The Heart Wants What the Heart Wants

The Christian Soldier collection – December 2nd, 2023 (8-minute read)

Ah, such a timeless romantic aphorism, isn’t it? Depending on your age, you might relate the title of this article to anything from a celebrity scandal to the words of a pop-music song. The original author of those words was early American poet Emily Dickenson in a letter she wrote to a lovelorn friend. For a Christian, that phrase may shed light on why we can struggle between what the Lord wants for our lives and the things that we sometimes want for ourselves. Sometimes, the worst advice for a Christian is the old cliché – “Follow your heart.” Let’s explore that idea and see where we end up.

Have you ever “theme surfed” the bible? It’s a great way to learn God’s truth. It can also be a challenging way to journey through the Word. If you don’t know what I mean, theme surfing is picking a topic and then cracking open (or going online to) a concordance or commentary and finding all of the places that a specific word occurs. It’s best done prayerfully, stopping from time to time and aski…