Modern people consider the head with its brain the center and director of human activity. However, biblically, the heart is the center where the issues of life manifest as described in Proverbs, chapter four, verse twenty-three, and the Gospel of Luke, chapter six, verse forty-five, respectively. The Bible expresses the heart specifically in the spiritual sense that encompasses the totality of one’s intellect, emotion, and volition.
The heart is a knowledge faculty; people know things in their hearts, pray in their hearts, meditate in their hearts, hide God’s Word in their hearts, devise plans in their hearts, keep words within their hearts, think in their hearts, doubt in their hearts, ponder in their hearts, believe in their hearts, sing in their hearts. All of these actions are primarily issues involving inner knowing.
The heart is the center of healing. Biblically, the Old Testament tells about the glad heart, the loving heart, the fearful heart, the courageous heart, the repentant heart, the anxious heart, the angry heart, the revived heart, the anguished heart, the delightful heart, the grieving heart, the humble heart, the excited or burning heart, and the troubled. All of these actions of the heart involve inner feelings.
Lastly, the heart is the center of voluntary activity. In scripture, we learn about the hardened heart that refuses to do what God commands in Exodus with Pharoah and the Israelites. However, the other gestures from it, such as a heart that yields to God, that intends to do something, seek the Lord in devotion, that it decides, the soul that desires to receive from the Lord, conscience of turning towards God’s statues, want to do something. All of these activities take place in the human will.
The nature of the heart apart from God began when Adam and Eve chose to follow the serpent’s temptation to eat the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Their decision drastically affected the human heart that became tainted with sin. Presently stated in Jeremiah, chapter seventeen, verse nine, “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked: who can know it?” This verse indicates what makes a person unclean before God is not the failure to follow some ceremonial law but the willingness to listen to wicked inclinations lodged in someone’s heart. Jesus taught about the seriousness of sin in the soul. He said that anger is tantamount to murder. The sin of lust is just as sinful as actual adultery.
Hearts committed to doing evil run the grave risk of becoming hardened. Those who persistently refuse to listen to God’s Word and obey what He commands and instead follow the wicked desires of their hearts will find that God will eventually harden their hearts. They will lose all sensitivity to his Word and His desires of the Holy Spirit. Anyone who continues to reject God’s Word will eventually have a hardened heart.
Regeneration is God’s answer to the sinfulness of the human heart. It comes to all who repent of their sins, turn to God, and place personal faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior. Those who ask for forgiveness and confess will receive a new heart from God.
Within the hearts of those who experience spiritual birth, God creates a desire to love Him and obey Him. Repeatedly, God emphasizes the necessity of a love that comes from the heart. Such love and devotion cannot separate from obedience to His Word. Jesus taught that a love for God with a whole heart and love for one’s neighbor summarizes God’s law.
Love from the heart is the essential ingredient in obedience. All too often, God’s people try to substitute good behavior to mere outward religious forms for genuine love from the heart. Outward observance without the inner desire to serve God is hypocritical and severely condemned by the Lord.
Many other spiritual activities take place in the hearts of regenerated believers. They praise God with all their heart, meditate in their heart, cry out to God from their heart, seek God with all their heart, hide God’s Word in their heart, trust in the Lord with all their heart, experience God’s love poured out into their heart, and sing to God in their heart.