Proverbs 4:23. Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.
This might be one of the most important verses in all of Proverbs, and one of the most important lessons in all of life – Keep your heart.
In the Old Testament, the ancient Hebrews understood the heart to be the deepest part of you, the control center of your life. The heart is the source of all love and desire, and out of the hearts flows every thought, choice, and feeling – the springs of life.
To keep the heart is to protect it, to guard it, to watch closely what goes in and what goes out. Why is this so important? Because we are what we desire.
What we desire with our hearts determines who we truly are, and who we are becoming. Everything you will say today will come from your heart. Every choice you make, good or bad, will come from your heart. Everything you think about will start in the heart with what you care about the most. Whatever you desire most is what you will think about the most, choose the most, and ultimately want even more of.
The Puritans called the heart our affections. Our affections drive everything we do. The acts of the will are determined by our affections so that we always do what we want to do, good or bad. Or as Saint Augustine said, “We always choose what we love the most.”
Sin, of course, has caused our affections to be misplaced, twisted, and inordinate. We are all born with a darkened heart, one that is desperately wicked as the prophet Jeremiah said. But praise God that in Christ we have been given a new heart with a new affection. A desire for Christ and his love that goes even deeper than any other desire we have. Our heart of stone has been replaced with his own heart of flesh.
2 Corinthians 3:3. And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
Paul is reminding the church that we have the New covenant written on our hearts. Not hearts of stone like the tablets of the Ten Commandments, but on hearts of flesh. Sensitive, open, growing hearts. The heart we are watching over is the new heart of flesh, not the old heart of stone. A heart that is actually capable of loving and serving God because it actually has found God to be the most satisfying thing in the universe.
Christian, God’s divine law of love has been written upon our hearts. Now we are becoming like the thing we love the most, and what we love is God because he first loved us. But this doesn’t just magically happen to us without our active participation. No, we don’t change our own hearts, only God through Christ and by the Spirit can do that, but we do protect our hearts from those things that would dramatically upend that transformation from occurring. We put on the breastplate of Christ’s imputed righteousness and carry the shield of faith in our union with Christ in order to quench the fiery darts of the Evil One that have been aimed at our hearts. Darts of doubt. Darts of worry. Darts of shame. Each extinguished by the unconditional love and acceptance of the Father.
You: Can you see the influence of your affections upon your thoughts, choices, and attitudes?
You in Christ: How does your union with the love of Christ serve to guard your heart?
Christ in you: How can you begin to listen to the heart and the affections of Jesus today, rather than your fleshly desires?
Pray: Father, help me by your grace to guard my heart today trusting that you love me unconditionally. Amen.
To Live is Christ 