Follow your heart. It’s the message of every Christmas Hallmark movie. Stop listening to your head when your heart knows what’s best. Be true to yourself. Go with your gut.

Rosaria Butterfield, Melissa Kruger, and Trillia Newbell sat down to talk about this message that pervades our culture. They look at what the Bible says about our hearts, indwelling sin, and the heart of Christ. But they also talk about how to pursue guidance in making decisions and acting on desires that aren’t sinful.

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Related:

Sisters, Jesus Is Not Your Cheerleader (Melissa Kruger)
Love Your Neighbor Enough to Speak Truth (Rosaria Butterfield)
Don’t Trust the Peace in Your Heart (Matt Rogers)
Jonathan Haidt on the Coddling of the American Mind (Collin Hansen)

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Imagine a life where you don’t feel inadequate, easily offended, desperate to prove yourself, or endlessly preoccupied with how you look to others. Imagine relishing, not resenting, the success of others. Living this way isn’t far-fetched. It’s actually guaranteed to believers, as they learn to receive God’s approval, rather than striving to earn it.

In Tim Keller’s short ebook, The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness: The Path To True Christian Joy, he explains how to overcome the toxic tendencies of our age一not by diluting biblical truth or denying our differences一but by rooting our identity in Christ.

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Rosaria Butterfield is a former tenured professor of English at Syracuse University and author of The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert (Crown & Covenant, 2012) and Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ (Crown & Covenant, 2015). Her new book is The Gospel Comes with a House Key (Crossway, 2018).

Melissa Kruger serves as the vice president of discipleship programming for The Gospel Coalition (TGC). She’s the author of multiple books, including The Envy of Eve: Finding Contentment in a Covetous World, Walking with God in the Season of Motherhood, Growing Together: Taking Mentoring Beyond Small Talk and Prayer Requests, Wherever You Go, I Want You to Know, and Parenting with Hope: Raising Teens for Christ in a Secular Age. Her husband, Mike, is the Samuel C. Patterson chancellor’s professor of New Testament and early Christianity at Reformed Theological Seminary, and they have three children.

Trillia Newbell is the author of several books including A Great Cloud of Witnesses, Sacred Endurance, If God Is For Us, Fear and Faith, and children’s books Creative God, Colorful Us and God’s Very Good Idea. She encourages and supports other writers as the acquisitions director at Moody Publishers. Trillia is married to Thern, and they reside with their two children near Nashville. You can find her at her website and follow her on Instagram.