Follow Your Heart
“Just follow your heart.” This ostensibly inerrant axiom advises us that our hearts are an infallible guide when we come to a decision point in life. If you don’t have any other guidance you can always trust your heart. I’ve probably heard this in church just as often as I have heard it in other places. Should we just follow our hearts? Is this good advice?
In Numbers 15, God gives specific instructions to His people about how to live once they enter into the Promised Land. God tells Moses that the people of Israel need to make tassels for themselves on the corners of their garments in order to provide a reminder to remember the commandments of God. This remembering is for the purpose of obeying. God’s people, like all people, continually stray from His commandments. Scripture points this out rather vividly in Numbers 15:39:
“And it shall be a tassel for you to look at and remember all the commandments of the Lord, to do them, not to follow after your own heart and your own eyes, which you are inclined to whore after.”
With this observation about the propensity of the human heart for misguided affections, we have our answer to our initial query. It is not good advice at all for us to follow our hearts. Scripture tells us directly not to follow our hearts. He goes so far as to say we whore after our hearts. The Lord did not mince words here. Our hearts are not reliable guides. We’d do a lot better telling one another: “Don’t follow your heart.”
Why does Scripture say this about our hearts? Does God want us to wallow in self-loathing? Are we to live in perpetual self-doubt? While some Christians undeniably live with these kinds of attitudes, the point Scripture makes in Numbers 15 (and others places as well) is that our hearts are sinful. Even after someone comes to Christ our hearts still have a bent toward sin. Christ gives the believer new power and His indwelling presence to help us prevail over sin, but I’ve yet to meet a believer who lived in perfect obedience to the Lord following their conversion. We are sinners saved and we are sinners changed by the power of the Gospel, yet our hearts are still susceptible to sin.
Understanding this about human sinfulness helps us to temper our self-reliance. We are capable of doing the right thing but for the wrong motive. We are capable of decieving even ourselves as to why we do what we do. Rather than looking inside our hearts for the answers to life’s decisions we must look to Scripture and to the Holy Spirit living within us. The next time you’re tempted to follow your heart, make sure your heart is grounded in Scripture and is filled with the Holy Spirit.