Kenny Warkentin

Be careful . . . make sure that your own hearts are not evil and unbelieving, turning you away from the living God. You must warn each other every day, while it’s still “today,” so that none of you will be deceived by sin and hardened against God. (Heb. 3:12-13, NLT)

Do you have someone in your life who speaks truth? Who encourages and spurs you toward Christ and his likeness? Who cares for you, and in doing so speaks into areas in your life that need encouragement or work? Do you have that trusted friend who is committed in walking with you in your journey of faith?
Most of us desire community and need to feel connected with others. Yet we also have what I call a flesh response, where we’d rather not have people speak into our lives. We feel we can do it on our own and that our decisions are ours and don’t affect anyone else.
But Jeremiah 17:9 reads, “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?”
And Proverbs 28:26 reads, “Those who trust in themselves [heart] are fools, but those who walk in wisdom are kept safe.”
Wisdom is the word of God. It’s the living, breathing, relevant word of God, which is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. It is our bread and our sustenance and we can’t live without it. When we base our motives on what we think our heart “feels,” we can easily be strayed off course and onto paths which may feel good, but are far from the best for us and lead us to destruction.
The folly of following your heart
I listened to my heart once and began to base my identity on how I felt, rather than on the word of God. I began silencing the solid, mature believers in my life, trusting instead my heart’s feelings! This led me to the path of identifying myself as a gay man. I believed that because I felt this way, my sexuality was set and I controlled it.
How many of us make decisions based on the sole merit of our feelings? When I proposed to my wife, I had definite feelings for her or I wouldn’t have married her. But I also knew that God was calling me to marry her and that I had total peace as I knew this was ordained by him. Do my feelings change on a day-to-day basis as I live out married life? You bet. Some days it’s easy to love well and to get along and we find our groove! But there are days when we slog through difficult communication, misinterpretations, sleep deprivation and child rearing. In those times, I need to know that I have a solid foundation of covenant, commitment, perseverance and faith. Those are truths you can lean on, found in the word of God, and they go far beyond “feelings.” Marriage is a mindset of being committed, regardless of how I feel.

I need Jesus everyday to walk this out and I need my family the body of Christ to do this as well. I need trusted brothers and sisters to speak truth to me if they see me dabbling in things I shouldn’t. I need these broken vessels to encourage me and spur me toward the goal set before me. When I begin to veer off the path, who is there to help me? If I have no one, I can merrily go this way and that.
So who’s in your corner? Who knows you and your heart and your life? Who has authority to speak truth in love to you, even if it makes you boil inside? Who are you submitted to?
I encourage you to find a good person, not a perfect person (because there isn’t one), to be the one who will challenge you and one whom you can challenge. If you have that person, thank God for them. Pray that God brings people into your life who won’t just allow you to feel good, but will challenge your “feelings” and spur you toward holiness and the race set before you. It’s not easy and each one of us can be easily strayed by appeasing things that tug at our heart.