Video Transcript: How Your Heart Shapes Your Mind

Is your mind a machine? Sometimes we think of it that way. We think of the mind as a sort of computer that takes in data and processes that data and then spits  out certain answers. And a well functioning mind is going to run like an  outstanding machine, where if it always gets the right data, it's always going to  come up with the right computations? Well, there are some things about the  mind that are a little bit like a machine. After all, we invented the machines, and  so they're a little bit like us. But the mind is a lot more than just a machine. The  mind is part of a total person, and there are deeper aspects of a person than just the thoughts that you think and the ideas that you hold and the facts that you  hold to be knowledge, the way in which you hold those facts in the first place is  shaped by deep elements of who you are and things that shape your mind. In a  few talks, we've been talking about how your social setting can shape your  mind, the people that you fit in with, the people who make certain things  unthinkable and other things seem entirely obvious. We've also talked a little bit  about how your actions, your pattern of behavior, will make certain beliefs a lot  more sensible, and other beliefs hard to believe if you're behaving very wickedly. For instance, God becomes very hard to believe in, and the Bible becomes very  hard to take seriously. And the third thing that I want to emphasize now is your  heart. What moves your inner self? That's going to be the main focus of this talk, and how the deepest drives of your inner self have a profound impact on the  ideas and thoughts and beliefs that you hold, your desires, your inner being has  a powerful shaping influence on what you hold to be knowledge, heart affects  knowledge. That's repeated again and again throughout the Bible, especially the Bible Book of Proverbs. Proverbs 18:15, says, an intelligent heart acquires  knowledge. Notice that an intelligent heart acquires knowledge. The heart of him who has understanding seeks knowledge above all else, guard your heart, for it  is the wellspring of life. You've got to have a heart that is operating properly, or  your mind is going to be off as well. And if the heart is healthy, then the mind  also is going to be more open and able to grasp the truth. My son, give me your  heart. And then, of course, who can say I have made my heart pure? I am clean  from my sin? Those are some of the facts in the book of Proverbs about the  heart. It is so important. It's the wellspring of life. You've got to guard it. You've  got to take care of it. You've got to realize that in order to have understanding,  you need the right kind of heart. But who can really say I've made my heart pure and I'm clean from my sin? And one of the big distortions in our thinking comes  from the distortion in our heart now, the way we are on the inside and our  condition will affect our taste for things. Your taste for a food item can change  when your condition changes, even if the food itself is the exact same food item. For instance, my wife does not like Captain Crunch, but every time that she  became pregnant with a baby, suddenly she had to have Captain Crunch. I  didn't even need the doctor's test if I saw Captain Crunch, that sugary cereal  come home with the groceries, I knew because it was the sure sign better than 

any pregnancy test. And as soon as she was pregnant and her condition  changed in that manner, she also just was disgusted with chicken, and ordinarily she just loves chicken, so her tastes were completely changed when her  condition changed. Captain Crunch yak can't stand it. All of a sudden, she loved  Captain Crunch chicken. Oh, yummy. I love chicken. And then all of a sudden,  oh, I don't want any chicken at all. Your condition can have a profound impact on something and how it appeals to you. Without that thing, it was still the same  Captain Crunch, it was still the same chicken. The food hadn't changed. The  appetite for it had changed. And you may know something of what that's like  many of you, of course, as men, have never become pregnant and and some  female viewers may may identify with those tastes and foods changing when  you're pregnant, but even when you're men, there. Are times when you just don't want something and something else seems more appealing, and especially  when you're sick, when there's something wrong with your appetite, then things  that normally were very nutritious and very tasty just seem revolting to you and  disgusting, and if you did take any you'd throw it up. That's kind of what it's like  to have a heart that is not right with God, and then have God's truth come to  you. That truth will seem disgusting, and the condition of your heart will affect  the way your mind receives or fails to receive and has no desire for the truth of  God, and you find it hard in your head to believe, but the real problem lies in  your heart issues. Now it's not only Christians who have pointed out the  importance of heart and of drives besides the intellect, that shape the way we  think and believe, some of the atheist masters of suspicion who were suspicious of various kinds of thought and looked at you sideways if you claim to have any  kind of truth, they knew that the heart shapes things. Karl Marx claimed that  economic factors and economic desires had a profound impact on our thoughts  and our ideals and the ideas that we operate by economic drives shaped  intellectual thoughts. According to Marx, Sigmund Freud claimed that our  unconscious, primal urges, our deep, unconscious desires, dominated a lot of  the way we think, and so he was suspicious of people who claimed to be  thinking one way. He said, Oh, I wonder what's really going on. And he'd be  digging down to try to figure out what some of the unconscious motives were.  Karl Marx, when he'd listen to somebody talk, he'd say, Oh, I wonder what's  really going on. I wonder what their economic drive is. And you had Friedrich  Nietzsche, another of these masters of suspicion. Marx was an economist.  Freud was a psychologist. Nietzsche, a philosopher, he said that the will to  power, the desire to control others around us, the ability to have an impact on  the world around us, that's the motivation behind all the claims to truth and  morality. And there really isn't much truth. There isn't really objective morality.  Anybody who says this is right and that's wrong, or this is true or that's false, is  really just trying to hold power over you. Now, at one level, we can say, Well,  these guys were atheists, and they made some very big mistakes. You could 

