With All Your Heart: Orienting Your Mind, Desires, and Will toward Christ
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
The Bible commands believers to “love the Lord with all your heart.” But with sinful and fickle hearts, how can they possibly obey that command? The heart, a term used all over the Bible, is a complex reality that captures the totality of a person’s inner nature. This book explores the three capacities of the heart (knowing, loving, and choosing), explaining how each is redeemed through the threefold office of Christ (prophet, priest, and king). As readers comprehend the heart as the source of all their thoughts, fears, words, and actions, they will discover principles and practices for orienting their hearts to truly love and obey God with all that they are.
- Explores the three capacities of the heart
- Examines how each capacity is redeemed through the threefold office of Christ
- Provides principles and practices for orienting your heart to truly love and obey God
Part 1: Knowing
- The Mind of Your Heart: Knowing
- The Sins of Your Heart’s Mind: Knowing Better
- The Prophet of Your Heart’s Mind: Better Knowing
Part 2: Loving
- The Desires of Your Heart: Loving
- The Iniquities of Your Heart’s Desires: Perverted Love
- The Priest of Your Heart’s Desires: Purified Love
Part 3: Choosing
- The Will of Your Heart: Choosing
- The Transgressions of Your Heart’s Will: Rebellious Choices
- The King of Your Heart’s Will: Obedient Choices
Part 4: Keeping
- The Keeping of Your Heart: Preserve and Protect
- The Gatekeepers of Your Heart: Eyes and Ears
- The Ambassador of Your Heart: The Mouth
- The Keeper of Your Heart: Preserver and Protector
Top Highlights
“So for the purposes of this book, we will operate with the following definition: The heart is the governing center of a person. When used simply, it reflects the unity of our inner being, and when used comprehensively, it describes the complexity of our inner being—as composed of mind (what we know), desires (what we love), and will (what we choose).” (Page 21)
“The Scripture presents the heart not just as a unity but also as a trinity of spiritual functions: the mind, the desires, and the will.19 To put it another way, the heart includes what we know (our knowledge, thoughts, intentions, ideas, meditation, memory, imagination), what we love (what we want, seek, feel, yearn for), and what we choose (whether we will resist or submit, whether we will be weak or strong, whether we will say yes or no).20 No other word ‘combines the complex interplay of intellect, sensibility, and will.” (Page 20)
“Which reminds us once again that there is nothing in our heart that the Lord of our heart cannot make right.26” (Pages 21–22)
“Because the heart is fundamentally unified, it is not in three separate entities that operate independent of one another. The mind, desires, and will function together. The heart may be complex, but it coheres as a unity—whether it is fallen in sin or redeemed by grace.” (Page 121)
“God shaped our hearts in such a way that our thinking functions properly only if our desires and will are right with God.11 When our heart is not at peace with God, our thinking becomes hostile to God, darkened, futile, and debased (Rom. 1:21, 28; 8:7; Eph. 4:18).” (Page 33)
Here is a devotional study of the heart that reflects the pulse of the whole Bible. Craig Troxel offers an anatomy of the thinking, yearning, and acting of the heart. He employs the surgical tool of Scripture to address the sins of the heart, and brings the reader to the Great Physician and Keeper of the heart. Would you like to meet a strong and sufficient Savior anew and afresh? Read With All Your Heart!
—Chad Van Dixhoorn, Professor of Church History, Westminster Theological Seminary; author, Confessing the Faith and God’s Ambassadors
Protestant theology often falls into one of two categories—an emphasis on doctrine that tends to overlook the concomitant experience, which thereby risks being vulnerable to the oxymoronic accusation of ‘dead’ orthodoxy, or an emphasis on experience, which downplays doctrine and risks being vulnerable to the accusation of being nothing more than subjective ‘enthusiasm.’ And if many of us are honest, we struggle to know how to balance our teaching and thinking to avoid these pitfalls. That is why this book is so welcome: drawing on many years of pastoral experience and demonstrating both the passion for truth and the passion for the Christian life that has always characterized the best Christian teachers, Craig Troxel presents a delightful account of the Christian faith from the perspective of the Christian heart. This is a book that teaches both by precept and example.
—Carl R. Trueman, Professor of Biblical and Religious Studies, Grove City College
Who am I? What is wrong with me? How can I overcome it? These questions all draw our attention to the heart. Craig Troxel carefully studies what God’s word teaches about the heart and discovers surprising answers that lead us to real solutions. He shows us how to become self-aware without being self-absorbed, authentic yet dependent on the Lord Jesus Christ, who reigns over our hearts.
—Joel R. Beeke, President and Professor of Systematic Theology and Homiletics, Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary; Pastor, Heritage Reformed Congregation, Grand Rapids, Michigan; author, Reformed Preaching
- Title: With All Your Heart: Orienting Your Mind, Desires, and Will toward Christ
- Author: A. Craig Troxel
- Publisher: Crossway
- Publication Date: 2020
- Pages: 224
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Topic: Christian Living
A. Craig Troxel (PhD, Westminster Theological Seminary) is professor of practical theology at Westminster Seminary California. He previously served as pastor of Bethel Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Wheaton, IL and Calvary Presbyterian Church (OPC) in Glenside, PA.
