Whatever You Do, Don’t Follow Your Heart

It will lead you astray from the heart of God.

There may be no greater contrast between the instructions of the Bible and those of popular culture than on the issue of the heart.

Our “heart,” in a primary sense, is who we are, as opposed what we are or what we do.

Many people we trust, the songs on the radio, Hollywood, and the leaders of our culture have a consistent message about the heart: follow it. There are variants of this: listen to your heart, be true to yourself, follow your instincts, and so on. They all mean the same: trust yourself.

When we hear these things, we should run as far from them as we can.

Every decision to trust our heart comes from believing the lie that we know better than God. Eve knew God’s instruction to not eat of the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden, yet she saw that it was good for food, pleasant to the eyes, and had power to make one “wise.” So she took it and ate it. She trusted her heart. The world was forever changed. Ever since, following one’s heart has caused almost unbounded destruction to the lives of people and of nations.

It is foolish to trust our heart

There are many reasons why Proverbs 28:26 tells us it is foolish to trust our own hearts:

• Its imagination is evil from our youth. (Gen. 8:21.)
• It is fully set to do evil in the absence of an expected punishment. (Eccl. 8:11.) This is why children must be controlled by a system of rewards and punishments until they can understand right and wrong. Once they are outside that control, though, if their hearts have not been converted (i.e., renewed; see below), they will revert to willful disobedience of God.
• It is deceitful and desperately wicked. (Jer. 17:9.) If I follow my heart, I will deceive myself.
• It causes us to speak evil things. (Matt. 12:34.)
• It causes us to think wrongly and do wrongly. (Matt. 15:18–20; Prov. 4:23.)

Will we lead our heart or allow our heart to lead us?

We are to guide our heart, not let our heart guide us. (Prov. 23:19.)

We are to give it unto godly wisdom, not give ourselves to it. (Prov. 23:26.) In this way, it might be fixed on God (Ps. 57:7, 108:1).

We are not to trust our heart, but to trust God with our heart. (Prov. 3:5–6.)

God must renew our heart

It is only by God’s renewing our heart that we can be capable of obeying Him willingly. Ezekiel chapters 11 and 36, as well as Psalm 51, speak of God giving a new spirit and taking away a “stony heart” and replacing it with a new heart. A renewed heart is necessary for readily walking in His statutes, keeping His judgments, and teaching transgressors God’s ways (Ezek. 36:27; Ps. 51:13). It is essential for being made clean (Ezek. 36:25, 29; Ps. 51:10) and deliverance from our guilt (Ps. 51:14).

For this renewing (or reviving), our heart must be contrite and broken. (Ps. 51:17; Is. 57:15.) It must be broken because it is, naturally, in contrast to the heart of God. Only when it is broken can God repair it; only when it is broken can God give us what our heart should desire. (Ps. 37:4.)

God performs this “purifying [of our] hearts by faith” in Him. (Acts 15:9.)

It is my prayer, as it was Paul’s, “that [God] would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God” (Eph. 3:16–19).

Adapted from a Sunday School lesson I taught at Twin Pines Baptist Church on May 25, 2014