How to guard your heart (Part I)

When we think of “heart” we picture red, beautiful, cut out valentines. But often, if we would really examine our hearts, we would find lies, selfishness, greed, lust, envy, and pride. There can be more vices in addition according to each individual.

But, though we might be surprised by the contents of our hearts, God is not. He understands how easily it can be swayed in the wrong direction. The Bible is full of warnings about the nature of the human heart and instructions to make our priority to watching over it. Proverbs 4:23 tells us “Above all else, guard your heart”. How should we do this?

First, picture guarding your heart as if your heart were a criminal tied in a chair who will like to break free and knock you over the head. In other words, protect yourself from your heart’s sinfulness. Keep an eye on your heart, knowing that it can do damage if it is not carefully watched. Jeremiah 17:9 says “ The heart is deceitful above all things. Who can understand it?” Though the advice of many well-meaning people today is to “follow your heart”, the Bible warns that the heart can lead you in wrong even deadly directions. Our hearts lie. Something can “feel” right and be completely wrong.

Julie, a nineteen-year old who worked as a receptionist in a doctor’s office, found herself deeply attracted to her boss, a married man who was beginning to make advances towards her. She wanted to act on her attraction and play along with his flirting. Her heart told her to give in to her feelings. Should she have listened?

Fortunately, Julie’s Christian convictions resisted the whisperings of her heart. She quit the job and confessed her temptation to a Christian friend who prayed with her and promised to keep her accountable. Julie wisely guarded her heart, by thinking through the consequences of her actions. If she followed her feelings, she will sin against God, carry the memory of the affair into her future marriage, and possibly ruin the man’s marriage and family. Recognising these things exposed the ugliness of Julie’s heart’s desires. Getting away from the temptation and finding an accountability partner were further precautioned to ensure that she didn’t fall pray to her own sinful heart.

Do you face a potentially precarious situation that your heart wants you to pursue? Like Julie, do what ever it takes to guard your heart and keep it in submission to God. Next, picture your heart as if it were a fresh spring of water that you want to drink from daily. The bible tells us “the heart is a well-spring of life”. Proverbs 4:23, the source of our attitude ,words and deeds. If we fail to keep our hearts clean, the rest of our lives will be stagnant and become dirty.

What are some things God’s wants us to remove from out hearts? 1John 2:15,16 says “do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him. For everything in the world-the craving of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does-comes not from the father but from the world. In this passage, John gives us three categories of worldly things that pollute our heart: sinful craving, lust and prideful comparison with others. Can we apply these items to romantic relationships? Yes. In fact, most our struggles in relationships seems to involve desiring what we should not desire, lusting after what God has forbidden, or complaining about what we don’t have. These “pollutants” specifically manifest themselves in relationships as infatuation, lust, and self-pity. Let us examine all three more closely.

Infatuation
You have probably experienced it-the constant thoughts about someone who has caught your eye, the heart palpitations whenever that person walks by, the hours spent dreaming of a future with that special someone. It is infatuation. Many of us have a difficult time seeing infatuation as potentially harmful. But we need to examine it carefully, because when you really think about it, infatuation can be a sinful responce to attraction. Any time we allow someone to displace God as the focus of our affections, we have moved from innocent appreciation of someone’s beauty or personality to the dangerous realm of infatuation. Instead of making God the object of our longing, we wrongly direct these feelings towards another human being. We become idolaters, bowing to someone other than God, hoping that the person will meet our needs and bring us fulfilment.

God wants us to focus our thoughts, longings and desires on Him. He lovingly blesses us with human relationships, but he first cause us to find our heart’s delight in him. Psalm37:4 says “Delight yourself in the Lord and He shall give you the desires of your heart”.

In addition to diverting our attention from God, infatuation can cause problems for us because it is most often founded on illusion. When infatuated with someone, we tend to build up that person in our imagination as the perfect guy or girl. We think we will be happy forever if that person will return our affection. We have substituted fantasy for all the information we lack about the person. As soon as we get to know the person’s true identity and discover that our “perfect” man or woman is human like everyone else, our dreams fade, we move on to a new crush.

To break out of this pattern of infatuation, we must reject the notion that a human relationship can ever completely fulfil us. When we find our hearts slipping into the fantasy world of infatuation, “Lord help me to appreciate this person without elevating him/her above you in my heart. Help me to remember that no human can ever take your place in my life. You are my strength, my hope, my joy and my ultimate reward. Bring me back to reality God, give me an undivided heart”.

When you let God be God, you can let human be human. When we place God in his rightful place in our lives, we don’t struggle so much when human relationships let us down. So we need to take a step back and evaluate the role infatuation plays in our lives.