guard your heart

i am sitting here on a sunday afternoon without an agenda.  there are a good many things that demand my attention at home, work, and in my heart.  i find myself lost in the last one though.

this weekend i started to read a book by gary rosberg entitled "guard your heart".  early in the book it breaks down proverbs 4:23  the lexham english bible says "with all vigilance, keep your heart, for from it comes the source of life."

the breakdown was something like this...

vigilant - alertly watchful, especially to avoid danger
keep - preserve, maintain
heart - your inner true self.  the combination of your emotions, will, conscience, and desires

the other word that was here was in the book was wellspring, meaning source but in the lexham version that was already broken down for us.

so king solomon's charge here is for us to be watchful in order to avoid the coming danger so that we can preserve the condition of our inner true self so that we wont be cut off from the source of life

in this charge i find both sadness and encouragement.

i find sadness because the state of my family is because i did not do this (guard my heart).  sadness because even though i have pleaded with God for redemption, reconciliation, and restoration for my family i still, today even, allow my hurts to dictate conversation and interactions that poison and eat away at core of the very things i pray for.

oddly enough, the encouragement comes out of the sadness (beauty from ashes).  the brokenness that has become a part of me solidifies this truth in my mind because without it i would not desire to protect, understand, or listen to my heart.  i would not have thought i needed to.  the encouragement comes because i understand that i have a core that needs to be protected and i want to seal all the holes.  i dont mean protected from other people either, but from the enemy and is minions.  the encouragement comes because i am responding to the battle cry.  it is not something i am doing myself though, God has shown me where my defense is currently weakest.  they happen to be bitterness, lack of forgiveness, lack of patience, and lack of empathy.

i have found in the last year the more that i come to know myself and they way sin has broken me, the closer that i get to being what God knitted together in my mothers womb, the more that i live out from my beating heart, the easier it is to commune with and trust my Creator.

if it was just me saying it, it would sound a bit hokey, but i believe it is in our hearts, the core of who we are where the spiritual battles happen most often.  it is not just me though...solomon, the wisest man to ever live, thought this too, that is why he charges us to guard our heart.