Just Because It’s in Your Heart Doesn’t Mean God Put it There

ECC Season 2

Nov 10

So, you’ve got something on your heart. That little, soft nagging of ‘this project’ or ‘this skill’ or ‘this audience’. Something that could only be supernatural within your chest pointing you in a specific direction to use your talents and abilities. Maybe you’re super duper excited about this! Maybe you’re telling everyone “Hey, God’s put this thing on my heart!” And maybe you are 100% correct! God speaks to us in a myriad of ways and a lot of times that includes putting something or someone specific on our heart.

However…

We need to use a liiiiittle bit of caution when it comes to claiming anything is “from God”, especially things that feel supernaturally significant. As the Bible says, the human heart is “fickle” and even “desperately sick”, meaning that there is plenty of opportunity for it to mess up, fall into temptation, or just be plain wrong. There are so many different ways — both good and bad — that something might be “placed on your heart” while not being from God.

The first thing to do when something is in your heart is to ask two diagnostic questions:

Is it sinful? If it is, it is 100000% not from God. Period. No room to wiggle.
Is it coming from a place of idolatry or pride (i.e., even if it isn’t sinful itself, is it being produced out of sin)? Also definitely not from God.

Once we’ve figure out the answer to these things, we can figure out what the next step is. If it turns out the feeling is either sinful or rooted in sin, then some repentance is in order. However, if it is not inherently sinful, that leads to two other possible answers:

It actually is from God directly.
It’s not from God, but is an expression of our own hearts’ desire (good).

Now, unfortunately there’s really no surefire way to tell if something good on your heart is from God or is just from yourself. A lot of that is going to have to depend on your own individual walk with God and how He communicates with you.

That being said, if something good — i.e. not sinful — is on your heart, it’s not a necessarily a problem if it doesn’t come directly from God. If you are a born again Christian, with a renewed heart in Christ, then your heart is likely going to be more empathetic to the needs of others and responsive your role in the Kingdom of God. I would even say your heart is going to have things it wants to pursue in a good, Kingdom-building way.

The problem is how we talk about these good things on our hearts. Big emotions like this or “supernatural” feelings need to be scrutinized carefully before they are pursued. The heart is a wonderful organ — both physically and emotionally — but it is also the weakest part of us. It is the part that is more often going to fall into temptation and be led astray by the wrong voices; even it’s own echo!

So, are we going around saying “God has put this on my heart!” to things we really haven’t checked? Are we confusing how God communicates with something our own heart has responded to the world around it? Are we sure we know what we are talking about when we say the words “God put this on my heart”?

Have we taken a moment to check?

Putting it into Action

Sometimes things that are on our hearts are bad and sinful, sometimes they are good, but even if they’re good, that does not automatically make them “from God”. If you’ve had something on your heart lately, take a moment to meditate on it with God. Dive into its root cause; is it sinful or coming from a foundation of sin? Does it relate to the things that you find important, such as mending a specific brokenness in the world or encouraging a specific group of people? Is it from God directly, or is it an expression of the renewed heart He has given you?

Try to parse out an answer to these questions. As long as it isn’t sinful in some way (which includes “it’s a good thing but God said no”), keep pursuing it! But use caution with how you speak about it unless you know for sure it was from God, or it was from yourself.