Psalm One Thirty Nine

My son, pay attention to what I say;

turn your ear to my words.

Do not let them out of your sight,

keep them within your heart;

for they are life to those who find them

and health to one’s whole body.

Above all else, guard your heart,

for everything you do flows from it.

Keep your mouth free of perversity;

keep corrupt talk far from your lips.

Let your eyes look straight ahead;

fix your gaze directly before you.

Give careful thought to the paths for your feet

and be steadfast in all your ways.

Do not turn to the right or the left;

keep your foot from evil.

-Proverbs 4:20-27

Keep your focus on verse 23. ABOVE ALL ELSE GUARD YOUR HEART; FOR EVERYTHING FLOWS FROM IT. KJV says “for out of it are the issues of life.” Oh man, isn’t that right. NIV says “the well spring of life”. Everything that touches your life or my life is getting sprayed or splashed by the fountain of your heart. Everything we are doing is being sprayed constantly by our hearts. Think about it this way- if I have a cold heart, I am spraying ice cold water all over everything around. If I have a bitter heart I am spraying bitterness and poison all over everyone around me. If I have a joyful or happy heart, I am splashing joy on everything around me. Our hearts are a wellspring of life! Everything bursts from it! We may think that we are withholding things, but no we are not! If I am withholding warmth, then I am spraying out coldness! Are you following me here? If I have all my doubt and my confusion and my fear and insecurity, then that is what I am spraying! Our hearts never run dry! What a revelation for me this has been! Luke makes it clear that “from the overflow of our heart, the mouth speaks.” So we cant even say a word without our heart getting into it! Even if we lied, our lying heart was all over what we said! So what then, does it mean, to GUARD OUR HEARTS? I am getting to that! God’s goodness and His glory are inseparable! You’re never going to live to the glory of God that you wont see the goodness of God! Ok so look how amazing our God is! In Exodus chapter 34 God and Moses are having a conversation! Starting from verse 5 check this out: “Now the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, He maintains His love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.” Remember Proverbs 4:23? Guard our hearts? Protect our hearts? If we want to know what it means to guard our hearts, lets see in action God guarding His heart. Verse 7 in Exodus 34 says that God maintains His love! God’s idea of guarding His heart is to guard Himself against diminishing love. He guards his love! When you and I think about guarding our hearts we think about guarding our hearts FROM people. God guards His heart FOR people. How AMAZING! He protects His love for you! He constantly keeps it in view. Now I will be transparent, this has been SUCH a difficult concept for me to grasp because I don’t know about you but I am the type of person that when I go through a tough time where I have reaped what I have sown, I begin to think that God has completely frozen his love for me. I make up in my mind that he has totally biased His love for me. BUT LISTEN TO THIS: at no time ever is God unbiased about you. He never sets his love for you aside. Our idea of guarding our hearts is guarding against. Paul writes in Philippians 1:9-10 “And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.” He is saying “I want you to love more and more, but not blindly. I want you to know your situation so you can be freed up in your life”. You and I do not want to suffer diminishing love. We want our love to overflow! But with wisdom and discernment. What he has really pressed on my heart lately is that the big priority we have would not be with what we are protecting our hearts against but what we are protecting our hearts for! Because what the scripture is talking about is that he guards himself against any diminishing love! He guarded His heart so that it would constantly overflow with an abounding type of love so that when a sinner bends his knees and repents He can look on him with love. Is that how we are guarding our hearts lately? I pray that this would be my daily goal: to choose to guard my heart FOR Him!