.....is my own heart. Anthony Burgess said, "Men are great strangers to their own hearts." I've been deeply considering this lately as I have been reading a book on Jonathan Edwards (one of my favorites).
Jeremiah 17:9 states it clearly that "the heart is deceitful". So what does a deceitful heart look like and why am I considered a stranger to it? Quoted from the book I'm reading, William Whately says, the heart of man "is the devil's storehouse, an heap of odious lusts; his tongue is a fountain of cursing and bitterness, and rotten communication; his hand is a mischievous instrument of filthiness, deceit, violence; his eyes great thouroughfares of lust, pride, and vanity...In his soul and body there lies the spawn of all wickedness: of atheism, of pride, of unbelief, of hypocrisy, of rebellion, of impatience, of hatred and contempt of God, and of His Word, of indevotion, of profaneness, of ambition, of wrath, of filthiness, of worldliness, of arrogancy, of self-conceitedness, of murders, of whoredoms, of thefts, of perjuries, and whatsoever thing besides, is hateful to God, and contray to His most holy law."
If you can't understand how the heart works then you will never understand your need for a Savior. The reason we are strangers to our own hearts is because we deny the power of sin and the depravity of our soul. Our actions originate in and come from the heart (Matt. 15:18). Consider your heart and the condition it's in that you may no longer be a stranger to it.
*Quotes taken from Knowing the Heart: Jonathan Edwards on True and False Conversion edited by William C. Nichols
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