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Guard Your Heart
Prov. 23:7a; 4:23-27
What is the most valuable thing you possess? Is it your house? Your car? Stocks?
-Listen to Mark 8:36-37; Proverbs 23:26a
Mar 8:36 For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
Mar 8:37 Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?
Pro 23:26 My son, give me thine heart
When God saves us, He saves us wholely, totally, completely. In REGENERATION, we are born
again and God saves our spirits instantaneously the moment we trust Christ as our personal
Savior. In SANTIFICATION God redeems our soul or, as the Bible often calls it, our heart – our
mind, emotions, and will; and He does this progressively as we read His Word and walk with
Him. GLORIFICATION occurs at the resurrection when He transforms our lowly body to be
conformed to His glorious body.
Your heart and my heart is what brought Jesus, God's Son, from His throne in glory to give His
life on the old Rugged Cross.
-In the language of the Bible, the heart or the mind refers to the seat of our decision making
process; the seat of our thought life; the seat of our will; the seat of emotion.
-It is the real you. The real you – the heart or mind – can be used for good or bad.
Gen 6:5 And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the
thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
Psa 119:11 Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.
Your heart is your most private world, the place where you feel and dream and make decisions
and meditate on eternal things. Your heart was made for God.
-One of the key battlefields in spiritual warfare is the human heart.
-When you lay your head on your pillow at night, and it is just you and your thoughts, that's
when your heart is revealed. So, what do you think about when you are all alone with your
thoughts? “As a man thinks in his heart” - what he thinks upon; good or evil - “is what he really
is in his heart.”
-“You are not what you think you are, but what you think, you are.”
Remember that Proverbs is written to young people. If you will keep your heart clean as a young
person; if you will avoid moral failure that will rob you of joy and your well-being while you are
young, it will make all the difference in the world what your adult years will be. But if you hang
around the wrong people and dabble in sexual sins and live with undisciplined behavior, your
adult life will not be as blessed of the Lord as it would have been.
-So reverence God, pay careful attention to good and godly counsel, cling to the wisdom of God
in your youth, and God will bless you.
I. The Plot for your Heart and Mind – 23:7a
Why is your thought life so important? Because it is your thought life that controls the rest of
your life.
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Tell me what you think about and I'll tell you what you are and the kind of life you live. It is your
thought life that controls you.
Sow a Thought; you reap a Deed. Sow a Deed; you reap a Habit. Sow a Habit; you reap a
Character. Sow a Character; you reap a Destiny. And it all begins with a Thought.
Satan has made your mind – your thought life – a primary target for his attack. There are four
things that Satan wants to do with your minds:
A. Satan wants to corrupt our minds – 2 Cor. 11:3
Satan will use all means possible to corrupt our minds. The word “corrupt” means to seduce or
draw away our minds from wholehearted devotion to Christ. He wants to divide our minds; to
lure us away from single hearted devotion to Christ.
Satan knows that God will not accept a divided heart. God loves the broken heart, but not a
divided heart. Satan is content with just a part of your heart, because he knows that God will
accept nothing less than your whole heart. Satan corrupts the heart by getting us to believe that
God will be satisfied with anything we'll give Him.
B. Satan wants to conquer our minds – 2 Cor. 10:4-5
We are told that Satan puts things INTO our minds (John 13:2) and takes things OUT OF our
minds (Luke 8:11-123). Satan can put doubts about God and wicked thoughts INTO our mind
and he can take the Word of God out of our mind.
C. Satan wants to control our minds – Romans 7:25
If the Spirit is not in control of our minds, the flesh will be. It takes spiritual discernment and
discipline for the Spirit to control our minds. We must allow the Lord to give us discipline and
discernment as to what we put into our minds.
-Infants lack discernment. A one or two year old baby has one drive in life: to put everything in
their mouth. A small child crawling on the kitchen floor finds a Cheerio under a chair, and into
its' mouth it goes. It finds a broken piece of potato chip on the floor, and into its mouth it goes. It
finds a broken purple crayon on the floor, and into its' mouth it goes. It finds a dead bug, and you
know where it goes.
-Satan wants to control our mind and he does so when we do not use discernment as to what goes
into our minds.
-Our minds or hearts are like a reservoir. What we put into our minds determines what comes out
in our lives. The old principle, “garbage in, garbage out”, is true.
4.Satan wants to condemn our minds – 2 Cor. 4:3-4
Satan blinds us to God's truth and we are condemned because we cannot see God's truth.
