We are exhorted to guard our hearts for out of it flows the affairs of life (Prov 4:23).
The heart is the primary organ of communion with God; the faculty through which the believer knows, loves and responds to Him.
It is therefore no arbitrary target; the adversary directs his most sustained assault precisely here, seeking to disfigure and contort the believer’s perception of God. This is why the enemy aims to sever the connection we have with the Lord, utilizing our hearts as his target to accomplish his goal. He seeks to give us a distorted view of God- whether as indifferent, harsh, unreliable or as distant so that our hearts disengage from fellowship with Him.The consequence is a believer feeling that since the Lord is aloof and indifferent, they will cease seeking His face.
Questions to ask ourselves
- Is my heart still seeing Him accurately?
- Is my heart still responsive to Him?
- Am I still making melodies to him in my heart? Lifting songs of praise and adoration with thanksgiving or have I permitted silence to inhabit the corridors of my heart?
- Is my heart tender or has it grown callous due to my circumstances?
- Does my heart genuinely love Him or is it seeking Him in a disengaged state?
- Does my heart long for Him and seek to be satisfied by Him or are the pleasures of this world well able to satiate me?
- Is my heart submitting to Him and His Word or do I still claim self-governance?
- Do I seek for the meditations of my heart to be pleasing to Him?
- Am I meditating on his Word?
- What has my attention? Does the world have my focus more than His Word?
- Am I guarding my heart from the influence of the world?
- Is the Word still alive in my heart?
- Do I still find His Word more edifying than my intellectual pursuits or entertainment?
- Do the things of the Lord command my affection and attention with more urgency than the things of this realm?
Where the honest answers reveal deficiency, may we all not despair but turn. The Spirit who convicts is the same Spirit who restores.
What we give ourselves matters. We fail to realize that when we received salvation we were enlisted into a life of being transformed into the image of Christ. Thus, what we give our attention to will either contribute positively or negatively to that process. When we read the Word, the Holy Ghost transforms us. His light penetrates our hearts, for He sows the seed of the Word in our hearts. We can choke this seed by how we order our lives, thus stifling the potential of the Word that was planted. Furthermore, when we are taught about holiness and the preceding action we make is to watch a program that is contrary to what we just read, we display self-contradiction and either a lack of understanding or ignorance. We read about how the Lord says to get the filthy or foul language out of our mouths yet once we close our Bibles, we unwittingly watch a series that has characters incorporating foul language in their speech, surround ourselves with friends and listen to music that does likewise, and we wonder why we cannot abandon foul speech despite our efforts of daily communion with the Lord.
Moreover, we claim that we do not practice any witchcraft yet we watch entertainment that practices it. We claim sexual continence, yet we watch shows that display nude scenes or sexually explicit content. No one takes a bath and immediately goes to sully themselves by rolling in mud yet we do this each time we wash in the water of the Word and entertain the filth of this world.
A call to guard the heart
Guard the heart, therefore, with the diligence that its dignity demands; for it is the seat of life, the organ of communion, and the ground in which the Word of God either flourishes or is suppressed. What is planted there determines what is produced; and what is produced will ultimately declare, with clarity, what we have in truth given ourselves to.