KEEPING YOUR HEART
Protecting Your Most Vital Interests
"Blessed are the pure in
heart: for they shall see God."
- Matthew 5:8
The heart is the production center. It is where God's Word takes root and grows up in us. Just like in any garden, it is the soil that requires constant care to help assure that the proper nutrients needed to grow a healthy plant are present. Jesus said,
"Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God" (Matt. 4:4). The food that we need to nourish our walk with God is the Word. It takes the Word entering into our heart for it to be able to produce what it was intended to produce.
In the parable Jesus gave of the "Sower and the Seed," he gave us four different kinds of soil: the wayside, the stony, the thorny, and the good ground. Out of each of these, only one was able to reach a harvest. Notice with the wayside soil the Word actually was sown in the heart. But look what happened. Satan came immediately to take away what was sown, so that it was unable to produce. It's not enough just to get the Word on the inside, in our heart. We have to follow through with a watchful eye to assure that the soil and the Word are maintained so that the production center is carefully carried out.
Satan's number one interest is to get the Word out of your heart. One of the major ways he does that is to affect the soil. If he can affect the soil, by sowing his own lies and deceit, or by bringing various things in that will choke out the Word, then he knows he can deplete the harvest of its necessary nutrients and cause it to be minimal or even lost.
The heart is where man's conscience is located. To keep one's conscience is really to keep one's heart.
Protecting the heart is really the believer's most vital interest. Solomon said, "My son attend to my words; incline thine ear to my sayings. Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart. For they are life unto those that find them and health to all their flesh" (Pro. 4:20-22). How necessary it is that we pay close attention to the Word; that we stretch ourselves and spread ourselves out so that the Word of God can have free course to do in us what it needs to do. However, if you read the very next verse to this passage, Solomon went on to say: "Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life" (Pro. 4:23). Literally, what he is saying to us is this: It's important to soak in the Word. But even that is not enough! You have to watch over the production center (the heart) so that the Word, with all of its power and virtue, has the proper environment to flourish until the harvest is reached.
If you read through the letters of Paul to Timothy, you will find him mentioning over and over again the need to protect your conscience. In fact, he mentions how the conscience can be corrupted. He uses words such as an evil conscience, a defiled conscience, even a seared conscience. His admonition throughout his writings is to keep a pure conscience, a good conscience; a tender conscience; a conscience that does not become hardened through deceit or corrupted with offence.
The heart is where man's conscience is located. To keep one's conscience is really to keep one's heart. God uses the conscience to guide us. That is where we hear the voice of God and his Holy Spirit. Very often things cross our path and try to influence our conscience to accept things that may not be wrong but have a slight edge of compromised attached to it. Remember, it's not always the blunt and obvious that do us the most harm. Oftentimes, it is the small and unapparent things that rob us of our harvest. Once again, we have the words of Solomon who warned us with: "Take us the foxes, the little foxes that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes" (S. of S. 2:15).
It would do us all well to keep our heart and make sure of what it is we are allowing in. You are the door-keeper. You decide what goes in and what stays out! Set your watch today and every day to be a keeper of what God has given to you...a new heart, especially one whose vital interest is to be like his!
PRAYER
Father, I ask you today to help me guard my heart. I will not let offense in. I will not let the little foxes come in and spoil my harvest. I keep a watch over my heart so that my conscience remains tender in your hands. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.
CONFESSION
Lord you gave me a new heart, and it is up to me to protect it and keep it in all my ways. So today, I declare I will walk with a pure heart, a heart that is tender to follow after the Word and is watchful at every turn to what the enemy would seek to do to stop your Word from producing in my life.
DEFINING MOMENTS...
If you are facing situations in life where you are having to stand against the onslaughts of the enemy, whether it is with people, thoughts, or circumstances. Do not give the devil an inch! You make sure you protect your most vital interest...which is your heart. Don't let bitterness, anger, strife, negativism have any part of your way of thinking.
Paul told the church of Philippi that whatever things are true, honest, just, pure, lovely and of a good report, if they have virtue, and if they are full of praise, then think on these things (Phil 4:8). David said, "Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer" (Psa. 19:14). Our strength and our redemption rest upon what we do with our heart. And what we do with our heart will ultimately result in what we do with our mouth! (Matt 12:34).
In His Grace,
Pastor David
Faith Harvest Church
