To Guard Your Heart Properly Know What It Is

Guard your heart. That’s something the Bible warns us we should do.

Our heart has a huge impact on how our lives play out.

It is our heart that determines our thoughts and attitudes. Those thoughts and attitudes are what control the words we say. In turn the words we say set the course of our lives because they have so much power to shape what we do and accomplish in our short time here on this planet.

The heart is at the very center of it, where it all begins.

Look in the Bible

So let’s look at what the Bible has to say on the subject. First here’s the verse that tells us to guard your heart.

Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life. — Proverbs 4:23

As you can see, that verse in Proverbs says our hearts set the course for our lives.

The first question that question that jumps out at me when I read that verse is this:

What is my heart?

I mean before I can guard something I have to know what it is.

Your Heart in the Bible

The word heart is found over 700 times in the King James version of the Bible so obviously it’s important. It turns out the Biblical understanding of our heart is different than our modern understanding.

When the Bible talks about our heart it is not referring to the hunk of muscle in our chest that pumps our blood around.

Instead of being a physical thing, our heart is more of an intangible thing. it means the essence or core of who we are.

If you remember, I recently wrote about the difference between soul and spirit.

It turns out that our heart is found at the place where our spirit and soul intersect. It’s that place of overlap where our soul touches our spirit and our spirit touches our soul.

Heart is a Governor for Spiritual Results

Because our heart is that connection point between our spirit and our soul it acts like a governor in a car to limit our speed when it comes to moving forward in the spiritual things of God.

Our heart is the control valve that determines how much we let out of our spirit versus how much we keep our natural man in charge.

Jesus said it this way.

A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.— Luke 6:45

Guard Your Heart

Because our heart is that control valve between our spirit and our soul, what we feed it will affect the results we see.

When your heart is filled with doubt and unbelief it is going to limit the miraculous in your life. That doubt and unbelief closes off the valve preventing anything from your spirit to flow into the natural.

When you fill your heart with things that are actually contrary to the ways of God – think about the entertainment you watch, the people you associate with, the decisions you make, etc. – then according to Jesus your life will produce evil.

But when we feed our hearts with the things of God – when we renew our minds with scripture, expose ourselves to stories of faithfulness, hear testimonies of the miraculous and come to know intimately God’s goodness – then we will see those good things happening in our own lives too.

And that is exactly what it means to guard your heart.

Used with permission from Chris Cree.