dismiss Marx simply by saying, Well, if he thinks everything's economic factors  that his theory is too you could dismiss Freud by saying, well, he thinks  everything is unconscious, wishful thinking. His own theories are wishful  thinking. His own refusal to accept God is wishful thinking. He wants it to be that way. Nietzsche is trying to manipulate, and that's why he's saying all these  things, so you can deal with it at that level. And rightly so, because they were in  error about the reality of God, but they're onto something. These atheists were  wrong to reject God, but they were right to see that many claims to rightness are really a mask for hidden drives of the heart. Many people who claim to be  arguing things on intellectual grounds actually have an agenda, and sometimes  they're not even aware of that agenda. They're quite self righteous about what  they're saying, but there's still something going on in their heart that they're not  aware of. And it's important to realize that these atheists were correct that often  there's a hidden agenda of the heart going on when there's an intellectual  argument being conducted the heart. It has a tremendous impact on what we  want to believe, and what we want to believe will shape often what we do  believe. Thomas Nagel is an atheist philosopher, and Nagel says, I want  atheism to be true, and I am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most  intelligent and well informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just  that I don't believe in God, it's that I hope there is no God. I have a cosmic  authority problem. Then he says, Darwin enabled modern secular society to  heave a great collective sigh of relief by apparently providing a way to eliminate  purpose, meaning and design as fundamental features of the world. Now, why  would you want to get rid of purpose? Why would you want to get rid of  meaning? Why would you want to get rid of design? And say, if the world is just  a chaotic, evolving mess, the reason you'd want to do that is you want to get rid  of God. You have a cosmic authority problem. Your heart is allergic to God. Your  appetite does not desire God, and you'll take anything but God. You'd like to  eliminate purpose and get rid of meaning, get rid of design, because you know  those things are rooted in God. And if you can get rid of those, then you can say  you. A big sigh of relief, your cosmic authority. Problem of your heart has now  resulted in the atheistic belief of your mind, the heart, that's where so much of  our thinking is rooted. The great philosopher Pascal said the heart has its  reasons, of which reason knows nothing. Pascal was not against reason. He  was one of the great thinkers of all time. He was a master of intellectual  reasoning and argument, but he, being a Christian who understood things of the heart, knew that much of what motivates us for better and for worse, is what the  heart desires. A heart that desires God may have deep reasons for walking with  God, even if you can't put your finger on all the actual data and evidence for  following God. And by the same token, the heart has reasons for wickedness  that you really don't even want to acknowledge in your unbelief, the heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing. And Pascal was different from another 

