JUST FOLLOW YOUR HEART

DATE TAUGHT: Friday, March 22nd 2019

TEACHER: Matt King

Why not just follow your heart? Isn’t that the key to happiness?

This REASON FOR HOPE WORKSHOP seeks to tackle this important question.

The world we live in tells us that satisfaction, fulfillment and happiness are found in following your passions. Trust your heart. If you’re passionate about it, or feel strongly about it, it can’t be wrong! Our culture tells us that truth is relative and that reality is what we feel and determine it to be.

However, the Bible tells us a very different story!
Jeremiah 17:9 tell us that, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”

In this workshop, we addressed some burning questions head-on, such as:

  • How can we give an answer to people who believe they need to be true to who they feel they are in their heart?

  • How can we diagnose our desires if our hearts are deceitful?

  • What reason for hope is there for a world that promises satisfaction by chasing the fulfillment of our every desire and passion?

  • Why not live for the maximum pleasure that this life has to offer us?

Pastor of Biblical Soul Care, Matt King shone light on this topic with a time of Q&A with him and Pastor Andrew Chia addressing burning questions about diagnosing our own hearts and applying this knowledge to others.

Video Slides with audio

Print out the worksheet PDF (below) and use these videos to follow along with the workshop.
(TIP: You can use the gear icon to speed up/slow down the video so you can follow better)

Workshop Audio MP3 (2 Parts)

You can listen to the audio of the workshop here – or download it to listen later.

NOTE: To download, on some browsers it may open in a new window where you can download the audio by clicking on the ‘three dots’ at the side of the audio player OR you may have to right-click the button links and choose Save As…

Further Resources

Below is a short list of recommended resources to help you go deeper into the question of “Why Not Just Follow Your Heart?”

Resources on the Heart

The Dynamic Heart in Daily Life – Our hearts are not steel. They are living, complex things that grow and change. Sometimes they fly so high we scrape the top of heaven. Sometimes they barely make it off the ground. What hope do we have of understanding ourselves when we are so changeable? And what hope do we have for lasting change when our response to life is so different from one day to the next? The goal of change is not to flatten this variety, but to guide our responses so they reflect who we are in Christ. Jesus perfectly lived his humanity out as a dynamic being. Now as our risen Savior, he redeems all of human experience for his purposes… Dr. Jeremy Pierre, in this ground-breaking book, lays out a holistic understanding of who we are and how we change through a dynamic relationship with Christ. Every day our dynamic hearts need help from our dynamic Savior.

Don’t Follow Your Heart: God’s Ways Are Not Your Ways – “Follow your heart” is a creed embraced by billions of people. It’s a statement of faith in one of the great pop-cultural myths of our day — a gospel proclaimed in many of our stories, movies, and songs. It can sound so simple, beautiful, and liberating. It’s tempting to believe. Until you consider that your heart has sociopathic tendencies. Our hearts were never designed to be followed, but to be led. Our hearts were never meant to be gods in whom we believe, but to believe in God. This book contains 31 meditations for recalibrating your heart. It is a collection of helps for common heart problems. Because your biggest problems in life are heart problems.

Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters – Success, true love, and the life you’ve always wanted. Many of us placed our faith in these things, believing they held the key to happiness, but with a sneaking suspicion they might not deliver. No wonder we feel lost, alone, disenchanted, and resentful. There is only one God who can wholly satisfy our cravings—and now is the perfect time to meet Him again, or for the first time. In Counterfeit Gods, Timothy Keller shows how a proper understanding of the Bible reveals the unvarnished truth about societal ideals and our own hearts.

The Pagan Heart of Today’s Culture – Although postmodernism, polytheism, and the ancient heresy of Gnosticism seem unrelated, Peter Jones shows that they are part of an ancient religious worldview that seeks to impose significant elements of a pagan civilization on our once Christian Western culture. Jones helps us to understand this opposing spiritual system so that we can counter it with the biblical gospel.brbrWritten to equip and strengthen laypeople in their defense of the faith, Christian Answers to Hard Questions challenges contemporary opposition to Christianity with concise, practical answers.

Look and Live: Behold the Soul-Thrilling, Sin-Destroying Glory of Christ – All of us live in the tension between where we are and where we ought to be. We try our best to bully our desires into submission. And we all know, this is exhausting. Are you tired? Stuck? Still fighting the same sin you’ve been fighting for years? The call in these pages is not to work or to strive, but to lift your eyes. You don’t need more willpower. You need a vision of greatness that sweeps you off your feet. You need to see glory. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Look and Live.

Idols of the Heart: Learning to Long for God Alone – Do you feel discouraged, even defeated, in your battle against habitual sin? Elyse Fitzpatrick delves into the heart of the problem: we’re all idol-worshippers who put our loves, desires, and expectations in God’s placeand then suffer the consequences. Yet God uses even our struggles for his glory. Fitzpatrick shows us how to better know our hearts, long for our God, and resist and crush the false gods in our lives.

Passions of the Heart: Biblical Counsel for Stubborn Sexual Sins – Enticed by rage, sensuality, or pride, anyone can become caught up in previously unimaginable acts. Experienced biblical counselor John Street takes a hard look at the heart idolatries that lead even Christians to commit egregious sexual sin . . . showing how to bring lasting change by identifying the underlying motivations of the heart. Here there is hope: any sin can be forgiven, and Christ gives men and women the grace to mortify fleshly desires and to humbly live for him.

The materials for our REASON FOR HOPE WORKSHOP are offered through our website free of charge for personal use or in small groups for the edification of individuals in the body of Christ and the Church globally. Please, no editing or redistribution of this content without the expressed written permission of Hope Church Toronto West.

SUNDAY SERVICE

10am | John English Junior Middle School
95 Mimico Ave, Etobicoke

CHURCH OFFICE

Mondays - Thursdays | 8:30 am - 5 pm
26-1255 The Queensway, Etobicoke

Share This