What Does the Bible Mean When It Says “Walk in the Ways of Your Heart”?

What Scripture Says

“Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes” (Eccl. 11:9). Were you expecting the Bible to say that? It could sound like a self-help mantra from this reckless world.

We aren’t the first ones to find this verse eyebrow-raising. Way back in the B.C. era, the Greek version of the Old Testament went so far as to change the very wording: “. . . and walk blameless by the ways and not by the vision of your eyes.”¹

The ancient Aramaic version also added words of warning: “. . . and walk humbly in the ways of your heart and be careful of the vision of your eyes that you do not look at evil.”²

Other scholars don’t mess with the biblical words, but they do flip the meaning—into a sarcastic dare. As if to say, “Sure, go ahead and have your sinful fun! See how much good that’ll do you!”³ But that spin on Ecclesiastes clashes with its own claim for itself—that Solomon wrote “words of delight” and “words of truth” (Eccl. 12:10).⁴ My belief is firm. Changing the words of the Bible or changing the message of the Bible are both bad options.

Let’s look squarely at what the Bible says here. And let’s accept this surprisingly bold encouragement.

Walk in the Ways of Your Heart and the Sight of Your Eyes

Just starting out, we know the Bible can’t be saying, “The key to your future is your own vast, untapped wonderfulness! So follow your dream! Your one sure reality, that you should always fight for, is your own self-chosen you!” For example, here’s an actual newspaper ad, from my wacko generation, oozing with this empty flattery:

I love me. I am not conceited. I’m just a good friend to myself. And I like to do whatever makes me feel good.⁵

You and I both know, that foolishness just doesn’t work. A researcher who studied criminals reached this conclusion: “The fact is, we’ve put antisocial men through every self-esteem test we have, and there’s no evidence for the old psychodynamic concept that they secretly feel bad about themselves. These men are racist or violent because they don’t feel bad enough about themselves.”⁶ Self-esteem at the center of our identity becomes self-distortion.

What you and I want is a place to stand that goes deep, proves true, gives courage. But that place is hard to find. By ourselves alone, it’s impossible to find. G. K. Chesterton was realistic: “To the question, ‘What are you?’ I could only answer, ‘God knows.’ ”⁷ Okay then. To God we go, to find out who we are. Then we can discover what it really means to walk in the ways of our hearts and the sight of our eyes.

Insight from C. S. Lewis’s Mentor

George MacDonald was a Scottish minister who influenced C. S. Lewis deeply.⁸ We can see why in a sermon MacDonald preached titled “The New Name.”⁹ He explains the mysterious words spoken by the risen Jesus:

To the one who conquers I will give . . . a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it. (Rev. 2:17)

In this world, your name can be a mere label. But Jesus knows the person you really are. If you follow him through this world, he will tell you someday. Your new name, chosen by him, MacDonald says, “is one which expresses the character, the nature, the being, the meaning of the person who bears it. . . . Who can give a man this, his own name? God alone. For no one but God sees what a man is.”¹⁰

On that happy day in heaven above, when you stand before him, he will tell you your real name.

All our self-exaltation is a bluff. And our make-believe leaves us feeling even smaller. But Christ knows and guards the true identity we long for. On that happy day in heaven above, when you stand before him, he will tell you your real name. It will express the you you really are. He will reveal to you his you— “that being whom he had in his thought when he began to make the child, and whom he kept in his thought through the long process of creation that went to realize the idea. To tell the name is to seal the success—to say, ‘In thee also I am well pleased.’”¹¹

Think of it. You there in his presence, the you he had in mind from the start, finally and forever complete. And suddenly an awareness of your true self flashes into your heart from the thought of Christ himself.¹² Something deep inside you will relax, with a calm you’ve never felt before. And you will stand tall—noble, royal, magnificent.

I will be there with you, as will all his followers from the whole length of history, each of us unique, and all of us like him, “sharing the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thess. 2:14 PHILLIPS).

For now, this world wants to squeeze us into its soul-crushing mold. And we have played along many times. But we don’t want that anymore. We want Jesus now. We are setting our hearts on his promises. And look what he does. He promises you and me a new name, a new self, a new identity, with a new destiny forever—and more authentic, more real than any makeshift self we invented here in this ever-changing world. Welcome to the glorious forever-you Jesus is creating!