man of his age, the great philosopher Rene Descartes was a great  mathematician who tried to construct all of human knowledge as though it were  a mathematical system, and as though the human were a thinking machine. And so you're going to get a foundation of things that the thinking machine could not  possibly doubt, and then build all of your other knowledge on top of those  undoubtable beliefs by using logical mathematical like reasoning. And so all of  knowledge would be as sure and as logical as mathematics was to Descartes,  and Pascal said, Whoa, Descartes, that's not how it works. We're people, not  just with a thinking machine in our skull. We have a heart, and that heart has its  reasons. And Descartes couldn't just come back and say, well, Pascal, that's just because you're not very good at very good at math. You're kind of anti math,  and so you're talking about all this touchy feely heart stuff. Well, Pascal was a  mathematician of enormous ability himself, one of the great mathematicians of  all time. And Pascal, in fact, invented the first computing machine. He invented  the computing machine. So if anybody had the right to say, the mind is not just a machine, the great Pascal certainly did. If anybody had the right to say, hey,  knowledge is a lot more than just what you can not doubt and then calculate, it's  not just math. Pascal knew better, and Pascal when he was trying to explain the  gospel, he wrote a bunch of thoughts down about apologetics that he was going  to put together and make a book on why people ought to believe in Christianity.  He never got the book finished, because he died before he turned 40, but that  was later assembled into a book called thoughts, or in French, pensees. And in  that book, he explained what His strategy was going to be. He said, first get  them to want Christianity to be true, then show it to be true. He knew that people need to want it before they can believe it. Their heart has to have a desire  before the mind can accept and grasp the facts of Christianity and really  embrace the reality of Jesus Christ, and because heart motives are such a big  part of belief, then the question I must ask myself, you must ask yourself. And  then, if we're Christians, sharing the gospel with others, ask them to consider is  not just okay, what's all the evidence? What are all the proofs? Let's feed some  data into your thinking machine and show Christianity is true. There sure a place for that. I try to do that myself in in some instances, but sometimes we've also  got to address okay. What's the condition of the heart? What desires move you? Do you have a cosmic authority problem? Do you just have a built in resistance  where you don't want God to be there, even if it means sacrificing meaning and  purpose. Do you have a longing for God or an allergy to God? Do you have a  desire to do certain things in life, and do those desires shape the way you think  another aspect of your heart is what worries you or scares you. What are the  things that you fear? Jesus says, Don't fear what everybody else fears. Fear the  one who can destroy body and soul in hell. Be afraid of him, but not anybody  else. But if your heart has lots of different kinds of worries and fears, then you're  going to have a hard time believing certain things that upset you or that bother 

you. Just what are your inclinations? Sometimes it's hard to put a word on it, but  what's your tilt? We come into certain discussions and sets of ideas with a tilt in  a certain direction, certainly in the realm of politics, people have kind of a tilt one 

way or a tilt. Another way where certain ideas are going to get a better hearing  from them, just because that's their tilt, they may tilt rightward, they may tilt  leftward, but we all have a tilt, and not just in politics. That's what I'm talking  about when it comes to the heart, when it comes to the matters of God, of living  for God, what are your inclinations? What's your tilt, what makes you laugh,  what makes you feel happy, what makes you feel good about life? That'll tell you a lot about your heart. Even many Christians, or people who profess to be  Christians, will say the right doctrines and do a few things that they think are  going to qualify them for heaven, but in the bigger part of their life, there's  nothing really about the things of God or associated with the people of God that  brings them much joy. They get their almost the total amount of their happiness,  from all sorts of things that seemingly have nothing to do with the reality of  Jesus, Christ. That would indicate that their heart is very attached to this world,  and they have not set their heart on the things above where Christ is, because if your heart is set on Christ, then your greatest happiness comes from growth in  the knowledge of Christ. Another aspect about your heart, this is something that  Freud and other psychologists got a glimpse in and that we have to be aware of. What what are the hurts that were done to your heart that haunt you? Some  people were neglected as children, or some had an overly demanding parent, or some were mistreated, perhaps molested by an uncle, and other kinds of terrible wounds that have occurred. Or maybe in adulthood, you went through a divorce  or through some other crisis experience, and it didn't just leave you with certain  thoughts, yes, I have had this experience. It crunched into your heart. It slashed  into your heart. And there are deep wounds and wounds that you try to avoid  thinking about, wounds that maybe your mind has shut itself off to, and yet these hidden hurts make you less able to trust, less able to believe certain things, less  able to see what's good in others, less able to believe that God is good. Those  hidden hurts of the heart can impede the ability of your mind to grasp real facts,  because you see the whole world through kind of a dark colored lens because of the hurts and anguish of your heart. Another aspect to think about, when you're  saying, Okay, where's my heart at what directs your decisions? Do you just  make up your mind when you've got to decide? Or do you do you pray about it  first? Do you think about what are the things in the Bible that give me guidelines  or principles for looking at this decision, or is it just okay? Got to decide, I'm  going to do the best I can of that decision. Again, you might be a Christian, or at  least think you're one, but if, if the things of God never come to mind when  you're making important decisions, that may tell you something about your  heart. It may not mean your heart is completely lost, or it may. But these are the  kind of questions. It's not just Okay, can you say, After me, certain Bible 

