Following Your Heart

I hear people say "follow your heart" all the time. I see beautifully made pictures on Facebook with that quote, and I see well-meaning people give that piece of advice to struggling friends. Follow your heart. It sounds so simple and it would make life so much simpler if we could just decide to follow our hearts. I'd love to follow my heart and do whatever I felt like doing! It presents itself as an ideal solution to our own happiness. But beware those sugary sweet words of advice; they'll end up tasting sour as vinegar.

The problem with following our hearts is that our hearts are deceitful. Jeremiah 17:9 says "The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?" Our hearts lie. We look inside ourselves and we think we know what we want and/or need, but it's not the truth. God knows what we need, his plan is sovereign, and always for our good (Jeremiah 29:11). Jeremiah says we don't even know how bad our own hearts are. Think about that for a minute-- our hearts are deceiving us already and we're blinded to the fact that they are deceiving us, so we can't even understand how bad our own desires are! I'm not saying that everything we want or desire for ourselves is bad, but we are inherently selfish beings and we don't ultimately know what is best for us. Because our hearts are deceitful, it is vital to pray for God's leading and his wisdom in our lives. We have to be discerning about whether we are following our own hearts or listening to the leading of the Holy Spirit whispering to our hearts. When we are open to being obedient to God's voice in our lives, it is truly amazing how our own wills are brought into alignment with his. We then start to desire what God desires for us. In this way, we are no longer so disappointed when things we thought we wanted don't come to pass.

Here's an example: a couple of years ago, we had the chance to move to Canada (where my husband is from) and take over a family business. We were so excited and couldn't wait to get everything in order and ready to go! We prayed about it often. Although it seemed like exactly what we wanted and had ever hoped for, we still prayed God's will over it. Through the months it took to try and get everything settled, we prayed for God's will to be revealed even though we really wanted to move. After several months of planning and praying, we found that what we thought had been our hearts' desire in moving turned out to be contrary to the will of God, and in praying for God's will, he had changed the desires of our hearts and we no longer wanted to move. Amazing how he does that! Something we thought we had so wanted ended up being something we didn't want after we prayed for God's will to be revealed in our lives.

It's easy to get caught up in your own desires, your own plans, your own hopes and dreams. There's nothing wrong with having desires, plans, hopes and dreams. We just have to realize that they may not be what God has planned for us. However, when we pray for his will to be accomplished in our lives, and truly desire to be obedient, we won't be disappointed if our own plans don't come true. God's plan is always the best plan, and when we desire nothing more than to walk in his will, we will experience the fullness of God's blessings for us.

A bold beginning

My very first blog entry.  You'd think I would pick something innocuous to talk about; how to better organize your time, maybe, or respecting your husband more, etc.  Nope.  My first blog is going to be about sex.  S. E. X.  Why, you ask?  Because we don't talk about it enough in the right context!

If you're like me, you were raised in a home where sex was sort of a taboo topic.  Sure, we knew what it was (well, mostly anyway) and that it happened around us, but we didn't *gasp* talk about it out loud.  Heaven forbid.  My best friend and I couldn't even say the word sex, so we made up a code word!  But that's so ridiculous!  Growing up not talking about it and viewing sex as something to be kept under the table and as something dirty did not do me any favors as an adult.  It didn't do my husband any favors either because I couldn't tell him what I wanted or that I wanted!  Sex is an important part of marriage and it's healthy to talk to your spouse about it.  If we can't talk to our spouse about our needs and desires our sex life will suffer.  Ladies, the number one way in which your husband feels truly connected to you emotionally is during sex.  Personally, I want to show my husband how much I love him in every way I can.  This meant that I had to get over that fear of talking about sex.  When I did, my goodness!  What a world opened up for us!  Sure, there's a learning curve, but we were learning together and it was fun!  I felt like a teenager again!

We've got to get over this idea that sex is dirty and disgusting and that we shouldn't speak of it.  Sex within marriage is one of God's gifts to us.  We truly can become one flesh and even be worshipful during sex with our spouse.  It isn't something to be hidden and talked about in hushed tones like it's forbidden and disgusting.  Sex is a beautiful thing between two people who love each other and are committed to loving each other.  I want my kids to know that sex in marriage is a good thing; a healthy thing; and that it isn't something to be ashamed of.  I want them to know how to talk about sex and sexual matters comfortably so that they can develop a healthy attitude towards sex and empower their future spouses to be open about it as well.

It's even important to God that we talk about sex.  There's a whole book of the Bible full of beautiful imagery related to marital sex!  We don't talk about that book in the Bible either!  Song of Solomon is a beautifully written dialogue between a husband and wife.  It's loving and tender, passionate and erotic.  If God saw fit to guide one of the wisest men who ever lived (Solomon) to write a book about sex then surely we should be able to discuss it and use the wisdom in that book to guide our sexual experience!

So, there it is folks.  My first blog entry.  I hope y'all enjoyed it!  Come back now, ya hear?