Proverbs 4:20-23~
My son, be attentive to my words; incline your ear to my sayings. Let them not escape from your sight; keep them within your heart. For they are life to those who find them, and healing to all their flesh. Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.
I have been thinking on that verse for the past few weeks. I listened to some messages about it on vacation, I taught a devotion on it, and shared it in worship yesterday. It's simply stated, yet so profound concerning the life of anyone who calls themselves a Christ follower.
There is work to be done!
The enemy of this world comes to seek, kill, and destroy; and that enemy is after our hearts. With more vigilance than we would provide over our homes, our cars, or even our families, we should be working to protect our hearts!
WHY SHOULD WE PROTECT OUR HEARTS?
- Ultimately, like a spring of water flows, so do the attitudes of our hearts. The quality of your moral and spiritual impact is flowing like a stream of water to impact others. What's in your heart, will eventually come out, and it has the ability to impact others for the good or for the bad. Are you protecting your heart?
- The testing of your heart is dependent on you protecting it! The circumstances and even trials that we face are opportunities in our sanctification to bring glory to God. When the pressure is on, often what comes out is less than glorifying to God. Keeping our hearts means hiding God's word in our hearts, so when the pressure is on we will not sin against him. Keeping our hearts is putting off attitudes that aren't godly, doing away with gossip, and anger, and bitterness...all the things that tend to fuel our ungodliness when the pressure is on. Are you protecting your heart?
- Finally, our worship is dependent on the keeping of our hearts. Before God desires the outward response that we easily can bring and go through the motions with, God desires our hearts. More than our songs, our prayers, our raised hands, or good deeds, God desires our hearts. Are you protecting your heart?
HOW DO YOU PROTECT YOUR HEART?
- Hide God's Word in Your heart. It has all you need for life and godliness, and the power to defeat temptation and sin!
- Don't pollute it! What you put in will definitely come out. What you watch, what you look at online, what you read, what you are entertained by, and the kind of conversations you have all shape your heart! Let your light shine in darkness, rather than the darkness creep into your light!
- Learn to sense the conviction of the Holy Spirit. God's Spirit reveals that which we need to repent of, as well as gives us a sense to flee from evil.
These are just the things I've been working on. I could give you a list of areas where I have left my heart unprotected, and the Lord is constantly teaching me and shaping me and convicting me in those areas. But what an incredible challenge it is to know, that we can protect our hearts from the things that do not honor God! It takes work, but greater is the power in us, than he that is in the world.
Are you protecting your heart?