Guard Your Heart

More is known about the human heart today than during any other time period in history. There may be more that has been discovered about the heart in the last 50 years than was known in all of the other centuries combined!

Doctors and researchers know how the heart functions, what clogs the heart up, what medicines can be used to help a heart that is beating irregularly, how to hook up a pacemaker that keeps the heart beating at the correct rate, how to install an internal defibrillator to restart the heart instantly when something goes wrong, how to do by-pass surgery and heart transplants. Is there anything that medical science can’t do for the human heart? Yes!

All of the procedures mentioned above have complications and side effects. Most of the procedures require constant monitoring, tweaking and follow-up. They are not permanent solutions. Transplant recipients are relegated to a life on immunosuppressive drugs to keep their body from rejecting the transplant.

Wouldn’t it be nice if a person’s spiritual, emotional and psychological heart could be fixed in the same way? Life would be so different if we could take a pill, have a bypass or have a transplant. If solving ‘heart problems’ happened that simply, we would never have to ‘guard our hearts.’

Solomon wrote: Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life. (Proverbs 4:23 NLT)
The Message Bible says it this way: Keep vigilant watch over your heart; that's where life starts.

How many times have we heard that we need to watch what we eat, watch our salt intake, exercise, etc? All of these have a direct impact on the heart. Medical Science would say: Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life!

Guard your heart above all else! Guard what your heart thinks about, the assumptions it makes, what is allowed access, what your heart feels, judgments that are made, worries, perceptions, etc. The list could literally go on and on. Guard your heart above all else – your life depends on it!