What Can We Know About Our Hearts?

According to the Scriptures, what can we know about our hearts? I’m not asking about other people’s hearts but one’s own heart. For example what can one know of their own beliefs, values and motivations and feelings? In what examples is it possible for a person to be self-deceived about what’s in their heart?

How do you understand Jeremiah 17:9? How do you understand
1 Corinthians 2:11?

A big subject. Yes, the human heart is deceitful above all things, which is why God gives us a new heart. That's what it means to be born again. Once we are born again, God has to renew our minds. We imagine many things about ourselves which are not true. The negative person looks only at their faults and they have a "woe is me" attitude. The positive person cannot imagine that they have any serious flaws. Of course, these are the extremes and there is a wide range in between.

What few Christians understand and accept is that God condemns all that we are and are not outside of Christ. To be a Christian, the person has to agree with God's judgement that they have sinned and have no hope of heaven. Christians know that they have done bad things. But in order to experience God's full salvation, we need to know that we ourselves are bad.

This is why many of us suffer failure and defeat. God has to make us aware that we cannot live the Christian life. This was Paul's experience as he relates in Romans 7. All God has to do is leave us to our own resources. When we run out, we will (hopefully) turn to God. We need to know that we are sinners by nature, not that we become sinners when we sin. We need to lose all confidence in self and put our full confidence in Lord Jesus.

We can put on a good show before people. We know the reality and very often it is nothing like the image we present to others. Deep down, we know we are faking it. Our own spirit tells us. In the same way, it is the Spirit of God that reveals the mind of God to us. No one knows our inner thoughts except ourselves. No one can know God's thoughts apart from the Holy Spirit.

Many try to work out God by intellectual pursuits and studying the Bible. There is much benefit to Bible study. However, if it is not illuminated by the Holy Spirit, it will remain information that has little impact on our lives. Again, God allows situations that prove to us whether or not God's word is real to us. Maybe we lose a job or our car breaks down. Maybe a friend or relative turns against us. How do we react? With confidence that God is able and willing to resolve the problem? Or do we go into panic mode and worry about how we can solve the problem ourselves?

This is a lifetime process. Very often, we imagine that we have arrived at a high place spiritually. God has a very sharp pin. He uses it to burst the bubble of self confidence and bring us back to reality. Asking God to keep us in reality and truth is a request that He will always answer.

I think Jeremiah is talking about the state of fallen man's heart. From my own experience, I think even we don't even always realise the motives of our own hearts, and our selfish motivations. I certainly think people can be self-deceived about what is in their hearts.

Scripture talks about circumcising the foreskin of our hearts, about God giving us clean hearts, softening our hearts, replacing our hearts of stone with hearts of flesh. I think these metaphors refer to the problem of fallen man, and the only solution being God. We can't fix our own hearts - we are too fallen. We need God to heal us.

Once God has healed us (i.e. via salvation through Christ) and we are less prideful, I think we can get a better understanding of our own hearts, provided we continue to evaluate them in the light of scripture. I still think we can be deceived by our hearts, but only if we start to ignore what God has done (for us) and said.

Even for unsaved folks, probably no one knows his heart better than himself (other than God), which is what I think 1 Corinthians 2:11 is saying.

Deuteronomy 10:16 Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiffnecked.
Psalms 51:10 Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.
Job 23:16 For God maketh my heart soft, and the Almighty troubleth me:
Ezekiel 36:26 A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.
Jeremiah 17:9-10 “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings."
1 Corinthians 2:11 For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.

I recall reading that when Judas was with Jesus... Satan entered Judas heart.
we know that Judas betrayed Jesus.
While acting as his disciple. Maybe he didnt guard his own heart, so Satan was able to enter. Though we also know that Jesus knew Judas was a thief and stealing from him, though Judas lied and covered it up. Nobody else (the other disicples) knew if they would betray him. They all asked 'is it me?' when Jesus shared this, that ine would betray him with them.

Did Judas know he was lying or did he actually believe he was doing the right thing?

I would think Judas knew he was lying. Though perhaps he could have justified his actions of stealing the money. I don’t know if he was justifying his actions or not.

AS we read scripture that uses the word heart, we need to know that to the people who were writing down what God spoke to them believed the heart was the source of emotion and intellect. The brain was ignored.

I desire to be pure of heart toward all and where I fail I pray he extends his love.
I question often the war going on between brain and hearts desire and have to just trust the Spirit to reconcile the two.

Jeremiah 17:9 refers to the one who is unregenerate. 1 Cor 2:11 refers to the natural man also. In contrast, God gives the regenerated person a new heart and a new spirit.

I tell you, we have not met any in this realm that have the new heart yet.How many of us can say without fibbing that they are in love with god?

I love God. I cannot help but love and desire Jesus . He is beautiful to me and I long to come into his arms.

hope so CherieR

May we all think on all things beautiful believing the same. Beauty, true beauty, is always of the Lord.

People know their own hearts. They're deceived by the devil about God's heart.

Read Jer.17:5-8. Then in vs.9 he means God knows the hearts of all and
what is within the heart is manifest in the life.

We each know our own selves, but to know God, we must have his Spirit.

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”
‭‭Jeremiah‬ ‭17:9‬ ‭

this is explaining the heart of mankind. It wasn’t created by God be like that but was deceived and corrupted by Satan to become like that knowing man was given freedom

man in the beginning had a clean heart before the lord

“And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.”
‭‭Genesis‬ ‭2:25‬ ‭KJV‬‬


but when they partook of the forbidden knowledge they became corrupt in nature and will ( heart )

“And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.”
‭‭Genesis‬ ‭3:7-8‬ ‭KJV‬‬

“And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.”
‭‭Genesis‬ ‭3:10‬ ‭KJV‬‬

You can see mans change from no shame to hiding from Gods presence and being afraid of his word . This fear is coming from thier now corrupted heart not meant for good and evil conflict and just ten generations later we see by Jeremiah speaks of the heart as he does

“And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.”
‭‭Genesis‬ ‭6:5-6‬ ‭

since man ate the fruit and became corrupt in thier inner knowledge ( heart ) it’s been the problem . And it’s interesting that we then have grieved Gods heart by becoming corrupt in our hearts

the gospel is about hearing and believing the truth to repair d heal our hearts from the knowledge of good and evil and full us with the knowledge of the children of God we fell by the forbidden corrupt knowledge which corrupted our hearts and we’re saved by the knowledge of the lord in the gospel.

“And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.”
‭‭1 John‬ ‭5:20‬ ‭

just as the forbidden knowledge led man to have corrupt hearts and natures , accepting and believing the approved and blessed knowledge of the gospel leads us to have pure hearts undoing true damage Satan did to our hearts and minds . Only the gospel is able to change the knowledge of our hearts and thus our lives