When Should I Follow My Heart?

00:00:00.000 | A really sharp podcast listener named Rachel writes in today, and she seems quite familiar

00:00:09.300 | with Christian hedonism.

00:00:10.600 | "Hello, Pastor John.

00:00:12.540 | The world tells us that we can only be real if we obey our native desires.

00:00:17.960 | That's obviously wrong because our natural desires are for sin and for what will only

00:00:22.520 | destroy our joy in the end."

00:00:25.520 | But in response, I hear a lot of people in the church simply offering prohibitions, various

00:00:30.040 | forms of "don't trust your desires" or "don't follow your heart."

00:00:35.560 | And yet, if I understand Christian hedonism correctly, the Bible calls all people everywhere

00:00:40.720 | to follow their hearts toward the greatest and most lasting joy in the universe.

00:00:46.000 | That seems to be how you define faith, in fact, finding Jesus more satisfying than anything

00:00:51.960 | else.

00:00:53.000 | So it would be impossible for us to genuinely believe if we acted toward Christ in a way

00:00:57.840 | contrary to our own hearts and our own desires.

00:01:01.920 | So wouldn't the Christian hedonist say something like, "Do trust your desires and do trust

00:01:06.720 | your heart when your hearts and desires are calibrated to Christ."

00:01:12.180 | At what point do we trust our hearts and follow our desires?

00:01:16.420 | The blanket prohibitions seem inaccurate to me.

00:01:19.560 | Right.

00:01:20.560 | Yes.

00:01:21.560 | They are inaccurate, unless they're just calculated rhetorical devices to get your

00:01:26.200 | attention, which sometimes they are.

00:01:29.320 | Rachel really seems to know her way around in Christian hedonism.

00:01:32.600 | I'm impressed.

00:01:34.320 | The two fundamental statements of Christian hedonism are, one, God is most glorified in

00:01:40.540 | us when we're most satisfied in Him, and two, therefore, let's all pursue our largest

00:01:48.700 | and longest satisfaction in God, the largest being full, really full, and the longest being

00:01:56.480 | forever.

00:01:57.480 | And of course, we know where that comes from.

00:02:00.120 | Psalm 1611, "In your presence is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forever

00:02:06.360 | more."

00:02:08.200 | One of the implications of these two statements is that perpetual pursuit of God that does

00:02:16.600 | not come from joy in God will not honor God.

00:02:21.680 | You might pursue God for all kinds of reasons that don't glorify God.

00:02:26.560 | You might pursue Him for money.

00:02:28.620 | You might pursue Him for marriage.

00:02:31.220 | You might pursue Him for job success.

00:02:34.340 | If God is just a divine butler to bring me what I really want besides God, then pursuing

00:02:41.020 | Him gets Him little glory.

00:02:43.760 | What you glorify most is what you want most, not what you use to get what you want most.

00:02:52.480 | You don't make God look majestic by making Him the means of something else that you want

00:02:59.240 | more.

00:03:00.540 | And Rachel is right that I think an essential part of saving faith is to be satisfied with

00:03:08.560 | all that God is for us in Jesus, and so I think she's right to say that we can't

00:03:13.720 | genuinely believe, and I would add can't genuinely worship either, if the pursuit of

00:03:21.240 | God is always contrary to our heart.

00:03:25.400 | That's right.

00:03:26.400 | Contrary to our heart means that our heart wants something else more, and we simply feel

00:03:30.600 | coerced into pursuing God lest something bad happen to us, or as a means to something good

00:03:37.240 | that we want more than God.

00:03:39.640 | So yes, yes, yes, it is essential, let's just call it, to be born again, and that from

00:03:47.120 | inside out we be given new preferences, new inclinations, new desires, especially a supreme

00:03:56.200 | desire for God.

00:03:58.200 | And when that essential thing happens, then we may say, perhaps without misunderstanding,

00:04:07.440 | that we must follow our desires.

00:04:11.920 | In other words, when we have been made new enough to have our strongest desires be for

00:04:19.320 | God, then we must follow them; otherwise, we will not only be inauthentic, but God will

00:04:28.680 | not be glorified.

00:04:30.400 | Now what's missing from most contemporary declarations to follow our desires so that

00:04:38.480 | we will be authentic, or not to follow our desires because we will be sinful, what's

00:04:45.120 | missing is the serious consideration that our desires must be deeply and profoundly

00:04:52.840 | renovated.

00:04:54.960 | This is offensive to unbelievers, and it's scary to some believers who think that they

00:05:01.240 | should have the final say in controlling their own behavior.

00:05:05.240 | It's offensive to unbelievers because it says that they are deeply flawed, deeply flawed

00:05:11.320 | human beings, and need to have their most fundamental desires changed by God so that

00:05:18.800 | God is at the center of their wants and preferences and values.

00:05:24.320 | And it's scary to some believers to say that our desires must be profoundly renovated

00:05:30.160 | by God because that renovation is not in our control.

