One common morsel of advice is to follow your heart. Do what feels right. Today, that is often expressed as “you do you.” Along with that advice is a bit of urgency – follow your heart right now and don’t let anything stand in your way.
If we’re being honest with ourselves, our hearts are often wrong. Today’s proverb gives us some wisdom about the heart. “Patience is better than power, and controlling one’s emotions, than capturing a city.” (Proverbs 16:32, CSB) The keyword is “better”.
Exercising power and strength may overcome a problem. But so does patience. This is especially true in person-to-person relations. When in conflict, we can strive to overcome with physical power or the power of our words. The problem, of course, is that the other person becomes defensive, which requires even more power.
Patience is better. Sure, we may “lose” for a while. It may seem that little progress is being made. But that constant drip of consistency will win out in the end. It is the same kind of patience that God gave us.
The second half of the proverb extends the first. In the same way that patience is better than power, ruling our emotions is better than taking a city by force. Taking a city, whether by conflict, the power of presence, or popular election, says, “I am somebody.” I am important. I am to be listened to. But it is better to conquer our emotions than it is to conquer a city.
This flips the script on the ‘follow your heart’ mantra. Instead of being ruled by our hearts, we are to rule our hearts. Our emotions might scream to be heard. It is what we do with those emotions that matters.
Some, like the Stoic philosophers of ancient Greece, strove to silence their emotions. A modern-day example would be the fictional character Spock in the original Star Trek series. But there is a difference between stoic suppression and Biblical self-control. We recognize our emotions; they are telling us something. But then, like Jesus in the Garden, we take those emotions to God in prayer and allow His Word to guide our actions. (Luke 22:44, Heb 12:4).
The book of Galatians reminds us, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The law is not against such things.” (Galatians 5:22–23, CSB) Patience and self-control are both fruits of the Holy Spirit in our new life in Christ.
It is not so much that we exercise patience and self-control through our own strength of will. But, instead, we strive to live under Christ’s rule. We welcome God’s work in His own time for our needs and desires. We hear what our emotions are saying and take them to Christ instead of being ruled by them. We are not following our hearts; we are following Jesus.
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