Follow: Reflect - Week 1
Despite the popularity of “Follow Your Heart,” Scripture teaches the very opposite! Your heart is deceitful. Trust The Lord and question your heart and the hearts of others!
Books:
Don't Follow Your Heart by Jon Bloom
“This book contains 31 meditations for recalibrating your heart. It is a collection of helps for common heart problems. Because your biggest problems in life are heart problems. Jon Bloom will help you follow Jesus by resisting your heart’s errant predilections and directing it to do all God’s will.”
Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will
“Too often, God's people tinker around with churches, jobs, and relationships, worrying that they haven't found God's perfect will for their lives. Or-even worse-they do absolutely nothing, stuck in a frustrated state of paralyzed indecision. But God doesn't need to tell us what to do at each fork in the road. He's already revealed His plan for our lives: to love Him with our whole hearts, to obey His Word, and after that, to do what we like. This is for the people who question themselves TOO much!”
Articles:
Gospel Coalition - Our Hearts, Desperately Wicked
“...But the sin of idolatry lies deep in my heart. This sin deifies my supposed independence. I want to be God. I want to set my own rules for living and terms for happiness. Sin transforms God’s holy “Thou shalt not” into my stubborn “I will.”
Desiring God - Can I Follow My New Heart?
“I suggest we not counsel each other to “follow your heart,” but instead to “follow the Treasure.” Looking into our hearts for direction can be spiritually hazardous. It is usually more helpful for us to direct our hearts to what is most valuable and delightful.”
Gospel Coalition - Tremble! Then Rejoice!
“Some of the most sobering and frightening passages of Scripture reveal to us that God does not see the way we see. And more to the point, those passages reveal to us that God’s holy and searching gaze falls upon our hearts.”
Ligonier Ministries - Shattered Trust
“We are not to place our trust in other humans. Like us, they are going to die because of their fallen condition and turn back into dirt. We don’t have to trust in people; we have to love them and do good to them (1 Cor. 10:24; Gal. 6:10). This truth gives us freedom and a calling.”
Got Questions - How Can I Know If the Desires of My Heart Are From God?
“God can literally plant His own desires into the heart of man, the heart that, without Him, is desperately wicked and deceitful. He replaces the evil with good and sets our hearts on the path toward Him, removing our own desires and replacing them with His. This only happens when we come to Him in repentance and accept the gift of salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Videos:
Gospel Coalition - Should Christians Follow Their Heart?
Rosaria Butterfield, Melissa Kruger, and Trillia Newbell sat down to talk about a message that pervades our culture. They look at what the Bible has to say about our hearts, indwelling sin, and the heart of Christ. But they also talk about how to pursue guidance in making decisions and acting on desires that aren't sinful.
Jen Wilkin - Reflecting God's Character
“One of God’s primary concerns is to change US—change our hearts because we were made to glorify Him. True knowledge of self and true knowledge of God go hand in hand.”
The Gospel Project - Rethink the Self
“In this short talk, Trevin Wax—general editor of The Gospel Project and author of the book, ‘Rethink Your Self’—observes that today's common wisdom says you’re free to create yourself, design yourself, and define yourself. Yet the way of Jesus, Wax argues, would have us realize we’re already created, designed, and defined. Jesus confronts a “me first” way of life with a “God first” world. The world says we should look inward, while Jesus says to look upward.”
John Piper - The Knowledge of God and of Ourselves
“The knowledge of ourselves is more difficult than the knowledge of God because to know yourself requires that you FIRST know God. We are also prone to thinking that we have self-knowledge when we really do not.”
Sermons:
John Piper - Joy Changes Everything - An Invitation to Christian Hedonism
“Our hearts are deceitful and desperately sick. Don’t let your heart trick you into thinking that you can find greater pleasures anywhere but Jesus.”
Matt Chandler - Love and Knowledge of Self
“Accepting the grace God freely offers is the only way to reconcile the New Testament’s command to both deny ourselves and love ourselves.”
Tim Keller - The Gospel and Your Self
“The cure for our self-absorption is an encounter with God. The real God is infinitely glorious, weighty, and beautiful. When God moves from being a concept to a reality, he changes our beliefs and priorities by displaying his beauty, man’s sinfulness, and purifying man by grace. Once changed, we can live new lives for him.”
Podcasts:
Welcome to The Warehouse! Has a Sunday sermon ever left you running to Google with new theological questions? Have you ever wished that you could peer behind the curtain to see how the message comes together? That’s where we come in! Here at Cornerstone Church, we spend hours every week talking about the Bible. This is the place to learn about Scripture, dive into its context, and study the Bible’s cultural background. Come to the Warehouse–where we’ll extend the stuff you learn from the stage.
Ask Pastor John - Is the Christian’s Heart Deceitfully Wicked?
“All human beings — no exceptions — are born with a kind of fallen, diseased, deceived, self-exalting, God-opposing heart. So, the question is this: When a person experiences the new birth — becomes a Christian — what happens to that diseased, deceived, self-exalting, God-opposing heart?”
Gospelbound Podcast - Why the Gospel of Self Improvement Isn't Good News
“Self-acceptance, she reminds us from God’s Word, doesn’t come from self-love but from the redemption of Jesus Christ, where God demonstrates his love for us as sinners. That’s why she can write, “[S]elf-righteous striving is more hopeless than you want to believe, but grace is more life-transforming than you realize.”