“Go with your heart”. This is the infamous response when someone is uncertain about a specific decision. I’ve always thought that was a reasonable response but God told me differently. I received a promise from God a year ago and to this day the promise has not been manifested in my life and I can’t say the road has been easy but it has supplied me with the wisdom of hope and complete trust in God. The moment I received God’s word, the promise that He told me was mine drew further away from me and my reality completely conflicted with His word. There have been many times over this year where I’ve wanted to psych myself out and convince myself that I didn’t really hear God just so I can forego the desire of this promise and find something easier. Something less challenging. Something less painful. Something less gray. Something more black and white. Something that would have been outside of the will of God, but that is somewhere I don’t want to be.
If I would have followed my heart, I would have been on the feeder road of my promise after exiting too soon because the highway was too hard. And each time I would get over into my far right-lane to attempt to exit, God would steer me back with Jeremiah 17:9, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” The definition of deceitful is “intended to deceive; misleading; fraudulent.” Since the Word of God itself is telling me that my heart is intended to deceive me, will mislead me, and its feelings are fraudulent, then I would be making a huge mistake if I went with my heart. The reason why The Bible tells us the heart is deceiving is because the heart is where emotions root from and emotions are an immediate byproduct of current circumstances. That is why making a decision by following my heart results in a high possibility of regret because I don’t know if my emotions concerning this decision will stay the same once my circumstances change. So, I had a conversation with God where he told me not to follow my heart, but to follow my soul.
The soul is where the mind and the heart congregate with the guidance of The Holy Spirit. If I have The Holy Spirit, which provides divine guidance, congregating with my mind and my heart then I am bound to make the right decision for my life. Going with my soul furthermore means that even when my heart is telling me something and my mind is telling me something, it must congregate with The Holy Spirit before a decision is made, which will align my mind and my heart with God’s will for my life. That is why when people feel strongly about something they will say, “I feel this deep down to my soul”, because the soul goes beyond the surface outlook and provides concrete God-given truth on the matter at hand.
The reason why God didn’t say to go with my mind either is because the mind is constructed of past experiences and I can’t trust a building that was built in the past to hold my future. ‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the LORD” (Isaiah 55:8). His thoughts and ways are based on getting us to the things which he has predestined for our lives because he knows what lies ahead but we only know what lies behind. That is why I can’t lie to you and say that I know why my promise and my reality contradict each other because I don’t. My ways are not God’s ways and my thoughts are not God’s thoughts. I may not understand God’s way of bringing my promise to fruition, but I do understand that if God gave me a Word then it shall come to pass. That is why every time my mind and heart wants to forego the promise, my soul overpowers the voice of fear and uplifts the promises of God.
Father God, we come to you enlightened because the word has been a lamp unto our feet and a light onto our path. Thank you for guiding us with your Word. God, we come to you today praying for divine intervention and discernment when decision making. We declare today that we will no longer make decisions with our deceitful heart just because it feels right, but we will congregate our minds and hearts with The Holy Spirit because it is the guiding light. I pray that even when we feel outside the realm of our promise, remind us that your Word will never return void so if you said it we can believe that it shall come to pass. Father, we surrender to your will. Whatever you want us to do we will do. Wherever you want us to go we will go. However long you want us to wait, we will wait. Thank you for the power of The Holy Spirit to align our hearts and our minds with your will in the depths of our soul. The Bible says that a cord of three strands is not easily broken, so God will you be our third strand? Wrap our minds and our hearts in the power of The Holy Spirit and strengthen every weak mind, strengthen every weak heart, and enlighten every soul. In Jesus name, we pray this prayer of enlightenment and alignment. Amen.