I remember one of my early basketball coaches teaching the team how to play on-the-ball defense. In addition to taking a low, wide stance on the balls of our feet and shuffling from side-to-side, he taught us where to look. He told us not to look at the player’s head or his feet, because a head fake or stutter step would leave us beat. He taught us to look at their midsection, because (and I can still hear him say this), “He ain’t goin’ nowhere without his belly.” You can’t fake with the belly. Where it goes, the body goes. Without exception.
This basketball strategy is based upon a Biblical truth that could be stated in the vernacular of my coach, “He ain’t goin’ nowhere without his heart.” Where the heart goes, the body goes.
In First Kings 11, the wise king Solomon “went after” the gods of Canaan and “did evil in the sight of the Lord” (11:5-6). What would cause the son of David to become an idolater? “His heart” was “turned…after other gods” (11:4). Where his heart went, he went.
Less than 400 years later, the nation of Judah was headed into Babylonian captivity after they had “gone after other gods to serve them” (Jer. 11:10). What would cause an entire nation, which once was faithful to God, to break their covenant with the Lord? “Everyone followed the dictates of his evil heart” (11:8). Where their hearts went, they went.
Amazingly, the Lord had cautioned against this very thing almost 500 years before Solomon began to reign. In Moses’ final words to the children of Israel, he warned the Jews of the time when they would “surely perish” because they would have been “drawn away” to “worship other gods and serve them” (Deut. 30:17-18). What would precipitate their apostasy? “If your heart turns away so that you do not hear…” (v. 17). They would follow their hearts.
Less than a year after Moses spoke those words, Israel was gathered at Mount Sinai, and having “rejected” God, Stephen testified that “in their hearts they turned back to Egypt” (Acts 7:38-39). Having turned away from God, “they made a calf” and “offered sacrifices to the idol” (7:40-42).
Brother and sister in Christ, where is your heart? Don’t get “head faked” into believing that your life, your service to God and your faithfulness will go anywhere without your heart first leading the way! If your heart longs for the Lord and His ways, your everyday life will follow right along.
God’s desire for His people is the same today as it was nearly 3,500 years ago: “Oh, that they had such a heart in them that they would fear Me and always keep all My commandments, that it might be well with them” (Deut. 5:29).