Keep Your Heart

Introduction:

Some of you have had the wonderful experience of having to start going to the doctor on a more frequent schedule in order to keep your health up as you have gotten older or if you have had some kind of health issue that now requires more frequent checks.

All of us will at some point get to that place, but one of the things that can increase the frequency of your visits is if you have heart disease.

You know, there are some ailments that can be more of a nuisance than life threatening and you might even ignore the need to get checked out.

Maybe you have a toe that is bothering you or something else. But, if you have heart disease, then you might have blood pressure medicine or cholesterol medicine or blood thinners or the list goes on and on. You may even have medicine that helps offset the problems caused by other medicines!

Well, the heart is a serious organ and whenever it is not functioning well, we give it extra attention. However, the spiritual heart is just as critical for us to look after. We are told by Solomon, the wisest person to ever live, second only to Jesus, to guard our heart.

Proverbs 4:23 ESV

23 Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.

Pray

1. Heart Keeping

The first thing we are told by Solomon who is instructing his son in this section of the proverb is to keep his heart.

What does it mean to keep your heart?

Heart keeping is not passive work

We must be active in keeping our heart. We will see in a few moments that the passive stuff that we allow into our hearts is often the very thing that contaminates it.

When you are keeping your heart you must be diligent.

Illustration

I have recently gotten interested in honey bees and beekeeping, so in order to decide if this is something that I want to dabble in or if I even have time for it, I have been doing a little research on it.

Now, my mind works different than yours probably. It is a fault in many ways, but I will get a little bit obsessive over a topic until I get the answer I’m looking for. This means I have researched a ton on honey bees and did you know that they all have different roles within the hive?

I learned that there are forager bees and nurse bees and of course we all are familiar with the queen bee. But there are also these bees called “guard bees” who have the sole responsibility of sniffing out the bees that come back from foraging and making sure that they actually belong to the hive.

It turns out that all the bees in a hive have the same scent and this identifies them as the ones that belong. If there are intruders, these guard bees will bounce the intruder off.

I even learned that bees can surround intruders and start vibrating their bodies so fast that they generate enough heat to cook the attacker.

God is an amazing God isn’t He!

Well, just like those guard bees are standing watch over the hive diligently defending it, you and I need to set a guard over our heart.

You see the reason we need to guard the heart is because there is evil in this world and there is evil in our hearts.

Ecclesiastes 9:3 says,

Ecclesiastes 9:3 ESV

3 This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that the same event happens to all. Also, the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead.

We are born into the world with an evil heart and we also have to navigate a world full of people who also have evil hearts.

Our hearts are also good at deceiving us.

Jeremiah 17:9-10 says,

Jeremiah 17:9–10 ESV

9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? 10 “I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.”

So, all of that tells us that we have our work cut out for us in heart keeping.

How can we keep our heart? What are some practical ways?

Heart Keeping Requires Vigilance

Proverbs 4:23 ESV

23 Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.

Notice that the proverb says to keep our heart with all vigilance.

Well, the Proverb begins with teaching us to pay close attention to instruction.

Proverbs 4:1–2 ESV

1 Hear, O sons, a father’s instruction, and be attentive, that you may gain insight, 2 for I give you good precepts; do not forsake my teaching.

Proverbs 4:4–6 ESV

4 he taught me and said to me, “Let your heart hold fast my words; keep my commandments, and live. 5 Get wisdom; get insight; do not forget, and do not turn away from the words of my mouth. 6 Do not forsake her, and she will keep you; love her, and she will guard you.

If we want to keep our heart, it will involve listening to our Heavenly Father’s instruction through His Word and keeping it. We have to obey His word and meditate on it.

Notice again that this is active work and not just passive work.

The work the Holy Spirit will do in our hearts could be considered passive, but that does not mean that we are not active in listening and meditating.

We should consider that our vigilance in heart keeping is being watchful of what is inside and watching outside.

1 Peter 5:8 ESV

8 Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

James tells us that we will have the idea of a sin based off our own evil desires, again that come from the heart, and then that desire will grow into a full grown action of sin and produce death. Satan is surely active in the luring of our hearts with these desires.

He knows your weaknesses and has studied you and mankind in general for centuries.

2. Heart Influencing

Ironically it is what is passively going into the heart that defiles us and ends up producing action in the form of sin.

That is why Jesus warned that what goes into a person goes into the heart and what comes out of the person comes from the heart.

Matthew 12:34–35 ESV

34 You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. 35 The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil.

He also said,

Matthew 15:18–20 ESV

18 But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. 19 For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. 20 These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone.”

So in order to guard our heart, we have to watch what we put in.

“Junk in; junk out,” is the old expression and it is so easy to let junk come out.

Our Proverb teaches us that the springs of life flow from the heart.

The springs of life here is referring to all the important matters of life.

All of these issues come out of the heart.

Conclusion

Heart Keeping and Heart Influencing are all important, but what is most important is for us to let the Lord have our heart.

If you have a spouse or have had a spouse, you know that it begins with dating. You are very casual at first, but when you discover that you have a lot in common and you enjoy being with them, you take the relationship to another level.

At some point, you will determine that you love them and you will give your heart to them. That is why a breakup can hurt so badly.

We might even get to the point that we guard our heart and say that we will never give our heart away again.

Well, that can be unfortunate because we miss out on so much when we refuse to give our hearts to another.

In the same way, when we fail to give our heart to the Lord, we fail to experience the greatest joy we could ever have. We are left with a crooked and corrupt heart.

God wants our heart and He wants us to keep it just for Himself.