The New You Unbound

“Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes” (Eccl. 11:9)—that wide-open invitation is addressing the new you that’s following Jesus (Eph. 4:24). You are a new creation of God (2 Cor. 5:17). He has raised you up for a new future (Eph. 2:4–6). And when Jesus raised Lazarus, and that newly alive man walked out of his tomb, what did Jesus say to everyone around? “Unbind him, and let him go” (John 11:44).

No surprise, then, that our verse in Ecclesiastes is saying, “Hey new you, take a look around. Go for a walk. Check out the beautiful, broken world of your generation. As you see the exciting opportunities and the crying needs all around, what catches your eye? What moves you? Go for it!” Can you spot anything narrow and confining in that gospel call? Isn’t the whole point “the broad areas which are thrown open for our enjoyment”?¹³

One of our sneakiest sins, as we’re surrounded by a smorgasbord of choices for making our lives count for Christ—it’s just plain selfish to fold our arms, hold back and hold out. I did this for years. I didn’t want to stick my neck out and commit. I feared that diving in would look uncool, and I couldn’t take that risk. So I did nothing. Nothing bold, anyway. Now I grieve those lost years. I was paralyzed in cowardly face-saving. I repent of that sin. And repentance too is part of what Ecclesiastes 11:9 is fishing for.

Your Heart, Your Eyes

What about the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes? How is Jesus saying to you, “Follow me” (Matt. 4:19)?

As your Christ-following heart leans into your future, as your Christ-opened eyes scan the horizon, what possibilities grab you? What fires you up? What calling would make you say, “I don’t have to do this. I get to do this. God has called me”? What do you see, in your generation, that is so worth doing you’ll gladly sacrifice to accomplish it? What task is so big, so worthy, that your heart starts saying, “Lord, I want it. I can’t do it alone. But with you, I might make the difference”? Don’t turn away. There’s a good chance God is in it. Keep praying and exploring, one step at a time. Ask your church leaders to walk alongside you, in prayerful discernment. And in it all, in your progress and in your setbacks, God himself will lead you forward.

Your calling will be hard, even scary. And it’s better that way, more satisfying.¹⁴ Just keep saying yes to Jesus, he will strengthen you, and you won’t chicken out, and you sure won’t miss out. You will come to the end praising God. And in heaven, he will finally tell you, with your new name, how glorious your life really was all along. And that profound moment with him will be only the beginning!

Always remember this: “Jesus loved the enthusiast, the man who knew what side he was on and threw himself wholeheartedly into the struggle.”¹⁵ How could it be otherwise?

Look how boldly he is recruiting you: “Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes.” The Christian journey is not you timidly avoiding sin. It’s you bravely following Jesus—in exactly the ways you were born for.

Ecclesiastes 11:9 isn’t so crazy, after all, is it? Let’s keep going.

But Know That for All These Things God Will Bring You into Judgment

Wait, what?, you might be thinking. This sentence at the end of verse 9 feels like whiplash, right? Just when we were getting somewhere, along comes this downer! But it’s not what we think. Let me explain.

There are two opposite kinds of “walking in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes.” We’ve been reveling in the good kind. But there’s a bad kind too. We see it back in the days of Moses. God told the people of Israel to start a new custom in how they designed their clothes. He wanted them to sew a fringe or tassel onto the edges of their coats. The purpose was a constant visual reminder of “all the commandments of the Lord, to do them, not to follow after your own heart and your own eyes, which you are inclined to whore after” (Num. 15:39). That kind of following after our own hearts and eyes—forsaking the Lord Jesus for the whorehouse of modern paganism—really would bring us under his judgment.¹⁶ And “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:31).

But in Ecclesiastes, “judgment” isn’t God bringing down the hammer. It is God sifting through the complicated mess of this world, including our lives, and sorting out the good from the bad: “God will judge the righteous and the wicked” (Eccl. 3:17). In this world, good and evil can get mushed together in a confusing mess. God sees that. He sees it perfectly. He is the only one not confused. So in Ecclesiastes, “judgment” is God separating good and evil, vindicating what is right and exposing what is wrong: “God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil” (Eccl. 12:14). The point? No one is getting away with anything. God will have the last word, and God is just.

So God’s judgment here in our verse—“God will bring you into judgment”—that should sober us. Someday you and I will stand before God. We will “report in.” We will give him an account of what we did with the lives he gave us. And he will tell us what he thinks. He will be a perfect gentleman, but he will not flatter us. Very sobering.

This article is adapted from Eat, Drink, and Be Merry: A Gospel Call to Bold Enjoyment by Ray Ortlund.

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