Follow your Heart?

I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard people tell other people or counsel me to “follow your heart.” It’s said all the time on movies, and it’s what I grew up believing. When a character is faced with a hard decision, they are usually instructed to “follow your heart.” This advice, presumably, will lead one to the greatest happiness. After all, our hearts know what is best for us, right?

So, what happens when to “follow your heart” means to commit adultery?

What happens when to “follow your heart” means to abandon your kids and chase after wild dreams that you think will fulfill you

What happens when to “follow your heart” means getting into a relationship with someone that you know will only result in dishonor to your King?

What happens when to “follow your heart” means stealing something in order to provide for those close to you?

What happens when to “follow your heart” means pursuing a dream, career, or ambition that is in direct disagreement with the Word of God?

What does the Bible say about following your heart?

“The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it?” Jeremiah 17: 9

“For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, and blasphemies: these are the things which defile a man.”  Matthew 15: 19-20

“Therefore, God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts…” Romans 1:24

Our hearts, according to the Bible, are deceitful and wicked. One of the major misconceptions in Christianity today is that we base our closeness or nearness to God upon feelings. If we feel close to God, then He’s happy with us. If we feel some spiritual “high” after summer camp, then we are great Christians. If we feel like praying, we will. If we feel like reading our Bibles, then we will. We will only serve if we feel like doing it and have some sudden burst of compassion.

Christianity is not based upon how you feel about something. Christianity is based upon fact. Therefore, true Christianity is not based upon what your heart “says” about something. True Christianity is based upon what the rock solid truth of God’s Word says. And when our feelings are in contradiction with the Word of God, we side with the Word of God, despite how we may be feeling at that moment.

If God has called you to pray and you don’t feel like it, you pray anyway. If God has called you to get into His Word and you don’t feel like it, you study anyway. God has called you to serve those around you and take the lowest place always. So, you serve and pour out for people, no matter how much you feel like doing it or not. We are to guide or lead our hearts (Proverbs 23: 19). And the amazing thing is, that as we guide our hearts and base our lives on fact rather than our feelings, our feelings with come into alignment. If you serve other people whether or not you feel like it, eventually the feelings will come. Jesus made us to feel and delights to give us the feelings, if we will just ask Him for them. He wants us to feel deeply for those around us. However, we must learn to base our lives upon His unchanging Word, no matter what this world or our own deceitful hearts may say against it. His Word must be first and foremost in our lives. He will then change our hearts so that they conform to  His Word. 

"A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you. And I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put My spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statues, and you shall keep my judgments, and do them."  Ezekiel 36: 26-27