True to Your Heart?

I used to be quite fond of the animated Disney movie Mulan. Like most of my peers who were in elementary school in the late nineties, I saw all the Disney movies – The Little Mermaid, Beauty & the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King and the second to last of those ‘90s animated classics, Mulan. Music was central in those films and Mulan was no exception. The signature song was called “Reflection”. The title character wrestled with her true identity, and the lyrics of the song described that struggle. Christina Aguilera recorded the song for the official movie soundtrack, and that recording helped launch her career.

I thought the song would launch my own career as well. I had aspirations of being a singer, and after days and days of my parents patiently bearing with my futile attempts to match Aguilera’s vocal acrobatics, they took me to audition for a televised talent show for kids. But alas, all my hopes were providentially crushed when just as I and the rest of the kids in the group I was assigned to were about enter the room to sing the songs we’d prepared, the organizers closed down the auditions. Something about child labor laws and kids not being able work past a certain time.

Well, that door was shut. And looking back, I can see God’s hand at work. Pop stardom was not His plan for me then or now. And “Reflection” remains the song I practiced the most but never sang.

But another song from that film sticks out to me today. At the end of the movie, when Mulan has saved the day and the credits are rolling, the song “True to Your Heart” plays. Stevie Wonder and boy band 98 Degrees sang it. It’s a catchy enough tune, but what I most remember now are the lyrics. Due to my music industry background, I shall not repost the lyrics here illegally, but you can read them on this legal lyric site.

The song repeats that you must be true to your heart. In the context of the song, that’s the only way to find true love. Follow your heart. Trust your heart. Your heart will not lie to you. I think we’re all familiar with those sentiments. It’s a prevalent theme in most Disney movies, including the sequel to Mulan. But is it true?  Can the heart be trusted?

From a biblical point of view, the heart is the source of our spiritual life. (Proverbs 4:23)

So instead of taking Disney’s word for it, I believe we owe it to ourselves to re-examine the trust your heart/follow your heart/be true to your heart mindset so prevalent in our culture today.

Defining The Heart

To be clear, in the context of staying true to your heart, the heart is not the amazing muscle responsible for pumping blood throughout the body. Rather, the heart refers to the seat of an individual’s will, reasoning and feelings. It’s the place where our emotions and desires begin. It drives our behaviors. It’s the command center of the whole individual. So really, the heart is more synonymous with the mind. 

Jesus Christ made this point pretty clearly when He addressed the scribes in Matthew 9. Jesus had just returned to His city when the people brought a paralyzed man to Him. The scripture tells us that Jesus saw the faith the people had in Him and was moved with compassion. He told the man with palsy to take heart and that his sins were forgiven. The nearby scribes took issue with Jesus saying the man’s sins were forgiven, a prerogative reserved for God alone. Of course, they missed the main point that Jesus Christ is God and as such, His statement was not a blasphemous one. The scribes did not express their contempt out loud. They thought it within themselves. And Jesus, who knows the internal conversation of every individual, said to the scribes, “Why do you think evil in your hearts?”

Why do we?

Heart Failure

In many ways, God has been contending for the hearts of His creation from the beginning. Adam and Eve, in the paradise of Eden and in perfect relationship with God, still strayed from the truth in their hearts. And the devastating results have been echoing throughout the generations. Things got so bad that after a while, Genesis 6:5 tells us every inclination of man’s heart was only evil all the time.

And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. (Genesis 6:5)

So God in His sovereignty shortened the spread of man’s wickedness and sent the flood to reset the earth so to speak. Noah, his wife, his three sons and their wives chose the safety of the ark and re-populated the earth. But the corruption of man’s diseased heart persisted even after the flood.

We have to be honest with ourselves. We are just like the pre-flood generations because we have the same heart condition. Again, we need only to look to Jesus Christ to help us understand this condition. In Mark 7, as He did so often, Jesus made the parable He had just shared about what truly defiles a man more clear to His disciples:

And He said, “That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: All these evil things come from within, and defile the man. (Mark 7:20-23)

That truth can be a tough pill to swallow in a society that prides itself on, well, self. Self esteem. Self love. Self help. Selfies. But what the world at large fails to recognize is that our hearts do not contain the answers to our problems. Our hearts are the problem. The solution to the chaos in our world comes not from self-improvement but self-denial.