II. The Protection of our Heart and Minds
Jerry Schmidt has a book entitled, “Do You Hear What You Are Thinking?” You and I are
thinking about something all the time. Consciously or unconsciously – and our thoughts are
affecting our
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behavior, our emotions, and our life.
Look again at Proverbs 4:23-27
Solomon makes sure we take this command personally. Each one of us is responsible for keeping
our own heart. Notice the words “thy”, “thee” and “thine”.
The word “keep” means “to safeguard”, “to protect”, “to guard”, “to watch”.
The word “diligence” means “with constant and consistent watchful care and painstaking effort
and work.”
That is to be the diligent duty; the chief practical priority of each one of us. This is not an easy
obligation. It's not easy to keep our thoughts pure and holy. If sinful thoughts come into our
minds and hearts, the Bible says to quickly mortify them. Put them to death. Keep things that
will defile us out of our hearts and minds. Keep bad thoughts out of our mind and keep good
thoughts in. Keep watch as if you would watch a prisoner in a cell.
It is spiritual suicide not to guard your heart with all diligence. What does that mean? It means
that every inlet of sin must be strongly guarded: the heart, the mouth, the eyes, the feet.
Nothing is more difficult and nothing is more needful and necessary.
-If we know our weak points and “the sins that so easily beset us,” Satan knows them, too.
“Keep your heart”. The heart is the vital part of the body. A wound there could mean instant
death. The same is true spiritually!
So, how do we keep our heart?
1.Give you Heart to Christ – Proverbs 23:26
If you're not a believer in Christ, that means your heart is not worth keeping. An unbeliever's
heart is defiled, dirty, and dead. It is cold and hard and lifeless.
-You need a new Heart! Ezekial 36:26-27 God can give you a spiritual heart transplant.
2.Crucify or Mortify your evil thoughts.
Col. 3:5; Romans 8:13; 13:14
Col 3:5 Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection,
evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry:
Rom 8:13 For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye
shall live.
Rom 13:14 But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.
Make a conscious effort to put to death all sins in your flesh. Deal with them ruthlessly and
quickly. Don't allow them breathing room. Choke the life out of them.
-By the way, this is one of the marks of the true Christian. Gal. 5:24
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Gal 5:24 And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.
We won't do it perfectly, but we must make a conscious effort. It is a process and a slow death,
for those affections and lust will continue to plague us, but in the process you will make
progress. This is the pathway to sanctification.
3.Put Restraints on your Heart
Get rid of evil influences. Don't watch movies or read books that fill your mind with wickedness.
Have some self-control in what you expose yourself to.
How?
a. Guard your Ears – 4:20
Be careful what you fill your ears with. What do you listen to? Off-color humor? Profanity?
Music filled with iniquity?
b. Guard your Eyes – 4:21,25
Censor what you watch, especially those things that incline us toward sexual immorality or sin of
any kind; like violence.
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Psalm 119:37 (“Vanity” means “worthless things”)
Psa 119:37 Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity; and quicken thou me in thy way.
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Job 31:1
Job 31:1 I made a covenant with mine eyes; why then should I think upon a maid?
c. Guard your Conscience – 4:21-22
In effect, he is urging us to keep a healthy and active conscience. Stay tender toward sin.
d. Guard your Tongue – 4:24
A world of evil pours from a froward mouth and perverse lips.
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Psalms 141:3
Psa 141:3 Set a watch, O LORD, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips.
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Proverbs 17:20
Pro 17:20 He that hath a froward heart findeth no good: and he that hath a perverse tongue falleth into
mischief.
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James 3:2
Jas 3:2 For in many things we offend all. If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, and
able also to
bridle the whole body.
Show me a person who curses and I'll show you a person with a vile, dirty, black heart.
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e. Guard your Feet – 4:26-27
Avoid the places where you know you will be tempted.
Guarding your heart involves effort, persistence, and struggle.
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Jer. 17:9 Our hearts are breeding grounds for all kinds of evil.
Jer 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
III. The Purity of our Hearts and Minds – Phil. 2:5
Read the Gospels and make a list of the kind of thoughts that Christ had as He moved through
His earthly life. Saturate your mind with what He thought about:
Compassion...Love...Mercy...Submission...Forgiveness...Truth...Graciousness.
Phil. 4:8 Six standards of thought: Whatsoever things are:
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True: real, genuine, sincere
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Honest: honorable; that which claims respect
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Just: right or righteous by divine standards
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Pure: that which is morally clean and undefiled
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Lovely: pleasing, kind, graciousness
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Good Report: highly regarded or well thought of.
“As a man thinketh in his Heart, so is he.”