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From the Spiritual Heart Perspective:
To understand what the function of our heart is, we first need to realize that God’s desire is to have a warm, loving, and affectionate relationship with us in which we and He share the same life: His divine life. For this, God created us with a heart. In order for a person to be saved, then, the heart must be changed. This only happens by the power of God in response to faith. “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment” Mark 12:30 (NKJV). So, as we might expect, our intangible heart is our loving organ. If we didn’t have our heart, we couldn’t sense love, know love, or love in return. Thus, the Bible is everywhere realistic in its evaluation of the human heart. It recognizes the good from creation and the grace of God but is utterly straightforward about the sin and folly bound up within us as well. The heart in the Scripture is variously used; sometimes for the mind and understanding, sometimes for the will, sometimes for the affections, sometimes for the conscience, sometimes for the whole soul. Generally, it denotes the whole soul of man and all the faculties of it, not absolutely, but as they are all one principle of moral operations, as they all concur in our doing good or evil. The heart is virtually unsearchable to human beings. Certainly no one can fully understand the heart of another person and no person can fully understand his/her own heart either. “Now before him there was no king like him, who turned to the Lord with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the Law of Moses; nor after him did any arise like him” 2 Kings 23:25 (NKJV). The human heart is fully pervious to God alone; only he can plumb the depths of our hearts and render an accurate verdict as to what he finds there. And, remember, it is in that unsearchable heart that the law of sin dwells. the Bible refers to the heart hundreds of times, it must be significant to God and to us.
Thinking that our hearts desires are not God’s will, is a distressing interpretation of the nature of God. If we don’t believe that it is his desire to see our desires met, we have a limited view of the love that our Heavenly Father has planned for His children. Consequently, the way we read and interpret the Bible will create a filter of understanding that limits God’s abundant and unconditional love towards us. “I delight to do Your will, O my God, And Your law is within my heart” Psalm 40: 8 (NKJV). This limits our capacity to live out the full abundant life that he has for us, the very life that Jesus suffered and died in our place to enable us to have. Not being able to experience God’s abundant affection and compassion for us limits our potential to fully impact the world as we were created to. “Then I will give them a heart to know Me, that I am the Lord; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God, for they shall return to Me with their whole heart” Jeremiah 24:7 (NKJV). The heart is a metaphor for the inner life. The word Jesus used means the seat of the physical, spiritual and mental life. The heart is the center and the source of the whole inner life–thinking, feeling, and willing. We must begin to see that our heart functions as both the loving organ and the gateway of our being if we recall our salvation experience. When we heard the gospel of how the Lord Jesus died on the cross for our sins, our hearts were touched. “But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature, because I have refused him. For the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” 1 Samuel 16:7 (NKJV). We sensed the depth and the sweetness of His love for us and responded to His love. We couldn’t help but love Him in return for all He did for us. Consequently, we opened the doors of our heart to believe in Him and we received Him.
To consider our hearts are deceitful and wicked it to doubt the work of the cross and what Jesus has done for us. Let’s not minimize the incredible work of redemption and restoration that God has worked through the power of the cross, which includes restoring our hearts back to his original design. “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But when the desire comes, it is a tree of life” Proverbs 13:12 (NKJV). We received Him into our spirit and were born again of the Spirit in our spirit, but it was our heart that first had to open to let Him in. If neglecting our physical heart affects our life negatively, then surely neglecting our nonphysical heart is also detrimental. Jesus is concerned, not with legalistic literalism, but with the spirit of the law. “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” Matthew 6:19–21 (NKJV). He is concerned not with outward appearances but with the heart. This incredible adventure involves living in the spirit which we as sons and daughters of God we have been born into. The spirit lives within us, and within our hearts. If you want evidence that your desires are good and not ‘fleshly’ (or evil), take a look at this last passage, it clearly lists evidence of the works of ‘the flesh’ that are not of God. If your desires fit into this list, then they are desires of the flesh not your newborn spirit. We were created by God in such a marvelous way with a spirit to interact, receive, and encompass Him as life, and with a heart to love Him unconditionally and unrestricted. He wants to be our life and He wants us to love Him, even with our whole heart. This is the relationship the Lord wants to have with us; in life and in love. God’s work of creating a new heart within us involves testing its character and nature by filling our heart and mind with new thoughts, new perception, and new challenges; along with new struggles and trials.