Zacchaeus could have stayed in his head. Instead, his heart sent him climbing. (Luke 19:1-10)

I’ve always prided myself on being a thinker. I like to gather facts, weigh the odds, and reason things out. The more I know, the more control I have. But the Bible makes a distinction that often unsettles me: knowledge isn’t the same as action. Truth in your head doesn’t necessarily make its way into your life.

Psalm 119:11 doesn’t say, “I have stored up your word in my mind.” It says, “I have hidden your word in my heart.” The difference is subtle but crucial. The head stores information; the heart drives action from the word hidden there.

That’s where I often get caught. My head is great at keeping me safe, and safety sounds reasonable. It whispers things like:
     “Don’t try that — you might fail.”
     “You’re not ready.”
     “What if people don’t accept you?”

All those voices are, in some way, trying to protect me from risk, disappointment, or rejection. And they usually succeed in keeping me stuck.

But the Spirit speaks a different language. The Spirit doesn’t say, “Play it safe.” The Holy Spirit says, “Trust me. Step forward. Let my power work through you to act.”  The Spirit calls me out of my head and into my heart, where, faith and love live.

Look at Zacchaeus. He was a man of numbers — a tax collector who made his living calculating what people owed. If he had stayed in his head, he never would have climbed that tree. Respectable men don’t scramble up branches like little boys. But his heart said, “I have to see Jesus.”

And when Jesus called him down, Zacchaeus didn’t pause to run the math. He didn’t calculate what it would cost. He just acted. He gave away half his possessions. He restored what he had stolen from people — not because it made sense in his head, but because love had taken root in his heart.

That’s the shift. From calculation to graciousness. From control to surrender. From safety to transformation.

So here’s where I find myself today: asking God to make my head the servant of my heart and not its master. Let the facts inform me, but let the Spirit lead me. Because in the end, it’s not about whether I understand everything. It’s about whether I utilize the trust found in my heart to act.