“Keep your heart will all diligence, for out of it is the wellspring of life” – Proverbs 4:23
I once asked what our hearts need to be guarded against. Then I read this scripture. Our emotions are from our hearts. Love, anger, and joy all emanate from it. The combination of our will, emotion, and mind. Our hearts are a superpower for our lives, but it can also be our greatest weakness.
Our hearts can lead us to lash out in anger or cry over something silly. Our hearts aren’t just a ball of emotion but our emotions that come from our thoughts. Some psychologists would call our hearts our subconscious. Our hearts determine our lives.
Try thinking of your heart like a fresh spring of emotions. And you will quickly see how it directs your life. A spring of water occurs naturally throughout the world. Underneath the earth’s surface are rocks and sediment that collect water as I sponge. When they take in too much water the sponge overflows creating a spring. A natural spring has calcium and iron, but it also can contain arsenic or even radioactive materials.
Our hearts are also like this. Each of us has layers and layers of life events that create little sponges. There are bound to be some contaminants that come in. Unfortunately, our hearts take in whatever our eyes and ears have been exposed to. It doesn’t discriminate. It just soaks up life.
Our hearts determine our lives. Jeremiah 17:9-10says,
“The human heart is deceitful above all things and it is exceedingly corrupt. Who can know it.”
It’s not surprising that marketing professionals design advertising that targets our hearts. They want to motivate us to spend our money. Movies are made to make us feel a certain way, anger, sympathy, joy… Make no mistake Satan knows our souls and that he can take us out by attacking our hearts. He understands all he has to do is poison the water. Our hearts will take it in because it knows no different.
Ephesians 6 talks about using “The armor of God.” The breastplate of righteousness is the piece of armor that protects our hearts. This means we can fend off attacks if we stand with God. But whether it not you stand there while you get pelted by arrows is up to you.
If our hearts go unchecked for too long, we can easily hurt others even if it’s unintentional, it comes from the outpouring of heart, if we do it consistently it becomes culture to us. Solomon says in Proverbs 4:23, guard your heart because everything we do starts there.
How to guard your heart,
Guarding our hearts requires diligence. Satan knows it doesn’t take much for us to absorb negative experiences.
“Keep your mouth free of perversity, keep corrupt talk far from your lips” – Proverbs 4:24
Death and life are in the power of the tongue. Watching what we say goes a long way to preventing future hurts. But it also keeps us from hurting ourselves. In Ephesians 4: 29-32 Paul says,
Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what us helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen, and do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you are sealed for the day of redemption.
If we are watching things that put us in fear or lust in our hearts then that is what is going to come from our hearts. Jesus said in Matthew 12:35,
“A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and a evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him.”
“Give careful thought to the paths of your feet and be steadfast in all your ways. Do not turn to the right or the left, keep your foot from evil”- Proverbs 4:26-27
There will be times when you make mistakes with your words or with what you see or hear because we cannot control the environments we are in. However, it’s important to choose whether to take action or not. Our actions with bring us closer to God or further away. I’ve important to feed our hearts and minds Godly things, not impurities that will continue to spring up causing us to he in a constant state of internal war.
The Bible talks a lot about the heart because it has the power to cause success or failure in life. The only way to guard our hearts is to be vigilant in our communication and to pay attention to our actions.
From Pity to Praise 