teachings? Of course, it's great if you can. It's great if you do believe them in  your head. But I'm saying that it's hard to truly believe them in your head if your  heart is somewhere else. So what are your desires? What are your worries?  What's your tilt what makes you feel happy and joyous, what hit and hurts haunt  you, what directs your decisions? If you really begin to understand some of  those things, you'll understand a lot more about why you think the way you do,  why you reject certain ideas and beliefs, why you accept certain other beliefs  you may have, the belief I am inferior and no good. Is that an intellectual thought that you persuaded yourself of based on data and proof, or is that a wound of  the heart? There are many things that shape the heart, and as Pascal said, The  heart has its reasons, and oftentimes our mind and our thinking don't know it,  and we need to pray that God will give us a heart for him if we want a mind that  also has knowledge of Him, inner light or darkness. We've been talking about  the importance of the heart. Proverbs 20:27 says, The spirit of man is the lamp  of the Lord searching all his innermost parts. And if God puts a lamp in us. It's  also possible for that lamp to be misused or even put out haughty eyes and a  proud heart says, Proverbs 21:4, haughty eyes and a proud heart, the lamp of  the wicked are sin. So there is the lamp of the wicked and the lamp of the Lord  Jesus, picking up on similar line of thinking says, If then the light in you is  darkness, how great is the darkness? If the light is not shining in your heart, if  that light in you is darkness, then you are in darkness, and it's going to affect  your ability to grasp and think rightly. Jesus says in another place, Matthew  15:19-20, for out of the heart come evil thoughts and then also evil deeds. But  notice, out of the heart comes evil thoughts. Thinking follows the heart's  orientation. That means that in order to know, and to know well, especially I see  to know God well, I need a change of heart and in particular, I need to be able to love. We sometimes don't really understand how important love is in having  accurate knowledge. To really know someone, you have to get out of yourself. If  I'm stuck on myself, I can't understand things outside myself. I can't understand  people outside myself because I'm too focused on me, myself, and I. If I see  things in light of only how they fit my agenda, I can't see them as they really are, I see them only as they affect me. If I'm trapped in my own viewpoint on  everything, I can't understand another viewpoint and I won't even try very hard  because I don't like someone else enough to even want to understand their  viewpoint. If I love God, then I will have to know how God thinks. I want to know  what he's saying to me. I want to know the truths that he reveals. I need to love  him before I even care what he said. The same is true when relating to others. If  you really want to understand your spouse, you need to love them. Sometimes,  a man can say, you know, I don't understand my wife because men and women  are so different and There's no way a man could ever understand a woman.  Well, there is some truth in that. Men and women can be very different and  sometimes one person, just a different personality, can be very different than 

between you, another. But sometimes the obstacle to know is not the difference  between you, but your unwillingness to pay attention long enough to notice the  other person. You can really know another person only if you care about them.  And so if you have a wife and you really want to know her, that's an expression  of love. If she's doing things you want and she's doing things you kind of expect  and she's carrying her load and doing what you want to make you happy, well  you don't really need to get to know her very well. She's servicing your needs  and providing your wants and she acts as a good wife, you can hardly know the  real woman who she is because you love what she does for you. You don't love  her. You love her only in relation to you but not for herself. And in relation to  God. Yeah, I like God. God made the world. I'm glad he gave me good health.  I'm glad he gave me food. I'm glad he takes care of me. God. Oh really, as long  as he's behaving as the provider of everything I want, I may say I love him but I  don't know him or understand him at all because my heart isn't desiring God.  And I'm not longing to really know him better just because of who he is and  because I love him. A loving heart opens the mind so that your mind is seeking  not just what somebody can do for me but who are they? What do they care  about? What is true about them? And the same is true about the world around  us. If you have this love in you, you want to really understand this creation and  what God has made. So love in your heart, does wonders for the mind. There  are some very smart people with a powerful brain who miss out on a lot of truth  because they don't have a heart of love. And there are some people whose  minds aren't so quick but who have a heart of love and their mind therefore is  very alert to things and other people. You know some of those people. They're  considerate. The word considerate just means they're paying attention and they  know the truth about somebody else. And the reason they're so smart, people  smart, is that they love. They can get out of their own mindset and get their heart to be in tune with someone else's heart. Your heart shapes how well you can  know. This is true in many areas of life. Supremely true in relation to God. Love  the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Love your  neighbor as yourself and you're going to start understanding God better, start  understanding your neighbor better, start understanding your wife better. And  the truth that God speaks in the Bible. You'll understand them better and they'll  seem much truer and more real to you than if you're not a lover of God. The  importance of the heart really comes through in Jesus' parable of the four soils.  He talks about a man who goes out to sow his seed and some of the seed falls  on a hard path and birds come and take it away. Other seed falls in soil that has  rock underneath it, so the soil is very shallow, and that seed comes up right  away because it didn't go in very deep, but when it gets hot out, the seed just  shrivels up and goes away. And then there's other soil that has a bunch of  weeds and thistles in it, and some seed falls there, and it comes up, but then the weeds and thistles choke it out. And then there's some good soil that's been 

