Tag: Guard your heart

Devotionals

What’s in your heart?     

Loring Schultz

“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” Proverbs 4:23 NIV

Photo by The Maker Jess on Unsplash

What is it that’s in your heart, I mean constantly? What do you have endless thoughts about. It could be a good thing or a bad thing. Solomon tells us what’s in our heart controls everything we do. What we think about in our mind sinks into our heart and flows out by how we live our lives. Solmon tells us above everything else we do to guard our hearts. It will determine the direction our lives take.

This is like what the apostle Paul wrote to the church a Galatia. “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.” (Gal.6:7-8 niv) If our minds are constantly on the things of God our hearts will desire to please Him in all we do. We will be sowing unto righteousness, realizing our need for salvation and accepting Christ as our savior and we will reap eternal life.

It is a sure thing we will reap what we sow. With the spring planting season upon us, if you plant tomatoes in your garden you’ll get tomatoes, not corn and vice versa. Whether we sow seeds in our mind to please ourselves or to please God they will make their way down to heart and grow as we continually nurture them by our hearts desire through our actions. At the end of the season, the fruit will be evident. Everything we do will be the result of what is in our heart. So, what is it that’s in your heart. It’s not too late to dig up those seeds of destruction and plant seeds of righteousness, the things of God. I urge you, ‘Above all else, guard your heart.’

Devotionals

Guard your smartphone

Loring Schultz

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

“Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.” 1 Peter 5:8 NLT

            Dr. Erwin Lutzer in his book ‘The Church in Babylon’ wrote the following, “Maintaining mental and spiritual purity while surrounded by the temptations of technology thrusts us into a new level of satanic warfare…….Satan has marked technology as his territory. He says, ‘This is mine; here I rule.’” Living in the 21st century without the use of technology is, for all practical purposes, impossible. So what’s a Christian to do?

            Centuries ago King Solomon gave us the answer in one of his many proverbs. “Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.” (Pr. 4:23) But how is one to guard their heart when even the prophet Jeremiah said, “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?” (Jer. 17:9) On our own we cannot accomplish this, but through Jesus Christ and His Spirit within us, all things are possible. All things have become new for the Christian, but we still have the sin nature. Our sin nature will continually try to draw us away from mental and spiritual purity if we let our guard down.

            Keeping our guard up involves being aware of everything that is able to distract us by keeping us away from the things of God. Today’s technology in all its forms is most likely the biggest culprit with our smartphones at the top of the list. For most of us, myself included, our smartphones have become our hearts (determining the course of our life). How well do we guard our smartphones? Are we using them as the necessity of life in our modern times or are we allowing them to become a distraction to all that is important? Are we using them for God’s glory or our own pleasure? Are we aware of the tendencies of Satan prowling around the internet and social media looking to devour us?

            May we continue to look to God thanking Him for the usefulness in the gains of technology to better our lives and promote the gospel, and may we continue to ask Him to help us guard our hearts by guarding our smartphones.