You have probably heard it said you need to guard your heart and mind. After all, everything you do flows from it.
What does it mean to guard your heart and mind?
The word “heart is found in the Bible more than 800 times. To the ancient Israelites, the heart wasn’t thought to be a part of the body, but as a seat of emotions, thoughts, and place within a person that gave a physical life. It molded and motivated a person. They thought the heart and mind working as almost one.
When you guard your heart and mind, you actively monitor what goes in because eventually, it will spill out. What the heart and mind are focused on, the body will follow.
Many things compete for our attention and time, from media to marriage. Jesus said in Matthew 6: 21, “ For where your treasure is, your heart will be also.” Your heart is tied to what you treasure. To Jesus’ point, our actions reflect what is in your heart.
God always invites us to draw closer to Him so that He can give us the desires that not only align with His heart but will give us abundant life. When we guard our hearts and minds against distractions designed to pull us away from God, it opens up gates for His love and purpose to come in.
How we think is what we set our hearts and minds on and is reflected in our actions. Proverbs 23:7 says, “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.”
The Benefits Of Guarding Your Heart And Mind
The Bible says we reap what we sow. When you guard your heart and mind, you are sowing the seeds of protection. Allow the love of God in, and trust Him to be your comfort and guide. And trusting Him comes with a promise.
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight” -Proverbs 3:5-6.
Emotional Benefits
Fear and doubt cannot find a way in when you guard your heart and mind. You become more confident, not in your own abilities, but in God’s ability to work through you. His peace surrounds you, restoring and replenishing the places within your soul that are dry.
Relational Benefits
When you guard your heart and mind, you will find your relationships will deepen. Not only will your relationship with Jesus grow, so will your relationships with others.
1 John 4:19 says, “We love because He first loved us.” Your relationships grow as you guard your heart and mind because it is His live within you that spills over and out to others.
What’s At Risk When You Don’t Guard Your Heart And Mind?
While there are benefits to guarding your heart and mind. There is a cost for not guarding your heart and mind.
When you allow the world to penetrate your thoughts you have fruit becomes,
- Becoming more pessimistic
- Struggling to focus on what God is doing
- You become consumed with hopekessnesa
- You become fearful, doubtful, and anxious
The reality is something will fill your mind. The more aware you are of the battles you are facing, the more you will want to guard your heart and mind against Satan’s weapons that are designed to steal, kill and destroy your joy.
There are ways to guard your heart and mind
It’s important to know that guarding your heart and mind is about coming under His protection and coming under His protection means you will grow and mature in your faith.
- Protect Your Eyes
Have you ever seen something startling and quickly cover your eyes? When you protect your eyes spiritually, you keep a door closed that satan wants to walk through. While you can’t protect your eyes from every startling sight, you can be aware and respond by closing the door immediately if something is seen.
For example: before I became born again with the Lord, I loved horror movies, but they seemed to change my perspective on life in a dark way. After I was born again, I stopped watching them because they irritated my soul.
Jesus said, “The lamp of the body is the eye if your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness” – Matthew 6:22-23
- Protect Your Ears
Similar to seeing something startling, when you hear a loud noise, your instinct is to covet your ears. This is because God had designed yiybti guard the gatr of your heart and mind. Protective your ears means defending against what you hear: music, media and gossip in conversations. Romans 10:17 says, “Faith comes gy hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.
I get the image of the three monkeys showing us “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.
A way to guard your heart and mind is to protect against noises that lead to a path of sin and to incline your ear to the voice of God. We can do this by getting into His Word, filtering your hearts through His truth. “He who has ears, let him hear” – Matthew 11:15.
- Pray And Store Up God’s Word
Isaiah 26:3 says, “You will keep Him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You.” When we store up God’s Word in our heart, the Spirit will remind us of it in our time of need and guard our mind.
Then, we can lift up praises, speaking God’s Word which has been stored in our hearts. You can tell of His saving power and wonderful works.
When Jesus was in the wilderness, what did He do when He was tempted? He spoke God’s Word. This is why Ephesians 6 references the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. God gives us a weapon to work in spiritual warfare to cut down any lies they try to creep into your hearts and minds.
- Purpose In Your Heart
Daniel 1:8 says, “But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself. “ Another way to guard your heart and mind is to purpose in your heart like Danial. In other words, before a temptation or situation arises, decide to lean into God’s truth and stand for Biblical morality.
Daniel likely went through many circumstances and hours of studying and meditation on God’s Word to develop the kind of character required to stand firm in his faith in Babylonian culture. You can do the same. Allow God to mold you spiritually and sanctify you in challenging circumstances.
- Plug Into Community
God created us to live in communities. The Bible says “iron sharpens iron. We are to beat each other’s burdens by praying an encouraging one another. We can only do this according to God’s design when we are in a Biblical community (Such as Church, or Bible studies).
Getting plugged into a community of believers protects your heart and mind. In a community, someone there can pray with you and for you, hold you up, guide and correct, and walk this faith journey with you.
What you see, hear, meditate on, and think about will come out in your words and actions. God tells us to guard our hearts and minds in Jesus. This not only closes the door to Satan’s attempts to influence your life but also allows God’s Word, like a seed that planted within to flourish.
Guarding your heart and mind ultimately produces good fruit in your life that you can share with others.
From Pity to Praise 