Guarding your heart and mind every day

Proverbs 4:23 (NLT)

Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.

Proverbs 27:19 (NLT)

As a face is reflected in water, so the heart reflects the real person.

When you do what God shaped you to do, you enjoy it and are good at it.   What keeps you from doing what God shaped you to do?”  So much of what keeps you from being and doing what God intended for you are sins that you allow to dominate your life.  Sin targets your mind and heart.  Biblically, the mind and heart and soul mean the same thing.  The Hebrew word for heart in these two verses is “leb” that refers to the “inner man” and can refer to your heart, mind, soul, conscience, inclination, resolution, determination, and understanding. 

So, no wonder that the enemy of our lives, Satan himself, tries to target your “leb” because if he can entrench himself in your leb, he has control of your life and can lock God completely out.  Here is what Charles Swindoll writes about your mind and heart being the target of the enemy (Living Above the Level of Mediocrity, Word Books, 1987, p 21): “Since the mind holds the secrets of soaring, the enemy of our souls has made the human mind the bulls-eye of his target.  His most insidious and strategic moves are made upon the mind.  By affecting the way we think, he is able to keep our lives on a mediocre level.”  Mediocrity in your life occurs when you are not doing what God shaped you to do.

That’s why the writer of Proverbs states that you must guard your heart—your mind—above all else because whoever/whatever controls your heart controls you.  Whatever controls you determines the course of your life.  Whoever/whatever is controlling your heart reflects who you are—your personality, attitudes and actions. 

In Matthew 15:18-20, Jesus said that whatever you say and do proceeds from the heart (“kardia” in the Greek)---also means mind, soul, the center of all physical and spiritual life).  He was speaking to the Pharisees---people in His day who thought of themselves as righteous and holy—and told them that out of their hearts come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications (sexual immorality), thefts, lies, and slanders. 

So, no wonder that you must guard your heart, because otherwise the heart will be the source of all the evil that Jesus speaks about.  To guard means to be diligent about what thoughts and images are allowed to enter your heart.  That’s why Paul writes that you should take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ (II Cor 10:5) because the battle for what controls your life occurs in your mind and heart. 

You must guard your heart and mind not only against the overt evil that can enter, but also the subtle evil that keeps you from being who God wants you to be.  Again, quoting Swindoll, he suggests we read Roger von Oech’s book A Whack on the Side of the Head because he lists ten statements that might be ingrained in our hearts that hold us back from being who God wishes you to be --- The right answer, that’s not logical, follow the rules, be practical, avoid ambiguity, to err is wrong, play is frivolous, that’s not my area, don’t be foolish, and I’m not creative.  These are examples of old tired habits that we allow to control our lives and keep us in a state of mediocrity. 

The key to guarding your heart and mind is to allow God’s holy Word to be ingrained in your thinking and doing.  That’s why you cannot slack off from daily intake of His Word and meditating on it (Joshua 1:8, Psalm 1:1) and doing what it says.  It’s hard to do this and that’s why so many people don’t and suffer the consequences of living lives of mediocrity or worse.  Resolve that you will not be this kind of person; that you will soar with your life because you allow the Lord to do with what He shaped you in the beginning to be.  It’s never too late, no matter how old you are, to change the direction of your life, but you will need help from the Lord and His Word to do so.