Rudder of our lives

Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

The maxim of today seems to be follow your heart. Do whatever makes you happy and avoid that which doesn't. The problem is our heart, or more specifically our emotions, are often deceptive and fickle. They lead us in the wrong directions and end up making us do things that we later regret. Jeremiah proclaims in the verse above that our hearts are nothing but wicked and even we ourselves don't understand them. The good news is that in the very next verse, He declares that God does, and His advice is don't follow it, but follow His leading.

We are like a boat, and God's Word is meant to be the rudder. It is supposed to be what directs and guides us through the waters of life, aided by the power of our emotions, but not directed by them. In this case, emotions are like the wind which blows into the sails of a ship. The wind can help, or run contrary to the direction of the boat, but a wise captain sets his sails based on the direction of the rudder, not the direction of the wind. If he did, he would never get where he wanted to go. Worse, he might end up running into rocks and loosing his ship.

This is what happens when we allow our emotions, or our hearts, to guide us. We might talk back to our boss at work because we feel angry. We might ignore or neglect our families because we feel depressed. We might wrap our lives around someone who isn't interested in us, or worse, is dangerous for us, because we feel madly in love with them. We know, logically, that these things are not good, but we do them because our emotions tell us it's a good idea. We need to be weary of allowing the fickle winds of our emotions guide the path of our lives. We must allow something solid, unchanging, and good, like the Word of God, be our rudder through life, and adjust our sails to get our emotions to help us move in the right direction. Otherwise we can end up with our lives run aground and falling apart.

Trust the guidance of the Word of God. It will guide you through the rocks and corals of life and into safe harbors.