“A plan in a man’s heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out.”
~Proverbs 20.5
“You can’t judge my motives because you don’t know my heart.” You might hear this if you ever make a judgment call on someone’s actions. There is this idea that there is no way we can know someone else’s heart and, therefore, can’t judge their motives. Doesn’t Jeremiah say under the inspiration of the Spirit, “The heart is deceitful above all things and mortally ill; who can know it?” Doesn’t he expect the answer, “No one can know it”? Yes, he expects that answer. None of us relying on our wisdom can discern our own hearts, much less the hearts of others. When the source of our discernment is wisdom is our experience and thinking divorced from God’s revelation, then, no, we can’t understand our own hearts or the hearts of others. We are self-deceived and constantly seek to justify ourselves by rationalizing our motives while impugning the motives of others. So, with this wisdom, we can know nothing true about our hearts or the hearts of others.
But what if we don’t rely on our own wisdom but God’s? Can we discern the motives of others by looking through the lens of God’s wisdom? The answer is a qualified “Yes.” The qualification is that our wisdom is always alloyed with sin, so we must be cautious. However, as we grow in God’s wisdom, not only are we able to discern the motives of our hearts, but we also understand the motives of others.
Solomon’s statement in Proverbs 20.5, “A plan in a man’s heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out,” informs his son that as he becomes a man of understanding, someone who has the insights of wisdom, he will be able to draw out the motivations of the heart. The “plan” of which Solomon speaks is the heart’s motivation. Motives are like the water at the bottom of a deep well or the depths of an ocean that are difficult to fathom. The waters run deep. Motivations are a spring in the deepest part of our being, but we can draw them out when we have God’s perspective.
Many people have no clue as to why they do what they do or why others do what they do. But we all have the same Creator who determines why we exist. Your motives are rooted in how and why God created you. If your motives are bad, they are a twisting of what God created you to be. Sin doesn’t create anything new but attaches itself to what is good and perverts it. Consequently, when we see sin, we can ask, “What good thing is this perverting?” and we can draw out the God-given motivation that is being perverted.
Imagine you know a man who was reared in a home where he was never good enough. He was talked down to, criticized, never praised, and physically abused. He is wired to believe he is unworthy and must constantly prove himself. Some of these people slink off into the background; others become highly motivated over-achievers.
You realize that this person can never rest in anyone’s presence. He always believes he is being judged and judging everyone else, thinking or declaring how much better he is than everyone else. You recognize him in the desire to be justified. He wants someone who matters to declare him “good” so that he can rest.
Because you have insight from God’s Word, you know that man was declared “good” and even “very good” in the beginning. After our fall into sin and being declared “not good,” we are driven or motivated by the desire to be declared “good” or justified. This guy doesn’t see his motivation. It is too deep for him to fathom because of sin, ignorance, or a combination of both. However, you know his motive because you are a man of understanding.
Older, wiser people do this all the time with young people. Older men will help young boys understand why they pick on girls and always try to show their dominance with other men in the presence of girls. Older women reveal the motivations of young girls who like the little boy that throws rocks at her and throws the other boys off the dirt pile and becomes “king of the mountain.”
When you have God’s wisdom through his revelation, you can know yourself and others. You can, to some extent, know the motivations of others, understanding what is making them tick the way they do.
The wise know that this power is to be used carefully, but it is to be used to reveal the secrets of a person’s heart so that he will get his heart right with God (see 1Cor 15.24-25).
Photo by Cristian Palmer on Unsplash
