More on Guarding Your Heart

The effort of guarding your heart is a conscience decision.  It is not natural, neither is it fun.  It's a mature thing to do in your Christian walk.  Consciously protecting your heart will effect every other area of your life.

Chapter 4 of Proverbs alone tells us about learning to control our body.

• Verse 24 warns us to guard our mouth and lips
• Verse 25 tells us to fix our eyes on what is in front of us (guarding our eyes)
• and Verses 26-27 warns us about guarding our feet and our paths
• But again, above all else we are to guard our hearts

Matthew 12:34 says, "For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks."  In other words, what comes out of your mouth is a direct reflection of what is in your heart.  Therefore guarding your heart will help guard your mouth and lips.  This is why we are to guard our heart above everything else.  It is the root of everything that flows from us.


Verse 35 goes on to further explain, "The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him."  Again, out of of heart everything else flows, our speech, our thoughts, and our actions.

In Matthew 15 Jesus explained that breaking a religious rule does not make us sinful, but the motives in our heart behind it does.  Verses 19-20 say, "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, and slander.  These are what make a man 'unclean'..."


     This thought is reitterated in Mark chapter 7, which explains that what comes out of a man is what makes him "unclean," or sinful, not what goes into him.  Therefore meditating on lust and pornography isn't the sin, it is the motives of your heart behind that action that makes you unclean, and because your heart is warped when looking upon such things, your actions will therefore reflect that.  And so, these actions, attitudes, and behaviors are what "come out of a man" and so they "make him unclean."