Guard your Heart
July 06, 2010
by Pastor Jeremiah
Continued from last week...
Solomon says, “Above all else guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.”(Proverbs 4:23) According to Solomon, we live out of the heart. Simply put, when the scriptures refer to the heart, they are referring to that mysterious union between our mind, will, and emotions. But how does one guard his, or her heart?
One of my favorite characters in the Bible is King David. He wrote most of the Psalms and a great deal of his life is recorded for us in 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 Kings and 1 Chronicles. He’s perhaps the most exposed character in all of the scriptures. He made a lot of mistakes and yet through it all God declared him to be a man after his own heart. In fact, that was David’s greatest asset, his heart. God loved David’s heart and there’s a lot we can learn from him. David, repeatedly in the Psalms, pleads with God to work on his heart. He says, “search me O God and know my heart, test me and know my anxious thoughts, see if there is any unending way in me.” “Create in me a clean heart O God.” “Purify my heart.” David understood that though he may not be able to comprehend all that was going on in his own heart, God knew. He was constantly asking God to reveal the condition of his own heart. In essence, he was asking God to, “teach me about me. Show me what’s lurking under the surface. Help me to see my own flaws and areas of weakness.” I believe this is a key to learning how to guard our hearts. We must come before God on a regular basis for prayer, reading of scripture, meditation, and silence. Giving God access to the hidden areas of our inner lives. We must let the Holy Spirit convict us of sin, we must invite God to speak His truth into areas of our minds that have been deceived and most importantly we must receive God’s grace – His power to make us able for all things.
Jesus modeled this life style as well. While he was fully God, we often forget that he was also fully man. He knew what it was like to be tired, to be tempted, to suffer. The gospels make it clear that Jesus had a regular habit of isolating himself to go and pray (Lk. 5:16). This is a habit that Jesus’ clearly wanted to pass on to his followers. We can assume that the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray because it was obvious to them how important it was to his life. The fact that Jesus modeled this regular practice of spending time alone with God is a huge motivator for those of us who seek to follow him in this life. After all, if Jesus, who is God in the flesh, needed to regularly check in with the Father for help, for wisdom, or guidance, then how much more so do you and I require it?
Back to King David. He wasn’t always a king of course. He had humble beginnings as a shepherd boy outside of the town of Bethlehem. As a shepherd, he would’ve spent a lot of time in solitude roaming the hills outside of town with his sheep. I wonder if it was this lifestyle that developed within him a deep, abiding relationship with God. He is the most raw and honest personality within the scriptures and I can’t help but think that he developed that from years of crying out to God on the hills surrounding Bethlehem when no one else could hear him. One thing we can know for sure is that God loved his heart. When the prophet Samuel came to anoint a new king over Israel, God led him to the town of Bethlehem. He arrived at the house of Jesse and,
“When he arrived, Samuel saw Eliab and thought, “Surely the LORD’s anointed stands here before the LORD.”
Since we live out of our hearts, it makes sense that God looks to the level of the heart to determine the measure of a man, or woman. This is good news for us. Most of us are not the super talented, beautiful, rich, or powerful ones in this world, yet we can have the confidence to know that God has leveled the playing field. We don't need to be any of those things to qualify for the life that God has for us. All we need is a heart that is fully His!
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