Fearlessly CourageousDesk of Dennis Piller4 13 2023
Click for Audio VersionSteve Jobs says: Follow Your Heart! What do you say?
I was reading an article the other day about Steve Jobs. I wrote downs some parts of his commencement speech to Stanford’s graduating class. It gives us a glimpse of his philosophy and the world at large.
The speech is inspiring and chock full of applications for facing failures and setbacks. Jobs spoke of being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, death, and dying. Knowing that our time on earth is limited, he told the students to think carefully about how to spend it.
He said; “Don't be trapped by dogma–which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.
Everything else is secondary.He said, bottom line, it boils down to three important words: Follow. Your. Heart."
He continued; "Thinking about your death and the time you have left isn't meant to be confining. On the contrary, it's meant to empower you to use that time in the most meaningful way possible. Your mortality is your most important tool. He goes on; “Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything–all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure–these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart”.Those same words were Jobs' wish for the graduating students, just as he'd always wished it for himself:
He closed with 4 words as they cheered him. "Stay hungry. Stay foolish."
It was an inspiring speech but as I started to look more closely, I noticed some blatant problems with his philosophy and that of the world.
What did you hear?
First off, the Bible teaches that all men suffer from a common frailty—sin. The apostle Paul calls it our sinful nature. “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do–this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it” (Romans 7:18-20).
Our evil hearts lead us to sin.
Here we see that 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. At that point, He removes our hearts of stone and replaces them with hearts of flesh (Ezekiel 11:19). He accomplishes this by the supernatural implanting of His Spirit into our hearts. Then our desires become His desires, our will seek to do His will, and our rebellion turns to joyous obedience.
The "Follow your heart" idea has morphed into a real spiritual new age movement and it is preached by many nowadays. After all, if something comes straight from the heart, it cannot be evil, it must be good. Right?
Wrong!
This new belief system is the ultimate deception: it makes the heart of man an idol, a new god, to trust, believe in, and ultimately to follow blindly. It is a mystical approach to spirituality that tells you that your heart is pure and as such it should be at the center of your world.
Proverbs 28:26 – "He who trusts in his own heart is a fool, but whoever walks wisely will be delivered."The Bible defines Love very clearly, Love is not an emotion you feel, Love is keeping God's Commandments.2 John 1:6 – "This is love: that we walk according to God's Commandments."In closing,
So, while Christians can and should seek God through prayer and be sensitive to the leadings and desires God puts on their heart, this cannot be the final say when it comes to making decisions and understanding the truth. The feelings of our hearts should always be tested first and finally by the words of Scripture.
casting crowns Only Jesus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eQd3K2Fxp4&list=PL3oW2tjiIxvTstLS9GlgaT_mqONT0WVDw&index=18I researched this information from INC Magazine and several studies on the heart.
