Above all else, guard your heart,
for everything you do flows from it. Proverbs 4:23
I am having to think about this idea this week. It is a scathing idea I think.
By that I mean, I feel so dirty, wicked and evil as I start to look into my heart. Because to guard it I believe I have to know what is either in it, or trying to get into it. And this week I am seeing some things I don’t really like
- A love of preeminence
- A longing to be known, without attempting to know
- A love for leisure
- A drive for the easy path
- A longing for success that was easy and all mine
Yeah, pretty wicked. But this proverb is instructing us to guard it. I am supposed to make sure stuff like that doesn’t get into my heart. I am supposed to make sure that it stays full of Christ, and it doesn’t fill up with this kind of yuck.
But more often than not, God brings situations into my life to expose this kind of yuck. And so now I have to do something else besides guard my heart. Now I have to clean it. And that is not very nice at all.
As I have been attempting to study for the sermon this coming Sunday, I am struck by the fact that time and time again as God exposes my heart, the sermon passage is usually the passage I have to run to in order to correct me, change me, challenge me, heal me, and rescue me. So for now I will just leave this passage here for you. And maybe next week I will write a little more about it.
Ephesians 4:22-24 – 22 to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Brady Owens 