Why don’t we recognize this? God’s word can answer that as well. Quite simply, we are all self deceived.

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

So not only are our hearts inherently wicked, our hearts only tell us what we want to hear. And just like Eve, not only are we deceived into thinking God can’t be trusted, we are deceived into thinking we can be. We can’t even imagine how deep the deception goes. Thus, the plain teaching of scripture refutes the lyrics to the catchy yet misguided song from Mulan. Our hearts will most certainly tell us lies. That’s what our hearts do best.

It’s the heart that tells us we’ll benefit more from a Netflix binge than a bible study. It’s the heart that helps the overworked businessman rationalize fudging a few numbers to make year-end budget. It’s the heart that tells the unmarried thirty something woman that time is running out on her biological clock, so it’s ok to entertain advances from her very married co-worker. And it’s the heart of that married man who tells him he deserves some excitement outside of his day-to-day, duty-filled home life.

So what is the heart good for, if anything? Well, nothing in its natural state. Simply put, we are all in need of a heart transplant.

Heart Transplant

Rather than leave us in a state of heart disease, God offers each of us a cure. We have access to the best heart surgeon in the universe. And there’s no co-pay. Jesus Christ paid for the surgery Himself when He shed His own blood for us on the cross at Calvary. Now we have full access to the best care imaginable. God has promised to remove our diseased hearts and give us new ones.

A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. (Ezekiel 36:26)

And this new heart of flesh is different because instead of being filled with the fatty corruption of sin, it’s lean. It’s pliable enough to be changed so that it’s no longer ruled by its own sinful inclinations, but by the very pure law of God.

But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. (Jeremiah 31:33)

God knows we cannot fix our selves. We cannot write His laws on our hearts. But in our prideful state, we think we have all the credentials of the board certified heart surgeon. We’ve all gone to the school of Web-MD. We self diagnose. And if we follow the world’s prescription, we’ll look inside ourselves for the cure.

But our responsibility as heart patients is to respond to the symptoms and sign up for the surgery. We do that by surrendering our hearts, our desires, our plans, our best intentions. We have to come to the humble realization that we don’t know best, are incapable of knowing best and need someone to show us the way; Someone who knows us.

I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings. (Jeremiah 17:10)

We need only to look to the Pattern Son for an example of what surrender looks like. In the garden of Gethsemane, our Savior had every reason to ask for a change of plan. He was on the precipice of unspeakable pain, torment and death. And if for one moment Jesus Christ would have stepped outside of complete surrender over to self-preservation, He would have skipped the agony of the cross, and eternity would have been lost forever. Instead, our Savior cried out to a loving, compassionate Father who heard every word of His prayerful concern. And ultimately He came to this point:

Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done. (Luke 22:42)

And He became the guarantee of the resurrection for everyone in history who has had that same heart position: Nevertheless, not my will, but Yours, be done. At the end of the day, what separates the believer from the unbeliever is to whom they’ve surrendered their hearts: either to themselves or to the Savior.

The Heart of the Matter

I’ve come to the conclusion Disney is wrong. We only experience our “best life” when we learn not to follow our hearts, but to surrender them.  And we have the privilege of surrendering our hearts to a loving God who not only created us, but who desires to reshape us into the image of His Son. And He longs to perform that very miracle by giving us new hearts. Soft hearts. Hearts on which He can write the wonders of His laws.

Everything, and I mean everything challenging in my life thus far has required me to come to the point of complete surrender before I could move forward. Starting this blog is no exception. I will have to continue to surrender my time and my natural inclination to retreat and internalize in order to answer God’s call to share and serve.

I don’t know what that journey holds, but I know as long my heart remains in the state of surrender, I’m in the right place.

Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths. (Proverbs 3:5-6)

Welcome to My Surrendered Heart.

Recommended Resources: Little Light Studio’s expose Mulan’s Deception.