Relational Intelligence - Follow Your Heart, Part 1

What if I told you the most common and repeated advice that you're getting about finding love in relationships is a big, fat lie? Today, we're going to tackle that lie head on.

Stay with me. We're going to continue our series called Relational Intelligence. So let me ask you, before we get started, speaking of Relational Intelligence, what would you say is the best guide for making relational decisions?

What's your go-to source? Okay, hang on to that thought as we get ready to jump in. Now Chip's teaming up on the series with his son Ryan Ingram, who's a pastor of a vibrant young church in California. So today we're going to hear from Ryan as he brings us part one of his message, Follow Your Heart, from Proverbs chapter 14. Whether you're an introvert or you're an extrovert, we all have this deep longing and desire that we'd have an intimate, life-giving, character-shaping relationship that has a rugged commitment to one another. Life-giving. You know the friends in your life that you just go like, ah, so good to be with, and your soul's refreshed. That it's character-shaping that when you're around them, you want to be a better person, and you're growing in shape and form. And it's not just a fair-weather friend. It's not just a fair-weather marriage. It has this rugged, deep commitment to one another. And every single person in this room has been hardwired by their creator, by God, to have that kind and those kinds of relationships.

And so the question is, how in the world do you experience that kind of relationship? And I would suggest what we need is not more relational information. We have lots of that. We need more Relational Intelligence. You see, we live in a world that is overwhelmed with information. You can Google everything, and we're overwhelmed by it, and yet we are starved for wisdom. And that's what this series is about, is talking about wisdom or Relational Intelligence, relational wisdom.

What is that? It is the skill of navigating relationships well. It is this skill. It's an ability. And what's great about a skill is you can actually develop it. You can grow in it of navigating relationships well and wisely, navigating conflict well, navigating finances well, navigating discussions and communication and emotions well.

And so here's what it is not. Relational Intelligence is not merely the acquisition of knowledge. It's not just getting information. You have to apply it. A skill has to be developed and honed.

You have to take it in and get coaching and practice and be consistent with it. It's the application of the right knowledge. And we have to make sure we're getting the right knowledge to live and navigate relationships well. In fact, Proverbs 14, 12 says it this way, that there is a way that appears to be right.

But in the end, it leads to death. There's a way of going about relationships that appears to be right. There's a way that going about your dating that appears to be right. Going about your friendships that appears to be right. However, in the end, it's killing your relationships. It's killing your marriage. It's killing your friendships. See, it doesn't matter whether it feels good, whether it sounds good.

The question is, is it really good for you? And so he said, inherently, with Relational Intelligence, there's this challenge that is two things. It's counter-cultural and it's counter-intuitive. The gospel in Christianity is counter-cultural. It is not how everyone else is doing relationships.

Now, if you look around and evaluate and you like the results that everyone else is getting, then go ahead and do what everyone else is doing. But if you look around and see the brokenness, the heartache, and the pain, then chances are you might want to consider a different counter-cultural way of doing relationships. The other side of it is it's counter-intuitive, right?

It means, and the gospel and the kingdom of God is leaning in and doing things that may not feel natural at first. It's counter-intuitive to put your head in the water to swim well, and every young child fights the fight or flight response, I'm going to drown, putting my head in the water, and we all know when our head is up, our body goes down. And you will never swim well. And see, the same is true with Relational Intelligence that we have to understand. The things that we're going to be talking about, the things that we're going to be wrestling with, they're counter-intuitive.

It's not going to be our natural response. And yet, in like manner with the swimming, as we begin to put these into practice, what we'll find is we're going to develop a skill of navigating the most important meaningful relationships of our lives well. And so, we live in a world filled with sound bites, don't we? It's got relational advice that unfortunately what happens, because so much is coming at us, we tend to swallow whole. Never evaluating, is it true, is it good, or is it wise? And there is a major difference, friends, major difference between sounding good, feeling good, and being good for us. And so, what we're going to be doing is unpacking popular relational advice. And then looking at the timeless principles we find in God's word to help us navigate our most important relationships with Relational Intelligence. We're going to tackle the most pervasive relational advice in America. In fact, I believe it's America's relational anthem. In fact, many of you have given this advice, so don't feel bad, we're going to talk about that. Many of you have received this advice, and you don't have to go far to find it almost anywhere and everywhere. America's relational anthem goes like this, follow your, help me out, follow your heart.

Oh, that sounds good, doesn't it? In fact, it feels really good in the moment. Follow your heart. Your heart will never lead you astray. We say things like this, go with your heart. Maybe you're sitting and you have a tough decision in front of you, maybe relationally, what's going on? Someone says, well, what's your heart telling you?

Do what you believe feels right. And we find this all over. In fact, this has been part of the fabric of our culture for a very long time. And some of you will remember this, some of you are alive, I was not. When this song came out, 1972, Luther Ingram, great last name, came out with this hit song, if loving you is wrong, I don't want to be right, that's right.

