictate their beliefs of reality, they are in a very deep depression and keep distorting what is being said to them, and what is actually going on based on how they feel. They keep saying things like 'I'm never getting any better;' 'I'm stuck like this;' 'everybody makes fun of me behind my back;' 'everyone hates me;' or 'I'm not making any progress.' None of these things are true though, they are in fact making progress, very slowly but they are. What they are saying however, is how they feel and what they believe based on those feelings. I know this as someone who came through this and has helped my husband come through it too, I know they can get better and that they don't have to stay this way forever, I see and recognize the progress they have made and am quick to point it out. But they insist that nothing is or will help them to improve, and that life will never be any better than what it is now.
All of this back and forth with this person has made me think of a the verse in the Bible found at Jeremiah 17:9 which says "The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?" I am starting to think what I am experiencing with this person now, and what my husband and I went through in the past is exactly what was meant by the phrase 'the heart is more deceitful than all else.' Each of us, my husband and I, and this other person let our emotions (or heart) get the better of us. We allowed our emotions to dictate our reality, and it left us with a very distorted view of what was really going on. We saw only the pain we felt, and allowed that pain to build with both real and imagined offenses based on negative thoughts and emotions, leaving out any of the good, any of the love shown to us by others and God, leaving ourselves in a very dark and lonely prison.
I can see from where I am standing, now that I have come out the prison of darkness, just how much my heart lied to me and deceived me. I couldn't see then the people trying to help me for what they were, I saw them as coming down on me, gloating, or simply annoying with their dried up old phrases I had heard repeatedly before that really meant nothing to me. My heart tricked me into believing that they didn't really want to help me, that it was all for show, or so they could get something out of me later, I lost my faith in love and the genuine goodness of others because my heart said it didn't exist, and that everything came with a price attached, hidden or otherwise. None of those things were true though, they were just my beliefs about reality based on how I felt, based on what my broken heart told me.
This is not how it stayed for me or my husband though, and it doesn't have to stay that way for this person, or you either. I learned to keep the heart from deceiving you, you need regular daily doses of the truth, of God's truth, you need to surrender to Jesus, and through Him receive a new life, and a new heart(Ezekiel 11:19-20; Jeremiah 24:7; 2 Corinthians 5:17). In Christ we have hope, in Jesus we have a comforter, a provider, a friend and a Savior. With Jesus we can dispel the lies of our heart and rest in His truth as we come to know Him, and trust in God.
Jeremiah 24:7
7 'I will give them a heart to know Me, for I am the LORD; and they will be My people, and I will be their God, for they will return to Me with their whole heart.
Ezekiel 11:19-20
19 "And I will give them one heart, and put a new spirit within them. And I will take the heart of stone out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, 20 that they may walk in My statutes and keep My ordinances and do them. Then they will be My people, and I shall be their God.
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
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