00:05:35.320 | And some people have a theology that says we have to be in control, else we're not

00:05:40.520 | responsible.

00:05:41.520 | That's not true.

00:05:43.880 | God knows how to renovate and govern our hearts without taking away human responsibility.

00:05:51.440 | Now Rachel was getting at this when she said that we should only pursue our desires if

00:05:59.320 | "our heart and desires are calibrated to Christ."

00:06:05.680 | I like that phrase.

00:06:07.000 | I use the word "renovation," she used the word "calibrated to Christ."

00:06:11.240 | Right, that's a huge "if," though.

00:06:13.360 | If our heart and desires are calibrated to Christ, the greatest spiritual task—and

00:06:18.200 | I think she knows this—the greatest spiritual task of the Christian life is precisely that

00:06:25.080 | recalibration of our fallen desires, our disordered desires, our misdirected desires into godly,

00:06:36.440 | orderly, properly directed desires.

00:06:40.040 | This is where the great battle is fought in the Christian life.

00:06:44.880 | Of course, indeed, we are taught to use self-control to abstain from external actions that are

00:06:51.480 | sinful, but that's not the main battle of the Christian life.

00:06:55.680 | The main battle is to see our hearts renovated, recalibrated, so that we don't want to do

00:07:03.480 | those sinful external behaviors and don't just need willpower not to do them, but the

00:07:08.800 | root has been severed and we have different desires.

00:07:11.920 | In other words, the goal of change, of sanctification of the Christian life is to be so changed

00:07:19.880 | that we can and ought to follow our desires.

00:07:25.960 | Here's another way to say it.

00:07:27.880 | Authentic living is freedom.

00:07:30.920 | For freedom, Christ has set you free, Paul says in Galatians 5.

00:07:35.640 | But what is true freedom?

00:07:37.080 | Let's think about this for just a minute.

00:07:38.760 | When are you free, for example, to enjoy skydiving?

00:07:43.920 | Now one right answer is, well, when you have access to a plane and to some equipment that

00:07:49.760 | you need.

00:07:50.760 | The freedom of access.

00:07:51.760 | Right.

00:07:52.760 | Here's another right answer.

00:07:54.040 | You have to have the ability to do it.

00:07:55.920 | You've got to have some training.

00:07:56.920 | You've got to know what you're doing.

00:07:59.220 | You know, the freedom of ability.

00:08:01.160 | Right.

00:08:02.160 | Here's another right answer.

00:08:04.000 | You've got to have a desire to skydive.

00:08:06.760 | You can't enjoy skydiving if you don't want to skydive.

00:08:11.200 | Enjoyment means fulfilling your desire.

00:08:12.840 | So there is the freedom of desire.

00:08:15.000 | Now is that all?

00:08:16.760 | Access, ability, desire.

00:08:19.400 | Is that what constitutes freedom?

00:08:22.000 | No, that's not all.

00:08:24.520 | There's one more aspect of freedom that hasn't been mentioned.

00:08:28.960 | If you're going to freely enjoy skydiving, what if you have access and ability and desire

00:08:35.820 | and you leap out of the plane enjoying the hundred mile an hour wind in your goggled

00:08:41.320 | face until you realize there's no ripcord and in 30 seconds you'll be dead.

00:08:49.380 | That first enjoyment of the wind in your face was not authentic freedom.

00:08:54.540 | It was a delusion.

00:08:55.540 | There was a missing dimension to this freedom.

00:08:59.040 | We had freedom from lack of access, freedom from lack of ability, freedom from lack of

00:09:03.540 | desire, but we did not have freedom from regret.

00:09:08.420 | So my definition of true freedom to enjoy something is that we need access and ability

00:09:15.220 | and desire and the certainty we will not regret this in a thousand years.

00:09:21.540 | All of which is to say we may pursue our desires and we may trust our heart when our heart

00:09:32.140 | and desires are so renovated, so calibrated to Christ that we have no passions for the

00:09:41.420 | path that leads to regret.

00:09:45.500 | Very good.

00:09:46.500 | That's the kind of freedom we should all seek after diligently, freedom to be enthralled

00:09:52.100 | by God's beauty.

00:09:53.500 | So much reminds me of John Donne's Holy Sonnet number 14.

00:09:57.500 | That kept coming to mind.

00:09:58.500 | And thanks for joining us today on the podcast for our feed, our archive, or to send us your

00:10:03.180 | own question like this great question from Rachel.

00:10:06.100 | Wow.

00:10:07.100 | Thank you for it.

00:10:08.100 | Do all of that from our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

00:10:13.820 | While some people assume that John Piper was born a Calvinist, nope.

00:10:18.500 | In fact, his embrace of Reformed soteriology came at the expense of some very painful life

00:10:23.420 | experiences, one of which he'll share with us next time.

00:10:27.540 | I'm Tony Reinke.

00:10:28.540 | We'll see you back here on Wednesday.

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When Should I Follow My Heart?

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