How God’s Peace Heals Deceitful Hearts: Jeremiah vs. Colossians
There is an ongoing conversation about the heart vs. the mind, and for a good reason. Let’s discuss this by comparing two Bible scriptures, and looking at how both are true and equally important in our walk with God.
JEREMIAH:
9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
10 I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings. -Jeremiah 17:9-10
The heart is the word we often use for the place where our emotions live. We know the heart is deceitful because it’s very much influenced by worldly things like pain, temptation, guilt, and shame. But as Christians, we cannot read this verse and just accept that our hearts can’t ever be trusted, because the Bible gives us other verses explaining how God’s healing leads us to peace, which brings us to joy.
COLOSSIANS:
“And let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts. For as members of one body, you are called to live in peace, and always be thankful.” -Colossians 3:15
God is calling to us: Child, let me take the reins so that I can heal you, and bring peace to rule your heart! We don’t have to let Him in; we can certainly reject Him and block out His healing if we wish. Doing this will never bring us peace. If there’s no peace in the heart, then it cannot be trusted, nor can any plans that are conceived from it be trusted. If within this emotional unrest and instability we devise our own master plan for our lives, we are implementing a plan birthed from unhealed pain, not from peace or from God’s wisdom. This means that deceit is guiding our choices. Caution! This conversation is usually heart vs. mind, but we must remember that when our emotions are unstable, it affects our minds as well! So don’t fall into the trap that being emotionally unhealed isn’t a big deal because you use your brain… a deceitful heart filled with hurt, fear, paranoia, and anger will poison your mind as well. Remember that! I don’t believe that God wants us to choose mind over heart, rather He wants to restore us completely!
The only way that we can reach a point of trusting our hearts is by allowing God to heal our emotional turmoil, creating a harmonious relationship between the heart and the mind. This requires us to ditch our own plan and take up His plan for our lives.
꧁ What is the ultimate awakening that leads us to ask God for His intervention?
The realization that our plan, birthed from trauma and worldly influence, isn’t bringing us any joy. Only God’s path of healing will lead us to our best lives because healing brings us PEACE. I know this well because I lived it! For many years, I paved my own road… the further down it I trekked, the more warped my reality became. Foolishly, my solution was to go even deeper. Although my heart was still in shambles, I believed that my intellect was sound, so I trusted my choices. Huge mistake. I never found peace, of course, only more pain and heartache.
꧁ So, how does God heal our emotions?
The path of allowing God to heal our emotional unrest may look a little different for each person. He puts us through a series of personal situations that require us to make a choice in each one: our plan or His plan. The greatest “test” of all is when He ALLOWS us to walk on our own. God lets us reject Him for our own plan so we can feel the devastation, ramifications, and disappointments of each wrong choice. This is not to torture us! It’s to show us that we do not know what is best for our lives over what He has prepared for us. If we believe that God can heal the lame and sick, why would we think He doesn’t have the power to bring balance to our emotions? After walking alone for so long, we realize that we still feel empty and hurt, so we finally ask Him into our hearts… and that is where He can begin to mold us for the purpose we were meant to carry out.
꧁ Healing ➥ Peace ➥ Joy
God is calling us to let Him in so He can heal us and give us peace to rule our hearts! A healed heart is new and is not led by deceit, but by the Holy Spirit; therefore, we can trust where it takes us. In the peace, we experience stable conditions, where our hearts live in harmony with our minds— the keeper of God’s wisdom. Only in this peace can the mind now become laser focused with divine clarity. Let us not call this push/pull a “fight,” rather, a beautiful dance that will continuously take place, where the music that guides the choreography is God’s loving voice! Below, Ezekiel tells us that without being spirit-led, our hearts are stones—dead—but God brings them to life and tells us to do what He says:
26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
27 And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them. -Ezekiel 36:26-27
So today, we thank God for allowing us to feel the destruction of choosing our plan over His, because that experience is what causes us to walk back to Him and ask for help. Let’s invite Him into our hearts and fill us up with peace, purpose, and joy! The plan that awaits us on the other side of healing is where our lives truly begin!
Written by: Michelle TK