Can We Trust Our Hearts?

Question 5011.

Can we trust our hearts? Our culture answers before the question is finished: follow your heart, be true to yourself, you do you. It is the closest thing the modern West has to a creed. The Bible’s answer is bracingly different, and it comes from the prophet Jeremiah: the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? Two counsels could hardly clash more completely, and we have to decide which one is telling us the truth.

I want to take Jeremiah seriously without stopping at Jeremiah, because the Bible does not end with a diagnosis. There is a promise on the other side of it, and the two belong together.

What the Bible Means by the Heart

First, a definition. When Scripture says heart, Hebrew leb, it does not mean the seat of romantic feelings. The biblical heart is the control centre of the whole inner person: thoughts, desires, decisions, and loves. Out of it flow the springs of life, Proverbs 4:23. So the question whether we can trust our hearts is really asking: is my inner navigation system reliable? Does the compass point north?

That framing matters, because the world’s advice assumes the compass is fine and the interference comes from outside: parents, church, expectations. Scripture says the interference is inside. The instrument itself was bent in the fall.

Jeremiah’s Unwelcome Diagnosis

Jeremiah 17:9 is blunt: deceitful above all things, and desperately sick. The word deceitful is related to the name Jacob, the heel-grabber, the supplanter. Your heart, Jeremiah says, is a Jacob: it schemes, it flatters, it tells you what you want to hear and calls it intuition. Worse, it deceives its owner first. Who can understand it? Not even you, which is precisely what makes self-trust so dangerous. I have looked at Jeremiah 17:9 in its own right in the heart is deceitful above all things.

Jesus confirmed the diagnosis from His own lips: out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander, Matthew 15:19. Sin is not fundamentally an environment problem; it is a heart problem. Every scandal that has ever shocked you began as a whisper somebody trusted.

Experience agrees. How many disasters in your own life were faithfully following what you deeply felt at the time? I can think of counsel I was sure of, grudges that felt like justice, purchases that felt like wisdom. The heart is a persuasive barrister with a terrible client.

Why We Cannot Trust Our Hearts Alone

To trust our hearts as final authority is to make a fallen thing infallible. The advice sounds liberating, but watch what it actually does: it hands the wheel to appetites that change by the hour and calls the result authenticity. Proverbs saw through it long ago: he who trusts in his own mind is a fool, Proverbs 28:26, and there is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death, Proverbs 14:12.

Notice, though, that the Bible’s alternative is not to trust someone else’s heart instead, a guru, a crowd, an algorithm. Every human authority has the same bent compass. The only trustworthy reference point is outside the fallen system altogether: trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding, Proverbs 3:5. The heart makes a wonderful engine and a terrible navigator. It was never designed to set the course, only to power the journey once the course is set by God.

The Promise of a New Heart

Here is where the gospel enters. God’s answer to Jeremiah 17:9 is not a self-improvement plan for the old heart but the gift of a new one: I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you, Ezekiel 36:26. The heart of stone comes out; a heart of flesh goes in; and God’s own Spirit takes up residence to incline that new heart to His ways. This is the new birth Jesus described to Nicodemus, and it is the only surgery that reaches the real problem.

So can the born-again believer now trust his heart? Carefully, and never independently. The new heart has new desires, and the Spirit truly leads, but the flesh remains, and its old voice is fluent in spiritual vocabulary. That is why even the renewed heart is told to be calibrated constantly: the word of God discerns the thoughts and intentions of the heart, Hebrews 4:12. David, a man after God’s own heart, still prayed, search me, O God, and know my heart, Psalm 139:23. He asked God to audit the instrument rather than assuming it read true.

Living With a Compass That Needs Checking

Practically, this means every strong feeling gets tested, not obeyed on sight. Test it against Scripture, which is the fixed star; test it in prayer, where motives surface; test it with wise believers, because in an abundance of counsellors there is safety; and give it time, because deception thrives on urgency. Feelings are real information, but they are witnesses to be cross-examined, not judges to be obeyed. A well-calibrated conscience and a Scripture-fed soul are the instruments God uses in that courtroom.

And when your heart condemns you falsely, the same rule applies in reverse. John writes that whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, 1 John 3:20. The heart can be as deceitful in despair as in desire. Some believers need to stop trusting their guilt as much as others need to stop trusting their cravings; in both cases the verdict belongs to God and His word, not to the weather inside us.

Testing the Heart in Real Decisions

Let me show you how this works when something actually has to be decided: a job offer in another city, a relationship that feels right, a grievance that feels righteous. The world says the feeling is the verdict. Scripture says the feeling is the first witness called, never the judge. So before you trust your heart, put the desire on the table and ask the calibrating questions. Does anything in God’s word speak against it, or shape it? What surfaces when I pray about it honestly, including the motives I would rather not mention? What do wise believers who love me say, especially the ones free to disagree with me? And does the desire survive a month, or only a mood?

You will notice that this process does not despise the heart; it disciples it. Often God genuinely leads through renewed desires, and the settled peace that follows patient testing is one of His kindnesses. The point is the order. We do not trust our hearts and then recruit Scripture as decoration; we trust the LORD, test the heart, and let desire follow truth. People who learn that order make fewer wreckage-strewn decisions, and, better, they slowly find their wants being retuned until what they long for and what God commands begin to rhyme. That is the freedom the world promises and cannot deliver.

When the Question Becomes Personal

Can we trust our hearts, then, when it comes to assurance of salvation? Here the question turns tender, because many sincere believers have hearts that accuse them day and night. Notice that Scripture does not send you inward for your deepest assurance; it sends you to the promises of God, which do not fluctuate with your mood. Whoever comes to me I will never cast out, Jesus said, and the whole weight of assurance rests on the reliability of the One who said it, not on the steadiness of the one who comes.

So learn to trust our hearts only as far as Scripture does: as witnesses whose testimony must be checked, never as the final court. When your heart says you are too far gone, overrule it with the word. When it says sin will make you happy, overrule it with the word. The believer who practises that double overruling has learned most of what the Christian life requires, and has stopped asking the heart for verdicts it was never authorised to give.

The long-term remedy is the one the psalmist names: I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you. A heart stocked with Scripture begins to answer with Scripture, and its first instincts slowly become safer. That is the only sense in which we may increasingly trust our hearts: not because the heart has become an authority, but because it is learning, verse by verse, to echo One.

So, now what?

Retire the world’s creed. Do not follow your heart; follow the Shepherd, and bring your heart with you. Get it renewed at the cross if you never have, feed it daily on the word that recalibrates it, and surround it with counsellors who love you enough to disagree with you. The question is not finally whether we can trust our hearts, but whether we will entrust our hearts to the One who made them and can make them new. Which voice will have the last word in your inner life this week, the barrister or the Judge?

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.” (Proverbs 3:5-6, ESV)