What’s Happening in Your Heart?

The human heart is a strange and wild thing. It motivates all behavior, whether holy joys (Psalm 4:7), self-immolating sins (Matthew 15:19), or godly obedience (Ephesians 6:6). Its purposes are like deep water (Proverbs 20:5), yet it can be as shallow as a rain puddle (Matthew 13:20–21). It lives where its treasure lies (Matthew 6:21) yet wanders like a lost dog (Isaiah 63:17). Jeremiah says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick” (Jeremiah 17:9). And yet for believers, a grace-born light shines there, from the face of Christ himself (2 Corinthians 4:6). A heart can be a synagogue of Satan or a tavern for the Trinity, and only sovereign grace decides.

Where do this complexity and mystery leave us? How can Christians discern what’s happening inside themselves and in the hearts of those they’re discipling?

The Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck said, “All of our rational and volitional life has its point of origin in the heart and is governed by it” (The Wonderful Works of God, 3). As the most intimate part of who we are, the source for everything we think or desire, and the home of our greatest treasure, the heart is the origin of motives, the catalyst for character, and the reflection of our deepest delight. If we want to become more aware of what’s going on in our hearts and how we might shepherd the hearts of others, there are three pivotal questions we can ask: What are my motives? How am I growing in holiness? What brings me the greatest joy?

The Motive Question

First is the motive question, highlighted throughout the work of biblical counselor David Powlison (1949–2019).

“The heart is the origin of motives, the catalyst for character, and the reflection of our deepest delight.”

“What about motives, why people do what they do?” he asked his students. “How do we take apart their belief system, their cravings, their fears?” (Dissecting the Heart, 80–81). Powlison spent his career building the biblical counseling movement so that Christians could address the motive question from inside the church. And in ways no secular counselor or psychologist could, he reminded us that the fundamental motive question is always God-related:

The human heart has to do with God. So when the Bible describes the desires that obviously play within our souls and rule our lives, it does not portray them as hard-wired psychological or physiological givens: as needs, instincts, drives, longings, wishes. It speaks of them as morally freighted vis-à-vis God, as moral-covenantal choices: we are ruled either by cravings of the flesh or by repentance-faith-obedience to God’s desires. (The Biblical Counseling Movement, 288)

Our motives, in other words, put us into one of two orbits: a false, self-centered universe or the true, God-centered universe. As Powlison wrote, “There’s some sun around which the planet of our lives turns” (Dissecting the Heart, 25). God is our true sun. At our best, our motives reveal that he is our deepest longing and greatest love. We want him — communion with him, growth in him, the expansion of his kingdom, and the fruition of his beautifully sovereign will.

The motive question is straightforward: What is your motive? What are you chasing after, and why? Is it God, or is it something else?

The greatest danger with this question is not being candid in our response. We all know what should be true. But the right answer in doctrine isn’t the same answer in devotion; there’s a gap between head and heart. Be candid. Dig deeper. Sometimes I go three layers deep with why:

What’s motivating you at work? Being noticed by others.
Why? Because I want to make a name for myself.
Why? Because I want my life to be significant.
Why? Because I don’t fully believe that my worth and significance are found in Christ.

Time to repent. Repentance is the regular and healthy behavior of a heart that gets its sense of direction from God’s word. For Christians, motive and repentance will go hand in hand for our entire lives. That brings us to the second heart question.

The Holiness Question

While Powlison focused on the heart’s motives, J.I. Packer (1926–2020) emphasized the heart’s holiness.

Paul wrote, “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32). “All things” includes our growth in holiness throughout life. Within the context of this theological truth, Packer emphasized the internal or existential motives for daily holiness. Holiness, he wrote, entails the motives of gratitude and love. “Holiness is always the saved sinner’s response of gratitude for grace received” (Rediscovering Holiness, 25). And that “grace received” includes the future grace we’ve been granted in Christ.

What does this heart-level holiness look like? Delight in the Lord. Giving ourselves for others. A zeal for God’s cause. In all these areas and more, holiness means growth and change. Holiness is the constant comparative (better, greater, deeper), not the static superlative (best, greatest, deepest), and all of this growth and change is entirely Spirit-forged and grace-given.

