Don't Follow Your Heart or Ignore It; Train It Through Meditation
How "Bible study" can help us love God's Word
Our society has a strange relationship with “heart stuff.” The dominant paradigm is summarized in Steve Jobs’ famous quote: “Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.”1 Against this is a counter-sentiment captured in Ben Shapiro’s famous tweet, “Facts don’t care about your feelings.” These seem opposed to one another. “Follow your heart!” versus “Ignore your heart!”
But Christianity offers a richer path forward than simply following or ignoring our hearts. The Proverb exhorts us, “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow streams of life” (4:23). And look at Paul’s letter to Titus:
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. (Titus 2:11-14, emphasis added)
The gospel both saves us and trains us. It trains us away from worldly passions and leads to zeal for good works. In other words, God doesn’t want us to follow our hearts or ignore them: he wants us to train them, so we can love him with our hearts as well as our minds.
Training the heart: Meditation
Training hearts begins in our “Bible study” time, with the practice of meditation. Anglican scholar Peter Toon put it this way:
Those who have written books on meditation upon the contents and themes of Scripture have firmly agreed in this – that whatever method is used to digest, inwardly and spiritually, the content and meaning of God’s [Word], it must have the effect of raising our affections (for example, desire, joy, hope, love, trust) towards the living God.2
Not only can meditation try to train our affections; it must. Our meditation time should have the goal of loving what we see in the Word, not just learning it or living it. We want to “taste and see that the Lord is good!” (Ps. 34:8).
Scripture and Christian tradition offer three tools we can use to train our affections in meditation.
Tool 1: Beauty
Before the throne of God above
I have a strong and perfect plea:
A great High Priest whose name is Love,
Who ever lives and pleads for me
My name is graven on his hands,
My name is written on his heart
I know that while in Heav'n he stands
No tongue can bid me thence depart
“Before the Throne of God Above” is about Jesus’ interceding, security-granting presence on his people’s behalf in heaven. We could analyze it with rich theological terms. But its poetry moves our souls in ways the jargon wouldn’t.
Beauty draws our souls. We can train our affections toward God by savoring the beauty in his Word. It may be there naturally, like in a psalm or a poetic line. We may connect a truth like justification to a song like “Jesus Paid It All,” or a story like the Prodigal Son to Rembrandt’s painting. We may even create our own beauty in response! (You don’t have to share it with anyone.) But bringing beauty into our Bible study will train us to love what we’re learning.
Tool 2: Imagination
Yahweh is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters.
He restores my soul.
He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. (Ps. 23:1-2)
Psalm 23 contains deep theological truths. It’s about Yahweh’s providential care for his people; his sufficiency for our spiritual and emotional hungers; his sovereign guidance, that directs us in a life that glorifies him.
But how does it communicate those truths?
It uses simple, earthy images. A shepherd leading his flock on a mountain pass. Green grass and calm waters. It uses the imagination, which is “the power of the mind to form a mental image; that is, to think in pictures or other sensory representations.”3 Our imagination is the ability to create sensations in our minds and connect them to abstract truths. The more we engage our senses, the more powerful the truth becomes in our minds. “Yahweh is my sovereign guide” is true and good; “Yahweh is my shepherd” grips me, because I can see it.
If you read a text that has a visual image, stop and paint it in your mind. Film a scene from the Gospels like you’re making The Chosen. Imagine yourself as a branch grafted into the green vine of Jesus. Stand on the new earth and watch the heavenly city walking down the aisle. Using your imagination to render these images will bring them home to you in ways that abstract description can’t.
And if you’re studying a text about abstract truths like the atonement, find or think up an illustration to make it concrete. I don’t know where I heard John Piper’s image of depending on God being like setting a sail, but I’ve never forgotten it. The same with whoever first told me sin was like cancer that will grow and metastasize if it isn’t killed. You don’t have to preach your illustration to others; if it helps you remember and be moved by truth, it will stir your heart.
Tool 3: Self-Persuasion
Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation and my God. (Ps. 42:5-6)
As Martyn Lloyd-Jones has famously noted, in this psalm David turns from “listening to himself” to “talking to himself.” He exhorts his soul to fight against his despair and choose hope in God. He preaches to himself, persuading himself to hold fast to God.
Our study might lead us to a truth we desperately need or an idol we desperately need to hate. We might write a short sermon to ourselves, spurring ourselves toward God or away from our sin. We might rebuke our own idols like Martin Luther did with his idea of Law. Whatever would drive you toward the love and holiness of God or away from the sin that clings so closely. Exhort, argue, cajole, persuade yourself to pursue God’s truth and goodness. You’ll find yourself that much more willing to actually do it.
Image: Saint Augustine, by Philippe de Champaigne
From his 2005 Stanford commencement address.
Peter Toon, Meditating Upon God’s Word, 34. Emphasis added.
Gene Veith and Matthew Ristuccia, Imagination Redeemed, 13.
Love this thought and the discussion that followed: “God doesn’t want us to follow our hearts or ignore them: he wants us to train them, so we can love him with our hearts as well as our minds.”