• Proverbs 28:26 “He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool: but whoso walketh wisely, he shall be delivered.”
•  

You hear this phrase, “I believe with all my heart,” a lot. It is usually spoken with zeal and passion leading up to something the speaker wants to emphasize strongly. It works because it is spoken passionately stirring the listeners and it uses two catch words: “believe” and “heart”. However:

• #1 – The focus is on the speaker, “I,” and not on “thus saith the Lord”.
• #2 – Our text reveals that all who trust their heart are a fool.
• #3 – In God’s Word, true and real belief, trust, and faith is always connected with God (i.e. Heb. 11:7,8,11,13, etc…), God’s Word (Rom. 10:17), and Christ Who is both God and the Word (Gal. 2:21, 5:22).
•  

In the Bible, faith is never separated from God, His Word, and Christ. There are counterfeits, though, to all of God’s characteristics (i.e. – worldly wisdom vs. God’s wisdom Jms. 3:15, 17), and faith is no exception. Trust in anything other than God’s Word is not from God.

In this series, “Are You ‘More Noble’?”, we have been looking at the Bereans in Acts 17:11 who caught God’s attention and praise. Paul’s great habit, as every believer’s and preacher’s should be, was to reason only out of the scriptures (vs. 2). The Bereans, likewise, were not concerned about Paul, but about what the scriptures taught. (“…searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.”) It did not matter to the Bereans whether Paul was familiar or a stranger. It did not matter if he was old or young. It did not matter if Paul preached monotone or with charisma. It did not matter if Paul was loud or soft nor if he spoke a long time or short. It did not matter if Paul was tall or short, skinny or fat, handsome or ugly. The only truth that mattered was the Word of Truth, God’s Word. (Jn. 17:17, Ps. 119:43, II Cor. 6:7, Eph. 1:13, II Tim. 2:15, Jms. 1:18)

Dear reader, for far too long, God’s children have been caught up, like the world, with personalities instead of the Scriptures. We need to get back to being passionate and becoming consumed with “thus saith the Lord”, and not man’s whimsical, flimsy, error-prone quotes.

(This article is from the “Are You ‘More Noble’?” series.)