Guard Your Heart

The stores are filled with Valentine hearts and gifts getting ready for the big day February 14. Couples young and old will mark the day with romantic dinners, roses, and chocolate hearts. Those are all great things that I love to participate in with my husband. We all know love is so much more than one dayof the year. Biblically our heart is more than a holiday or a pretty valentine. It consist of our intellect, our will and even our feelings. Proverbs 4:2323 tells us, " Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life."KJV The word keep here means to guard , to protect and maintain. Wow! Did you realize that God expects us to maintain our thoughts. The reason is clear our thought life determines the direction of our life and if we are not careful and diligent we will be led a way we didn't intend down a path that is destructive instead of productive. So in this season when we are enjoying the beauty of romance and boxes of every size shaped like hearts and filled with chocolate lets consider our real heart.

Here are some heart issues for us to examine. Let's be transparent before our God.

1. We serve a God who binds up the broken hearted. Psalms 147:3

Who among us hasn't needed to run to the Father with a broken heart knowing that he will lift our head and proclaim we are His child. When we try to handle heart break on our own we fall short and our heart becomes a bit harder with each seeming insult. It gets to the place where we cannot allow others to really know us because we are constantly defending ourself against hurt. People in our life are paying the price for things that happened long ago. When we come into His presence and allow Him to heal our wound...pour forth His love on us...we go forth healed and ready to meet the world with His viewpoint. We'll talk more about this in future post

2. Some times our thoughts need an overhaul.
The Bible is filled with words about our mind. It is easy to understand the spirituality of such things as reading the Bible, going to church and serving God, but controlling our thoughts is something that Christians sometimes neglect. Some years ago the Holy Spirit began to talk to me about how my thought life was directly related to my feelings and my actions. If I entertained a spirit of unforgiveness and continued to ponder all of the unjustices I felt had been done to me, for example, my actions would lean towards self justification and refusal to see my part in an issue. The Bible tells us to renew our mind with the Word of God. Wouldn't it be nice if this were a one time alter call experience? Renewing the mind is a daily process...determining to align our thougths to agree with the Word of God. The most recent change in a thought pattern with John and I is our attitude toward savings. We've always seen the good in savings, but somehow convinced ourselves that it wasn't possible. Many folks are in the same position with their income being spent before the paycheck is signed. Anybody can allow a false thought to reign. The Word says that a person who spends all that he has is acting the fool. So we decided no matter how small we wanted to obey the Lord. There are always temptations to go back to old way...the old familar way, but going forward in obedience means embracing God's thoughts not ours. What thought pattern do you feel the Lord addressing in your life?

Refusing destructive thoughts

The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 10:5 "Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;"KJV It all may seem a little overwhelming at first, but we are not alone. The Holy Spirit is our teacher. It is not okay to let any thought continue to have access to our mind. It is not a sin for a thougth to cross your mind....but we are responsible for what we allow to linger and become part of our mindset. To some this may be a new concept. The Scripture in Proverbs tells us to be diligent and to "guard" our heart...our mind, will and emotions. It means that sometimes when we find ourselves pondering a thought that does not line up with God's Word we must refuse to continue to "think that thought" It won't always be easy...sometimes the we will have to refuse the thought more than once because we are used to the pattern....it can be rather like trying to stop an addiction. Thankfully, we don't do this alone...the Lord is with us. We are used to hearing about God's part....but here we see we have a part in whether or not we experience God's peace and security, based upon what we think upon. What we think about will eventually come out in an action. Examine your thougths today...and determine to guard your heart.