What Is Counseling Your Heart?

Psalm 1 starts out, "Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked."

"Walking" in Scripture always seems to indicate our life patterns, the way we continually go, how our "teeny" choices mount up over time and impact the direction of our hearts and lives.  For example, "walking in the Spirit" means continually growing in grace & yielding to the Spirit's influence in our lives, thoughtfully choosing to say "yes" to the pinpricks of God within our souls.

So to walk in the counsel of the wicked would, I think, be to listen to unregenerate, non-believing advice-givers.  To let TV shows and magazine editors and pinterest pinners and best-selling authors influence my heart and life... which is something we modern first-world dwellers do with great regularity.  Don't we?

We pay big money to let other people influence our lives and counsel us.  Monthly, we might subscribe to a cable plan.  On the internet, we have yahoo! answers and Heloise and forums and blogs and Huffpost and pinterest boards.  We buy magazines and sign up for e-mail lists to take advice from people who likely do not have the glory of God as their aim.

Even websites with the label "Christian" can steer us wrong.  See the bottom of my side bar for a warning even about stuff you find here.  Facebook allows us to take on a variety of messages, usually in a cute font on a cute picture, without requiring us to examine whether that message is rooted in Scriptural truth.  "Christian" radio station KLTY here in Dallas horrifically advertises "mommy makeovers" as if God Himself wants women to feel bad about their body image and spend gobs of money to surgically correct it after a token child or two.

Christian woman, I'm saying this to you, and I'm saying this to me:  Let's be SO careful about the things we let influence our hearts and minds.  No matter the source, hold up the ideas you hear and read, and examine them in the light of Scripture.  Do not let this world, and its wickedness, counsel your heart.  

"Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked."


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