If loving you is wrong. All the way back then, see, millennials, it's not all new, I just had to give you that. He's like, hey, this is our anthem.

I'm like, no, it's been around for a while. The Chainsmokers, great band, don't suggest chainsmoking. Catchy song wrote this feeling, and the chorus says this. They tell me, think with my head, not that thing in my chest, and then it goes on to say that. But if you're the one that I want, if that's really so wrong, then they don't know what this feeling is like.

Isn't it amazing just to go almost a 50 year span and it's identical. Our songs, our anthem. I'm going to step on some toes here, I really apologize, so just take a deep breath, uncross your arms just for a second, because they're going to cross right back, I get it. Disney has been teaching this for a long time. Tarzan, Tarzan says, trust your heart, let fate decide. Aladdin, I love hearing the groans on this one. Aladdin says, when did you last let your heart decide? Okay, this is a deep track, this one's a little unfair. Full disclosure, this wasn't a song in the movie, it was in the closing credits, and so this is only for the true Disney fans.

Mulan, I had to give it the preface because that one's really beloved. Your heart can tell you no lies. See, America's national anthem, when it comes to relationships, the most popular advice we give is follow your heart.

Now, what if we just stopped for a moment and thought about that? Follow your heart. In fact, underneath follow your heart is actually a few beliefs, two in particular I want to highlight. The first is, in following your heart, means that your emotions are the best guide for making relational decisions. Now, none of us would ever say that, but that's inherent in follow your heart, because your emotions, your feelings are the very best guide for making relational decisions. Now, let's just stop and think about that. What if we applied that to our health and nutrition?

Follow your heart. Let me tell you how that would work out for us. For me in particular, follow your heart means I love eating out, we'd eat out all the time, so financially we would be shipwrecked because we ate out so much. I love desserts, I have a massive sweet tooth. If I could eat it after every meal and for breakfast, it would be fantastic, and so that would not be good.

And then instead of going to the gym, I'd just watch TV. That's kind of what following my heart would look like when nutrition and health, I don't know about you. Now, just imagine if we applied this idea into the financial area, think about this. Suppose you sat down across from your financial planner, you're asking him or her their strategy on investments, and you say, well, you know, I just really follow my heart. Would you want to invest your resources, your money with the person who doesn't have a plan, doesn't have a strategy, but just follows the whims of their heart?

No! Then why in the world would we ever do it in something so significant and way more significant than money the relationships in our life? I'm going to dig into this just a little bit deeper.

Let me ask you this. Has your heart ever led you wrong? Yeah. Did you ever follow your heart and end up regretting dating him or her? Sleeping with him or her?

Marrying him or her? Have you ever followed your heart only to realize a month later, a year later, your heart has changed? For some, your biggest regrets have come from following your heart. And then we say something that's so interesting. Here's what we say at the end of a season like that. You say it about yourself, and certainly we say it about others when we watch the pain and the heartache.

What were we thinking? And therein lies one of the great problems with our culture in that we have separated out our emotions and our feelings with our thinking. And so we live this dualistic reality. And it feeds into the second fundamental belief under follow your heart. Not just that your emotions are the best guide for making relational decisions, but this is actually more deeply ingrained belief. Your emotions are the truest thing about you. We say things like be true to yourself.

You do you. See, when we talk about our heart in our culture, we're primarily referring to our feelings. Follow your feelings. Your feelings are the truest thing about you. And so as a result, we live an emotionally reactionary culture. It elevates our feelings to being the most important way to discern what's best, what's true, and what's good. If you just follow your heart, it will never lead you wrong. And it plays out like this. Do you love him or her? Doesn't it? You just fell out of love. You know, I'm not in love with my mate anymore, and I'm in love here, so it must be right, and it's okay. It's the truest thing about me.

It plays out. Do they make you happy? They just don't make me happy anymore. They make me happier. I just got to. It even seeps into this idea of do they accept you for you?

If I had to change, then oh my goodness. And we make major conclusions. Don't miss this. We make major conclusions about who we are, our identity, our sexuality, and our future based solely on how we feel. In our culture, the underlying belief is everything good and true is already inside of you. You just have to tap into it. That's actually Eastern mysticism.

You just need to know where the roots of these come from. But let me ask you. Have your emotions ever been wrong? Have they ever led you astray? You see, when the Bible talks about the heart, it speaks very poignantly and gives us a different picture than they're the best guide and the truest thing about you. In fact, the prophet Jeremiah wrote something so painfully insightful. He says this, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick.

Who can understand it? The heart, it's not like the truest thing about you or the best guide for decisions Jeremiah the prophet would say. He would say, no, no, the heart has this incredible capacity for self-deception and is sick. And so the question is, what do we do with our hearts if we don't follow it? What do we actually do then with this heart because we're a little confused now and I know I just spent some time helping us think through and undermine and deconstruct our cultural philosophy.

