The heart is deceitful and not worth following. Let’s replace a foolish heart-following with a bold and Biblical heart-leading. God gives us new hearts in Christ, and we are no longer bound to obey sin, so we can actually lead our hearts in a way that pleases God. 

It is popular to say (and mock) the cliché, “Follow your heart.” And while I’d love to mock the idea with all of you, I thought it might be better to provide an alternative. Honestly, it’s pretty easy to give the alternative, because the Bible gives the alternative. But before I do that, the Bible makes it plain that the heart is not to be followed. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick” (Jer 17:9). That deceitful heart is not to be trusted. So if we aren’t to follow our hearts, then what should we do?

Get a New Heart

The first thing that needs to happen is that you need to get a new heart. That old heart is deceitful and crooked. It doesn’t need to be reformed, it needs to be replaced. And by God’s grace, when someone turns to Christ for salvation, a spiritual heart transplant happens. “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh” (Eze 36:26). God has promised to remove that old, stony heart and replace it with a real, living heart. This new heart has new affections and new desires, and now has the capacity to respond to God in His word. If you don’t have this new heart, nothing else I say in this post will matter. So if you are not a Christian, stop here. The next bit of information is impossible without a new heart. Repent and believe the gospel. God always gives that new heart to those who turn from their sins and trust in the finished work of Christ.

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