In Proverbs, chapter twenty-six, verse twelve, “Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? There is more hope of a fool than of him.” Pride and self-importance cause people to seem to be wise in their own estimation and, therefore, arrogantly confident in their own ideas. Wisdom and truth are formed not by their own reasoning, however, but by accepting what God has said and revealed in all of scripture. In honestly acknowledging the potential for deceit within our hearts, we must not automatically assume that our own standards of right and wrong are God’s standards.
However, God calls us humbly to bring all our thoughts into submission to the authority of His revelation and the ministry of the Holy Spirit, as in John sixteen, verses eight to fourteen, asking Him to convict and correct us in the areas where we are wrong, as in Revelation three, verse seventeen.
In Jeremiah seventeen, verse nine, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? The heart is the innermost being of a person and encompasses one’s desires, feelings, and thoughts. Above all, it is desperately evil and corrupt; as a result, people turn to selfishness and evil rather than to God’s way of righteousness. The corrupt human heart is beyond cure and cannot be changed by itself. The only remedy is to experience God’s grace, be born again through faith in Christ, and receive a new heart: one that hates evil and delights in doing God’s will.
What holds many people back from following the straight and narrow way is the flesh, which fights against our spirit. If we want to obey God, we must allow our spirit to lead us, for it desires to connect to God. However, we must decide on the direction.