Heart vs. Head Control

We were created to live from our heart and God's restoration process will take us back into this arrangement. Because we were designed this way it stands to reason that our heart has available to it more resources and better equipment to do the job correctly. An analogy might be like trying to operate a complex, large piece of equipment with some of the controls missing. Living from the intellectual side might be like trying to drive a car without one of the needed pedals or with some of the critical gages missing. Or maybe a better analogy might be trying to fly an aircraft without important gages or with certain controls missing.

The left brain is so independent and proud and so sure that it can successfully do the job better that it will develop coping strategies that it is sure will be up to the task. This is the deceptive legacy all of us received from our first parents. This is where we picked up the “picker” and its affects have dominated our lives ever since. Our selfishness and independence will always lead us to believe that we can figure things out given enough information and time and resources. But this is not living from the heart or being led by the Spirit and sooner or later it is guaranteed to fail. This is living by rules and logic.

Living a rule-based life is what Paul identified as living under the law. This is when we use the “picker” to guide our life and choices. We compile and synthesize information and then sometimes ask for guidance by the Holy Spirit and may even have wonderful insights and spiritual knowledge. But if the leading edge of our life is guided more by our logic and rule-based thinking then we are actually living in the flesh and often wondering why we are having a Romans 7 kind of life. We may firmly believe that we are indeed led by the Spirit while still depending on our picker. It is quite amazing how easy it is to remain deceived in this area of life.

While it is true that the heart has available to it all the “controls” necessary to guide our lives and was designed for that job, it is also true that sin has damaged our hearts so that they are immature and untrained. When we try to live from our heart, for awhile it can appear highly unstable and untrustworthy. This is why the idea of living from the heart often has so little credibility because it can be very messy and erratic especially at first compared to those living an apparent stable existence from their head based on rules.

Because of sin and its crippling effect on our setup, our hearts are no longer capable of making right choices without outside intervention and guidance even though that was their intended role. While this guidance can only be safely supplied by God's Spirit, it is this very deficit in our heart that invites takeover by the logical left brain. So our hearts are the proper driver's seat from which we need to live genuinely but they also need a divine vital connection to succeed.

A counterfeit of being led by the Spirit is being led by our own emotions and base desires which will always be infiltrated by spirits from another source. This results in possibly living from our heart but from a hijacked heart. This is the arrangement that most people indulge in who have become cynical about hypocritical religion and watching rule-based people try to be “good” without living from their hearts. They see that living from the head is so destructive to relationships and steeps people deeper and deeper into the results of legalism. So they decide to take an apparent opposite course and immerse themselves in emotionalism or pleasure-seeking.

But neither of these are what God has designed for us to live successfully and thrive. We need to realize our need and dysfunction and understand what ditch we find ourself in and then participate in the plan of restoration (salvation) that God has put together to bring us back into living life abundantly. We need to learn what really satisfies our soul instead of going for temporary pleasures that only mask our pain or immerse ourselves in rules and formalism which also ignores our real emptiness.

When we finally connect with the Lover of our soul who is also the only Source of real life; when we allow Him to restore the proper functional arrangement within our minds with our hearts at the top under the control of His Spirit, then we will truly begin to experience life as described in Ephesians 4:13. “Until we're all moving rhythmically and easily with each other, efficient and graceful in response to God's Son, fully mature adults, fully developed within and without, fully alive like Christ.”