In deciding what direction to go in life, many people choose to “follow their heart.” Whatever seems good or appears to provide fulfillment is the course that they pursue. This can be done with sincere motives and the appearance of wisdom, but in the end this path will not provide the fulfillment that we expect or desire.
Determining the course we will take in life by following our heart is dangerous. The Lord said, “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). How many times have people followed their heart and ruined their lives, making decisions that brought harm to themselves and to others?
The prophet Jeremiah acknowledged, “I know, O Lord, that a man’s way is not in himself, nor is it in a man who walks to direct his steps” (Jeremiah 10:23). Pursuing the course that we decide upon is “futility and striving after wind” (Ecclesiastes 2:17). When people realize this, it becomes a source of consistent frustration. This is why Solomon wrote, “So I hated life, for the work which had been done under the sun was grievous to me; because everything is futility and striving after wind. Thus I hated all the fruit of my labor for which I had labored under the sun…” (Ecclesiastes 2:17-18).
If our heart is deceitful and our way is not in ourselves, how do we determine the way we need to go in life?
Interestingly, there was a group that began in Jerusalem in the first century that was referred to as “the Way” (Acts 9:2). They were followers of Jesus who declared Himself to be “the way” (John 14:6). Could “the Way” – this way – be what people have spent their lives searching for? Yes!
The wise man wrote, “[God] has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). In other words, there is within each of us a sense that there is something more – some purpose that is greater than what we immediately see around us. However, having this “sense” in our heart does not mean we have the knowledge to tell us precisely what this might be. Remember what Jeremiah said, “A man’s way is not in himself, nor is it in a man who walks to direct his steps” (Jeremiah 10:23).
Paul spoke about this when he addressed the philosophers on Mars Hill in Athens. Seeing an altar to “an unknown God” (Acts 17:23), he told them about the God of heaven: “And He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:26-27). We are here to seek after God. We can find Him, but only if we follow “the Way.”
In this series of lessons, we are going to be studying about “the Way” – what it is and why it is the path we must follow.
This material is available in paperback from Gospel Armory.
