Follow your heart?!

I was thinking the other day, the sort of contemplative/meditative sort. I was thinking back to a movie I had seen at some point. In it, I heard the somewhat cheesy, definately cliche line 'just follow your heart'. It occured to me just how often I've heard that from people, both as a motivational piece or pure advice. It wasn't until recently, however, that I thought about just how wrong it is.
Jeremiah 17:9 says, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?" In my old NKJV it translated to 'desperately wicked'. Why would anyone in their right mind follow a heart that is deceitful? Why would I make any decisions based on the prodding of a wicked heart? The catchphrase might sound good in some motivational movie or Disney show, but sadly our hearts are not the thing to put our trust in. We must not base our decisions on the things our heart tells us, because our hearts are sinful, and will naturally direct us away from the only One worth following. Unfortunately, the nonbeliever has nothing more to base his life upon than his deceitful heart, which directs him in paths of unrighteousness, and thus his decisions are often leading him farther and farther into sin. Nothing he can do will change the fact that our desires come from our heart, and as our hearts are deceitful the intentions of our heart are 'only evil continually (Gen. 6:5)'.
Does this mean that there is no hope for the one with a sinful heart? Almost. There is nothing you or I can do to take a heart of stone and make it pump blood, or take a dead heart and raise it to life, or take a God-hating heart and make it love Jesus. So in that sense there is no internal hope. The only hope for a wicked and deceitful heart is the God who 'will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh'. Without this active intervention by God Himself, I would only ever follow the desires of my heart--straight to Hell. So thanks be to God, who put a new heart and spirit within me, and in that Spirit enables me to follow and glorify Him. For believers, He is our guide, our direction. We must never cease to base our decisions on the Bible, the very Word of God. We must view all things in the light of Scripture, and go where the Spirit leads. However, we must make very, very certain that it is actually the Spirit, and not our sinful hearts again. Sometimes we mix up the two. How can we know which is which? The Scriptures. The Spirit will never contradict the Word.
So, by means of exhortation, my encouragement is thus: examine yourselves. Test yourselves, as 2 Cor. commands us. Use the Bible as the measuring rod by which you make every decision.
Not your heart.