that's nice, deep, rich soil, and the seed falls there, and it grows and bears 30  and 60 and 100 times as much seed as was planted. Now in telling that parable, Jesus was not just talking about soils, but about different hearts and the way  those different hearts receive God's word and how the truth affects those hearts. Same seed, in all the cases, same word of God, same gospel, same Jesus,  ultimately sowing that gospel and sending out His ambassadors to sow it. But in  only one place does it bear that good fruit, not in the hard heart. The hard heart  doesn't want to hear God's truth in the first place, and so Satan happily swoops  in like those birds grabbing seed. Satan and his demons come in and snag that  truth and just haul it right away again, and it goes in one ear and out the other,  and you forget it almost as soon as you heard it. Others hear the truth, and they  think they accept. They get kind of excited about it, but they're shallow, and as  soon as life gets tough, all of a sudden they wander away, and the gospel  doesn't seem true to them anymore, and the Bible seems false, and their belief  is gone. Others have a belief for a while, but it just seems crowded out. Life's so  busy, it's crowded out, says Jesus, by worries and cares and by the  deceitfulness of riches. So you can have two different kinds of clutter. One is  prosperity, the other is problems. And if you let your prosperity and your  problems just fill your heart either with worries or with pleasures, then it's got no  room for God. And so a crowded, cluttered heart is not a heart that is going to  believe in a real and living way and grasp onto these truths. And then there's the good heart, that good soil, and Jesus says that good soil represents those who  have a noble and good heart. It's a heart that's been renewed by being born  again through the Holy Spirit of God. And God gives a new heart as he had  promised. And in that heart, when it hears the word, it understands the word,  you see the difference. The other hearts didn't really understand it fully, and they weren't noble and good hearts. But when a heart has been prepared by the work of God's Holy Spirit, then the mind is also able to understand and receive the  Word of Jesus Christ, the Word of the gospel of the kingdom, reign of God,  same seed, excellent seed, different soils. That's the role of the heart in  knowing. You cannot know God. You cannot accept His truth. If your heart is far  from him. And so we are not just thinking machines. We're people with an inner  heart, inner heart with its wounds, with its desires, with its tilt, with all those  things that are going to shape and impact how I understand things and what I  find believable. What shapes your mind. Well, evidence and data and truths  coming in, kind of like data into a computer, they shape your mind somewhat.  But you're not just a computer. The people around you, they shape it. They  shape how you think and the ideas you find acceptable, the way you've been  behaving that's closely related, of course, to your heart, the way you've been  behaving, and your actions shape what you find believable. If you're acting in a  bad way, then bad ideas are going to seem true to you. If you're acting in a way  that God loves, then God's truth is going to sound more believable to you. And 

then ultimately, it's the condition of your heart, in your deepest self, in what you  want, in what you choose, in what you will, in what you desire, what moves you.  And if what moves you is a desire for God, and God's Holy Spirit is living in you  

and has renewed your heart, then that leads to godly actions. It leads you to  want to be in Christian community. It puts your mind in a setting where your  renewed heart, your godly actions and your Christian community enable you to  have more and more of the real knowledge of God and believe more and more  of the truth that God reveals, Heart, actions, community. These are mind  shapers. Pay close attention to them. Guard your heart. Live according to the  Word of God. Hang out with the people of God, and you will find that believing  comes a lot more easily.