But then what do we do? Now one of the things our culture has gotten right is our heart is of central importance. The Bible has actually a lot to say about the heart. And when it speaks about the heart, it doesn't just speak about your feelings or your emotions.

In fact, the Hebrew thought didn't separate the interior life of a person. The heart, according to the Bible, when you read that in scripture, it means the center of a person's mind, emotions and will. It is the seat of one's moral conscience and affection. This is the heart.

It is the interior you. You're listening to Living on the Edge and Chip's with us to talk about the message you just heard. But in case you jumped in late, our guest teacher today was Ryan Ingram with part one of his message. Follow your heart from his series Relational Intelligence. Navigating relationships has never been easy, which is why Chip asked Ryan to come and share these messages that bring such practical applications to the daily challenges.

Culture has a powerful voice that influences our attitudes and our thinking. So Ryan's fresh perspective on relationship building from a biblical point of view provides the tools you may need to make a few course corrections. For a limited time, resources for Relational Intelligence are discounted and the MP3s are always free. To order your copy or to send it to a friend, visit us online at livingontheedge.org.

For additional information, just give us a call at 1-888-333-6003. Well, Chip, Ryan was really on a roll today. I think it's great that he's not shy about presenting a biblical challenge to conventional thinking.

You do it all the time. With that in mind, could you give us kind of the pulse of what you're hearing from people these days? Yeah, Dave. At some point you wonder, you know, is Living on the Edge really making a difference? And I got a note in the mail that I just have to share with all of those that are praying and all those that help us financially. Listen to this. Dear Chip, we don't have enough words to show our gratitude. At one point, my husband and I both thought things were so bad they'd never get better. But thankfully, I heard one of your sermons that spoke to our situation.

Then I found out that I could download the Chip Ingram app on my phone. So I started listening on a regular basis. Now my husband listens too. Through God's transformation in our lives, we've started seeing restoration in our family. Even though we're still a work in progress, we can see God's hand making direct changes in our lives. Recently, we decided to make a monthly donation to help keep your broadcast going. We realized that if your ministry helped us this much, then it can help others too. Thank you for all that you're doing to furthering God's kingdom.

Signed, D.R. And I just remind you, you know, we're all so personally focused and we're human that, you know, over a million people this week will hear what you're hearing. And not only that, but then the broadcast and the teaching and the small groups will go to China, to the Middle East, and places all around the world. Because people pray and because people partner financially. And so if you're one of those partners, can I just tell you thank you very, very much? If you're one of those partners that kind of gives now and then and would ever consider prayerfully to say, you know, I bet I could give just a little a month. Boy, those monthly partners really help us understand what we can project and making budgets. It's a huge help. And if you have never partnered with us financially, would you just today say, Lord, is this something you want me to do? And if he nudges you and says yes, follow that good prompting.

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Your generosity is greatly appreciated. As we close today's program, I have to tell you, we're on the front side of this message and the very practical, so wow, how do you take the next step is in our next broadcast, so make sure you don't miss it. But what I wish you could have experienced is what I experienced sitting in a room of young professionals, young marrieds, a huge number of college students, and a number of other people all around. But I was looking around as he was teaching this and was beginning to literally deconstruct the American mantra of relationships.

Follow your heart. And as he began to give examples from everything from Disney to Hallmark and everywhere in between, I was watching the faces of people who've been bombarded for the first 28 or 30 years of their life with this message over and over and over that the way you make decisions is follow your heart. If it feels good in your heart, then it must be true. And I just watched it in amazement and thought to myself, because I didn't grow up being bombarded with that, of course I've heard it and I see it.

I don't think that way. And I watched the lights come on. And then I watched him talk about the heart is deceitful above all else, is desperately wicked, and then he began to go down and talk about guarding your heart and protecting your heart. And you could almost see the body language in the room of people who had followed their heart and they've been hurt and they've been wounded and they've been rejected. And they thought this is the relationship above all relationships.

And at times, just blown through moral boundaries that they knew were wrong as a Christian, but how could it be wrong if it felt so right? And it was just an amazing experience to see how an entire culture has been bombarded with a lie that says, follow your heart. And by the way, this isn't just for young people because you can't watch a Hallmark movie. And it seems like with Hallmark, it's Christmas or no matter what it's about, whether it's a mystery, I mean, they're going to fall in love.

And the core behind falling in love is, well, the older lady says to the younger lady or the older man to the younger man, well, I don't know what you should do, but just follow your heart. What I want you to know, it's a lie. And in our next broadcast, you're going to learn the antidote, the prescription to how not to follow your heart and have a great relationship instead of ones that continually hurt and disappoint. Don't miss it. You know, a great way to stay engaged and connected to Chip and Living on the Edge is with the Chip Ingram app. You'll get free access to all of Chip's recent messages, his message notes, and much more. And not only that, but it couldn't be easier to call or email directly from the app. Well, I hope you'll be with us again next time. And until then, this is Dave Druey saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge.