Following Your Heart Is The Wrong Suicide
Following your heart is about as useful as drinking Coca-Cola laced with arsenic. It will taste great as it’s killing you.
This is because the heart is a terrible guide. Following it would be like following Jeffrey Dahmer back to his house to experience a new take on steaks. That probably wouldn’t end well.
And it wouldn’t end well because your heart, like mine, is evil and incapable of giving good direction. Its default setting is depravity. Its normal mode of operation is death. Give it what it wants, feed it what it desires, and it will not lead you into freedom. It will drag you, kicking and screaming, into a thousand kinds of slavery, where you end up cuffed and beaten at your sin nature’s enjoyment.
This is not my opinion. This is what the Bible says. Scripture does not say our hearts are basically good but occasionally confused. It says our heart is deceitful above ALL THINGS and desperately sick. Did you catch that? Your heart is not merely deceitful. There is actually nothing more deceitful than it. It lies to you, tricks you, abuses you, manipulates you, and keeps doing it again and again and again, like Mike Tyson giving you repeated shots to the face.
Our heart is not merely wounded. It is wicked. It does not merely stumble into sin. It hunts sin, craves sin, feeds sin, hides sin, and makes future plans for even greater sins. Our heart is an idol factory, shaping gods to fit our polluted appetites.
It calls porn harmless. It calls greed ambition. It calls cowardice wisdom. It calls laziness prudence. It calls bitterness discernment. It calls gluttony enjoyment. It calls vanity confidence. It calls sodomy love. It calls adultery fulfillment. It calls disobedience healing.
Then it whispers things like, “Trust me.” “Follow me.” “You know you want this.” “No one will know.” “It is just this once.”
And that is the bitter irony. That we would trust our heart at all is madness. That we would follow that death-loving organ anywhere means we are gluttons for punishment.
Our heart would rather sell out Christ for thirty pieces of silver than mortify our sin. Our heart would rather hammer the nails into His wrists, shove the spear into His side, and press the thorns into His bloodied crown than grow an ounce in holiness. Our heart would rather rip heaven right out from its foundations than surrender one naked woman lurking in our thoughts. It would rather watch your marriage bleed out, your children suffocating in your sins, your church burn, and your soul sink into hell than fall flat on your face in surrender to His Lordship.
In that way, following your heart is the wrong kind of suicide because it kills everything God is making alive while preserving everything Christ commands you to put to death in the flesh. .
That is why Jesus did not tell us to follow our heart. He told us to deny ourselves, take up your cross, and follow Him. He was not inviting us to live for ourselves, but to die. The call of salvation is first a suicide of the old man before you can ever experience the resurrection of the new.
And as new creations, stop bowing before every pang in your chest and every death rattle in your heart. Your feelings are not reality. Your cravings are not what is best for you. Your trauma is not a replacement for Scripture. Your sincerity will not turn toxic sewage of the heart into the sweetest wine.
You do not need to discover yourself. You need to survive yourself.
You need God to reach into the graveyard of your chest, tear out the stone lodged there, and give you a living heart that fears Him. You need the Spirit to storm the fortress, kill the traitor, break the idols, wash the walls, and raise the banner of Jesus Christ in every room.
So do not follow your heart. Put it in the prison of mortification. Drag every one of its aberrant desires before the judgment seat of Scripture. When it lies, strike it with the axe of truth until it bleeds repentance. When it tries to hustle you, run it through with the sword of the Spirit until it ceases flinching.
Kill it, stab it, starve it, beat it until it has no more fight left. And when it rises up again in mutiny against God, put the rebellion down without a hint of mercy.
Your heart needs death, not following.
So Kill it. Follow Christ. Or follow your heart until it buries you.
