“Follow your heart” sounds inspiring—but Proverbs 3:5–6 offers a better path: trust God over your own understanding. Scripture reminds us that the human heart can be unreliable (Jeremiah 17:9), often shaped by emotion, culture, or pride rather than truth. Real clarity comes not from looking inward, but from surrendering fully to the Lord and allowing Him to direct your steps.

God doesn’t just redirect our paths—He reshapes our desires. As we stay rooted in His Word, He aligns our hearts with His will, replacing confusion with conviction. Instead of chasing what feels right in the moment, we’re invited to follow the One who sees the full picture and leads with perfect wisdom.

Highlights

• “Follow your heart” is cultural advice, not biblical direction
• The heart can be deceptive and influenced by emotion or pride
• True guidance comes from trusting God, not personal understanding
• God transforms our desires as we seek and obey Him
• Scripture renews our minds and anchors our decisions in truth
• Following God leads to clarity, purpose, and alignment with His will
• Obedience often requires surrendering plans we once held tightly

Have an idea for our newsletter? We want to hear from you! Take our survey below:

Take Our Survey!

Do you want to listen ad-free?

When you join Crosswalk Plus, you gain access to exclusive, in-depth Bible study guides, devotionals, sound biblical advice, and daily encouragement from trusted pastors and authors—resources designed to strengthen your faith and equip you to live it out boldly. PLUS ad free podcasts! 

Sign Up Today!

Full Transcript Below:

Forsaking Following Your Heart

By: Emily Rose Massey

Bible Reading:

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart,

And lean not on your own understanding;

In all your ways acknowledge Him,

And He shall direct[a] your paths” (Proverbs 3:5-6 NKJV).

Shortly after college graduation, I became a born-again believer in Jesus Christ; I repented of my sin and surrendered my life to Christ, committing to take up my cross and follow Him no matter the cost. Yet I still wanted to pursue my original plan to become an actress in Los Angeles. As a Christian, I believed I was called to be a light in a dark place, so I was supposed to use my talents for Christ in Hollywood. I was receiving mixed messages from trusted believers because they kept telling me to trust God with the plans to pursue my dreams. This just led to more confusion.

Trust God with my plan and my heart’s desires?

Again and again, the phrase “follow your heart” was echoing through my mind. This phrase seems to be very popular in American culture, even among Christian circles. You can find these three words boldly displayed on T-shirts, on Instagram graphics, and even heralded by some influential professing Christian leaders.

“Follow your heart…” - just a harmless motto, right?

It sounds really encouraging, doesn’t it?

Yes, very encouraging, almost Disney-like, but definitely not Biblical!

The Lord spoke these words about the heart through the prophet Jeremiah:

“The heart is deceitful above all things,

And desperately wicked;

Who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9 NKJV)

As Christians, sometimes we fall into the trap of giving man’s words more weight than the Word of God. I wanted to encourage us to look to the direction found in scripture for those who are God’s children. A very familiar, but powerful passage found in Proverbs gives the believer wisdom:

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart,

And lean not on your own understanding;

In all your ways acknowledge Him,

And He shall direct[a] your paths” (Proverbs 3:5-6 NKJV).

Intersecting Faith & Life:

If we put our trust in anything or anyone but the Lord, we will constantly be disappointed and led astray from God’s perfect will for our lives. We must trust in the Lord with all of our heart, which should never be filled with more of this world than God’s Word. I’m so thankful that during that time in my life, while I was faced with a major decision, I kept my heart full of God’s Word, which helped me renew my mind so that I was filled with faith to trust God when He began changing my desires to follow and obey Him most of all. One month after I decided not to move to Los Angeles, realizing that pride was actually driving my desire to pursue an acting career, I was introduced to my now-husband, and the rest is His Story.

My advice to you, beloved one, is do not follow your heart- follow God instead. He knows what you need more than you do. Trust Him with your entire heart and let him mold it to look more like His. He will never lead you down the wrong path!

The culture around us often loudly proclaims how important it is for us to pursue our dreams and destiny by listening to our hearts and following them. But God’s word is very clear: our hearts can often bring confusion, and the only One we can trust to follow is the Lord. If you are born again, God has given you a new heart in Christ, yes, but your flesh is always at war with God’s desires and longs to lead you away from God’s will. We find God’s will in His Word, so we must ask the Lord to help us have a hunger to hide it in our hearts so that we will not sin against Him. God’s word is what renews our minds so that we are able to walk in obedience and look more like Christ to the world, so that they may know that His ways and thoughts are higher and better than man’s. The Lord can help us not to lean upon our own understanding and trust Him above all, not our hearts’ desires. Let us be diligent to ask the Lord to mold our hearts to more closely resemble Jesus.

Further Reading:

Psalm 143:8-10