‘Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. ‘
Proverbs 4:23
If you have been a Christian for a while, you have probably read this verse or heard a few sermons about it. I remember learning that everything we do comes from our hearts, so that is why it was so important to protect our hearts from the influences of sin. However, for years I missed an imperative element of this scripture… the “who.”
Who is supposed to guard my heart?
Who would be charged with this important task?
My heart was delicate and fragile and special. My heart was shaped by my deepest passions and most tender feelings. I am not sure if my confusion on this topic was formed by my fairytale romanticism, social norms, or just my own victim mindset, but I somehow believed that guarding my heart was the job of those who loved me. Like a princess in a castle, my heart was to be protected by my parents and then by my friends and then even by my future life partner. The job of loving me meant you were to take seriously my sensitive heart and protect it at all costs. To guard it for me.
I know some of you may say I sound emotionally spoiled, but I am a tough girl! I have been through some hard things. The reality is that I didn’t realize I was expecting others to guard my heart until real hurt and disappointment entered my life again and again. I felt tossed around emotionally. It felt like the people I had entrusted with my heart were not taking care of it like they should have and they didn’t fully understand my needs. Every time I was disappointed, I wanted to play the “blame game” and be angered by the behavior of others. While hurt is a normal part of life, the level of blame and the layers of expectation that I put on the people around me was heavier than it should have been… because I had missed who the Lord said was to guard my heart.
It was supposed to be me. He was telling me to guard my heart.
Initially, this was frustrating because I felt like, #1 that wasn’t my job. I was the princess in the story and the protectors in my life were supposed to do that. #2 I was tired; when I was in the lowest and most desperate places of my life, emotionally, the last thing I wanted was to be told I had to do one more thing. I wasn’t strong enough.
Nevertheless, learning to take ownership of my heart’s health was imperative to nurturing healthy relationships with people and with God. Taking ownership puts the power of my heart’s health in my hands and thus being something that I could work on. When it was always everyone else’s job, then I could find excuses to wallow and fall into pits of depression and sorrow. This is not to take away from the very real need to mourn and lament in certain seasons, I am really talking about the “pity parties” that kept me trapped in cyclical sin and shame. Taking ownership of guarding my heart required a loving community, growing up in the Spirit by building myself up in prayer and the Word, and shifting my mindset. I had to accept the responsibility in order to tackle it.
While this does require real practical changes like regulating what we listen to, who we hang around with, and rejecting sin; it is not all up to us. The Lord promises to help us to fight and help us guard our hearts. He reminds us that this is not just a practical issue or a mental health issue… it is a spiritual issue. And with spiritual issues, we have the added support of spiritual warfare.
“For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. ‘
-2 Corinthians 10:3-6
Though you are responsible to guard your heart, you are not alone and you are not limited to your own strength and your own power. We have the Lord to help us, to empower us to fight in the Spirit. With the power of the Holy Spirit, we can learn to guard our hearts effectively and become the women of God we are called to be: spiritual gangstas who are resolved in their faith and not emotionally tossed around everytime life gets challenging. I pray that the Lord gives you the courage to take this charge and tackle the task of guarding your heart. I pray that in Christ, you find the strength to be obedient and trust the Lord in this area. I pray that the fruitfulness of your obedience would be evident through the mending of relationships and supernatural healing of your heart. Amen.
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