Packer’s motive language reveals the heart question: How are you growing in holiness? In what ways is Spirit-led sanctification taking shape?

The Joy Question

John Piper homes in on joy and leads us to the third question.

Many passages in Scripture emphasize our joy, delight, and satisfaction in God. Delight is higher than duty; joy runs deeper than any veneer of holiness. It is not enough to serve the Lord; we’re to delight ourselves in him. “Delight yourself in the LORD,” says the psalmist, “and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4) — most deeply, God will give you himself. The psalmists “delight” to do God’s will (Psalm 40:8); they “delight” in the law of the Lord (Psalm 1:2). They recognize that God has put joy in their hearts (Psalm 4:7) and given them “fullness of joy” in his presence (Psalm 16:11). God also satisfies “the desire of every living thing” (Psalm 145:16). Joy. Delight. Satisfaction. These go well above “pious duty.”

And so, Piper writes, “saving faith in Christ always involves a profound change of heart. It is not merely agreement with the truth of a doctrine. Satan agrees with true doctrine (James 2:19). Saving faith is far deeper and more pervasive than that” (Desiring God, 53). What is this “profound change of heart”? Simply put, it is joy in the greatest treasure: God himself. “The faith that pleases God is the assurance that when we turn to him, we will find the all-satisfying treasure,” Piper writes. “We will find our heart’s eternal delight” (Desiring God, 61). What is the one thing you cannot lose without forfeiting your soul? God is the answer. No person or thing can take the trophy over the Trinity.

“A human heart is a strange and wild thing. But God is the motive maker, the heart changer, and the joy giver.”

We know this theologically. The trouble is that we often don’t know it at the depth of the heart, in the pith of our soul. Our thoughts, words, and behaviors betray lesser loves. Many of those lesser loves are, in fact, gifts from God that have eclipsed the Giver.

The joy question is obvious but easy for us to duck away from: What brings you the greatest joy? As with the other two questions, candor is key. Christians are called to be diggers. We ask the questions that get beneath the shallow roots of our behavior. Again, try going three layers deep with why:

What brings you the greatest joy? Financial security.
Why? Because I didn’t have that as a child, and I want my family to have it.
Why? Because I don’t want them to have to worry about money all the time.
Why? Because then they won’t be happy.

Time to repent. Scripture is clear that our deepest and broadest happiness is found only in God’s presence (Psalm 27:4). If we think it lies elsewhere, we’re misleading ourselves (and possibly our family and friends). Just as repentance goes along with motive-checks, so it does with joy-checks. There is a reason Packer said, “Practicing repentance and pursuing holiness [is] a lifelong project” (Taking God Seriously, 13). We will constantly need to repent of sinful motives and sinful joys — motives and joys that do not have God at the center. That’s part of what it means for us to work out our salvation “with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12).

Examine with Sword in Hand

Asking heart questions is important, but it’s more important that those heart questions are generated by the true and living word of God. Only that word can cut through the calloused hide of the heart; only Scripture is “sharper than a sword, piercing, laying things bare” (Dissecting the Heart, 67). When Scripture lays our hearts bare, when it dissects us to the core, then we can ask the questions our heart-searching God gives us. Doing this takes courage, but we have that courage as we stand on the rock of Christ’s finished work. He has answered the final question before our heavenly Father: “Is this person part of our family?” The Father looks at each of us through the resurrected Son and says, “Yes!” With that question asked and answered, we find courage to do the daily work of asking our heart about its motives, holiness, and joy.

As you examine your own heart and the hearts of those you disciple, go to God’s word in prayerful confidence. And ask your heart questions for any given context. What’s your motive? How are you growing in holiness? What brings you the greatest joy? Be candid. Then ask the Spirit to help you dig. Beneath the surface, much is happening.

A human heart is a strange and wild thing. But God is the motive maker, the heart changer, and the joy giver. As you rest fully on his word and on your brothers and sisters in the church, you will begin to see what’s happening inside you. Then, repentance and redirection in the Spirit will lead you deeper into the country of Christ, where you can go, as Lewis put it, “further up and further in.”