G U A R D E D heart

"Guard your heart!" they said, as if it were an effortless, no-brainer. Until broken relationship after broken relationship and ridiculously long processes of healing later,  they said, "you must do a better job of guarding your heart."
In frustration I wanted to know...  
HOW IN THE WORLD DO I EFFECTIVELY DO THAT!?

The ironic thing was very few people could give me a straight answer. The responses primarily started off with, "well, I am not really sure, but..." or "I don't know, pray about it." Now, I will preface this next comment with the following: I greatly appreciate those responses! I would much rather someone tell me they do not know or are unsure of something, than make anything up just to answer a question.

H O W E V E R, what bothers me about these responses is: 

1. so many people are going around telling others to do this without know exactly what it means or how to do this

2. THIS IS WHAT GOD TELLS US TO DO ABOVE EVERYTHING ELSE and we don't know what it means or how to do it!

Therefore, I went on a mission to uncover this not-so-no-brainer.

This mission was to find out what exactly guarding my heart meant and how to effectively do so. Here are my first 5 revelations from this journey.

1. Guarding Your Heart is like Guarding Your Mind

For some reason guarding our minds is a more tangible concept for us to wrap our heads around (haha. the pun was unintended). When we guard our minds, we simultaneously guard our eyes and our ears, carefully selecting what we expose ourselves to and casting out thoughts/ideas that shouldn't be in there.

I imagine guarding our hearts is taking that same tangible and very literal concept and applying it to our emotions and spirit man. (one of the reasons I think it is difficult for many of us to grasp this concept, is because in the U.S. modern Christianity has neglected the spiritual - - this is primarily a spiritual task) In fact, there are very few things I can do to actually guard my heart.  It really involves me not doing, more so than doing, and just receiving God's Word and being obedient to what He says.

At the end of the day effectively guarding your heart is quite literally, impossible for you to do - PERIOD. It is something only God can do - so we have to let go, listen, and let Him!

Who better to stand at the gateway of your heart anyway?

(make s
ure you're not standing next to Him at the gateway, know your place! some of us tend to think oh give God this and I'll take this, BAD idea. Check out STOLENcrown)

2. Guard Your Heart, Not Only in Romantic Relationships

If God said to protect this tool above all else, I think that's probably the one thing Satan would want to attack harder than anything else - I mean, everything you do flows from it.

And WOW! He is doing a pretty good job of it, especially since many of us prance around thinking guarding our hearts only applies to romantic relationships.

We have to guard our hearts in every relationship - friendship, work relationship, parent relationship, etc. Any opportunity for others to hurt us or for us to sin period, is an area that needs to be guarded.

Additionally, those qualities and characteristics that you think are innately you or have become a part of who you are on this journey of life... are things (good or bad) in your heart. The sin is what we need to guard our hearts from.  It becomes very difficult, especially with the sin in our hearts that we have rationalized or excused, thinking the Lord created us that way - because we've been a certain way since "birth". Unfortunately, we have also been under attack since the moment our tiny little lives collided with this world at conception. Regardless of how long sin has been tempting, attacking, or distracting us while making it's home in our hearts, we have to call it what it is and let the Lord effectively remove and guard us from it.   

3. This is NOT a Game  

Your heart hides sin! And it hides it well! However, it is that sin in your HEART that will separate you from God. I had a taste of true darkness once, ONCE ... right after that I put on my "Jesus Freak" T-shirt and started studying Paul (you guys, Paul plays NO games!) This war for our hearts is so serious.

There are so many couseling and Dr. Phil shows in the world, I am certain we can grasp the concept of how important it is to get to the root of problems; if you get to the root, you can control everything else. So you say, oh I just curse, gossip, get drunk, have sex with random nobodies occasionally - don't judge me! remove the plank in your eye! ... (side eye) Yeah umm, I will but I don't want you ignorantly walking yourself straight into Hell while I am working on myself (because that process will never end) : Matthew 15:18-19 says ^"But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man.  
For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies"

Remember, anything that is not of God is of Satan. Don't forget that.
Even the smallest things (which stem from something much bigger in your heart)

God tells us to fight back by hiding His Word in our H E A R T S in Psalm 119:11. He tells us to HIDE it there. Not to place it there. Hiding implies somebody is coming to look for and take it.

You don't want to lose this fight. You've got to know the Word so that you can fight back.
This is NOT a game.

Literal Steps to Take On the Journey to Guarding Your Heart

1. You can't, so don't try. Seriously, submit EVERYTHING to the Lord.

2. Constantly pray that God reveal the sin in your heart! Trust me, He will! He doesn't want to be separated from us either! Just keep your eyes open for when He shows it to you.

3. When God reveals that sin in your heart, REPENT & RUN AWAY from that sin (like it is the plague!). If the Lord gave you specific steps to take to separate yourself from that sin, be obedient and do it. If you don't feel like you heard from the Lord on how to separate yourself, keep praying, use wisdom to do what you can, and ask your spiritual mentors.

4. Confess it & get a group of prayer warriors, warring on your behalf. (Ladies, there is seriously a war going on for our hearts - don't be ill-equipped. I CONFESS & submit EVERYTHING to my prayer sisters. I know my place. I am, at my best, a disgusting human being in need of grace.)

5. Don't take things personally. (don't take things to heart) Guarding my heart has been so much easier since I learned not to take things in life personally - both good and bad. My expectations for other humans is extremely low. We live in  a fallen world you guys, people need a ton of grace anyway (including myself). If I take everything personally it becomes difficult for me to extend the level of grace and love required to love others back to Christ anyway.



The Reason I am Guarding My Heart.