Trusting God Over Your Own Heart (Proverbs 28:26)
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Proverbs 28:26
He who trusts in his own heart is a fool,
But whoever walks wisely will be delivered.
Now isn’t this verse interesting? I love it because it proclaims a truth that directly and very obviously contradicts the message proclaimed by the world.
Our world encourages us to ‘trust our heart’ – ‘follow your heart man’ (shoutout to the guy from CARS) – and ‘listen man’, it’s so easy to get swept up in that message, isn’t it? It sounds empowering, even liberating.
But what’s funny is the Bible says the opposite, and we’ve seen that this week.
Unintentionally, as we’ve gone through Proverbs this week, we’ve studied the heart. Is it worth following? Is it worth trusting?
Pfft. No. Clearly no. Our study has shown us that no one’s heart is pure; rather, folly has been bound up in all of our hearts since we were born.
I mean, the more we study the heart, the more we see what Scripture says about it, the more foundation we build to know that we should in fact never ‘lean on our own understanding’ (as Proverbs 3:5 encourages us) – we should never trust or follow our heart – rather, we should always make Jesus Christ, the ‘wisdom from God’, our trust and our wisdom.
In other words, the more we study our hearts, the more reason we have to place our trust in the heart of Christ.
And that truth is presented to us in a contrast today, evident here in Proverbs 28:26. We see the juxtaposition that:
Those who trust in their own hearts are FOOLS.
And those who don’t, the ones who implicitly place their trust in the LORD, are deemed WISE and will be delivered.
Friends, to me that’s huge. This verse reminds us that the first step to becoming wise is realizing you aren’t. So many think they are. They boast of their plans and their ways; they trust in their hearts, but the Bible says they’re fools. And reasonably so… think about it: Why would anyone trust their heart when it’s proven to deceive them? It’s like trusting a broken GPS – you’ll end up lost every time.
That’s why Solomon says in Proverbs 1:7,
‘The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge;
fools despise wisdom and instruction.’
Wisdom starts with the fear of God, not with you. And I think this short little study we’ve done of our heart should strengthen this principle of that holy fear, which should thus enable us to walk wisely, as the second part of the verse says, and thus be delivered.
Delivered from what, you might ask? In the most general sense, from an eternity of destruction. But more specifically, from its cause: the evil of a self-confident state that ultimately leads to death and destruction.
I think this verse today challenges us to renounce the ways in which we have been or are tempted to trust in our own heart. It also leads us to the one who can ultimately help us walk wisely, who can ultimately deliver us from ourselves, and that’s Jesus – ‘the great Shepherd of the sheep’ (Hebrews 13:20).
So I want to ask you this morning:
Is there an area of your life where you are trusting in your own heart, following your own heart, rather than trusting and following Christ?
And what would it look like to take one step toward Christ in this regard?
Let’s take those reflections to the Lord in prayer.
