Follow Your Heart

Introduction

Hallmark movies all seem to share a common refrain: “Follow your heart.” Your heart will tell you what is right. For decades, emotions have been the primary means by which people make choices. At times emotions can be helpful and necessary, and they certainly play a valid role in life. Walk into an ice cream shop and you choose a flavor based on what you feel like. Buy a car and certain colors speak to you more than others. Emotions are woven into the human experience.

God gives us emotions. Without them, some of the great works of art, music, and literature would never have been created. To some degree emotions are used to decide about relationships, but that also illustrates how unreliable they can be. This is why Hallmark is able to produce the same movie over and over—people are emotionally drawn to the romanticism and their hearts are touched. Emotions are a necessary part of life. Who doesn’t appreciate someone who can cry with you when tears are needed, laugh with you in moments of humor, or stand with you in righteous anger at injustice?

But as valuable as emotions are, they are also unreliable. At times we know our hearts are not giving us accurate information, yet we follow our emotions anyway, resulting in broken relationships, poor outcomes, and guilt. Today we will invite the prophet Jeremiah to speak to us about the heart and especially to remind us of God’s perspective—a view we need to align with.

We Have a Heart Condition

Jeremiah, beginning in chapter 16, reveals the evil occurring in the Southern kingdom. God has seen enough. Decades have been given for repentance and a return to him, but those decades were spent pursuing evil desires rooted in the heart. The people turned away from God, and now punishment is coming. In 17:1, God reveals that their hearts are engraved with their sin—a permanence that cannot be undone. Their hearts have become so hardened that change or repentance is no longer possible, and the sins of the parents are being passed down to their children. Enough.

In 17:5, Judah’s heart has turned away from the Lord. The word for heart encompasses many dimensions—will, soul, mind, and emotions. Judah has fallen into the trap of pursuing other gods, and through that pursuit every facet of their life has been affected. Their thinking, will, soul, and emotions have all turned away. This reflects the integration of human beings—our emotions affect our thinking, our thinking affects our behavior and will, and the will shapes our character or soul. The cycle continues. Our thoughts, behaviors, and emotions are tied together.

Jeremiah presents a choice: one can follow their heart or one can follow God. The outcomes are vastly different. To follow one’s heart results in a wasteland—futility that may seem fine for a time, with moments of satisfaction, but the long-term effects result in isolation from that which is good. The world paints a picture of people having good times and fun without God, following their heart, doing what pleases them, acting on what seems right. They surround themselves with others of the same mind. Life appears good—it’s about fun, pleasure, enjoyment. It’s appealing. But sooner or later tragedy comes. Death, disease, loss—then what? Deep conversations with friends usually don’t follow. There are well-intentioned attempts to be supportive, but there is no real strength. Time moves forward and people adapt, but where is the healing? Where is the meaning?

Ecclesiastes 9:2-3 speaks directly to this: “All share a common destiny—the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not. As it is with the good, so with the sinful; as it is with those who take oaths, so with those who are afraid to take them. This is the evil in everything that happens under the sun: The same destiny overtakes all. The hearts of people, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live, and afterward they join the dead.” The author observes that there is no difference between the righteous and the wicked—their lives may actually look similar. We all end up dead. But here is the subtle truth: those who follow their heart end up dead without any purpose. They lived life, even lived it well, but it had no purpose; it was not real life.

Jeremiah 17:7 offers the alternative: the one who chooses to follow God rather than their heart lives life with purpose. Like a tree planted by the waters (as opposed to a desert plant), there is life, meaning, productivity, and purpose. Jeremiah is not describing a life without worries but a life that has purpose and direction because it is rooted in God. Choose your heart and there is no purpose. Choose to follow God and there is life.

His final truth in verse 9 cuts to the core: the heart—that which exists without God—is filled with lies and is incurable. Behavior that comes from following the heart produces lies. There is no purpose except to do what makes sense in the moment. Good is defined only by what pleases. This is the condition of the heart, and it is incurable. It cannot be trusted. It is not reliable. Only God can be trusted.

Illustrations and a New Heart

In the basement of a building at Yale University in 1961, Stanley Milgram conducted social psychology experiments to discover how far people will go when instructed by an authority figure to do things that violate their conscience. The experiment involved administering electrical shocks to help a person learn. While no one was actually shocked, Milgram discovered that every participant was willing to administer 300 volts and sixty-five percent were willing to administer 450 volts—which, if used over an extended period, can be fatal. Decent people following the guidance of a person in authority can do terrible things. The heart can be deceived.

In 1971 at Stanford University, Philip Zimbardo and colleagues conducted the Stanford Prison Experiment. This experiment and Milgram’s forced the writing of ethical codes for the field of psychology. Young college-aged men were randomly divided into guards and prisoners. Within days, the guards were mistreating prisoners and prisoners were mistreating guards to such an extent that the experiment had to be shut down before someone was killed. There are many lessons to draw, but the point is clear: the heart is filled with lies and is incurable.

Turn to Jeremiah 31:31-33. According to Jeremiah 17, sin is so inscribed on the heart that it cannot be removed by human effort alone. Only God can make a new heart. Only God can erase the sin and inscribe his life into our hearts. Don’t follow your heart—it is inscribed with sin. Follow God and let him give you a new heart, one inscribed with his love. Choose to follow your heart and it will result in isolation. Choose to follow God and you will have life.

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