Watch Over Your Heart Pt. 1 (It’s Definition and Command)
“The heart of man is his worst part before it is regenerated and the best afterward; … the greatest difficulty in conversion is to win the heart to God; and the greatest difficulty after conversion, is to keep the heart with God.” - John Flavel
The human heart is indeed something to be marveled at. Even though it’s just a little larger than your fist and weighing less than a pound. The human heart boasts of great responsibility. As a pump in your body, it sends oxygenated blood and necessary nutrients throughout your body that you need to live. The importance of our hearts leads many people to diet and exercise to keep their hearts in the best shape possible. And in light of what the heart is responsible for, this is a worthwhile and wise pursuit.
But do you know what is more important than keeping a healthy physical heart? It’s the keeping of a healthy spiritual heart. Now, what do I mean by that? To understand what I mean by this, we must understand what the Bible is referring to when it uses the language of the heart in a spiritual sense.
Definition: What does the Bible mean when it refers to our hearts?
When reading the Bible, whether the OT or NT, it doesn’t take long to notice that the vast majority of the Bible’s uses of the word heart are not referring to the physical heart. You get the sense that it refers to something more profound and more significant. For example, we see in the early pages of Scripture that the condition of man’s heart was the reason why God flooded the earth (Genesis 6:5). We learn from the Psalmist that our hearts are the center of man’s unbelief or belief (Psalm 14:1; Romans 10:10). And from the very lips of Jesus, we read that our hearts are what govern our actions (Luke 6:45). What you find in the Scripture is that the vast majority of the references to man’s heart are references to the core essence of a person. Put another way; the heart is the seat of your thoughts, disposition, actions, understanding, and belief. I like how Warren Wiersbe described the heart as “the master-control of the life.”
Thus, just like our physical hearts determine the condition of our physical bodies. Also, do our hearts, spiritually speaking, determine the condition (e.g., moral direction and veracity) of our spiritual lives. And if we deliberately spend time to protect and nurture our physical hearts. How much more should we give attention to protecting and nurturing our spiritual hearts?
Solomon held this conviction! Through biblical revelation and life experience, He understood that the condition of our spiritual hearts is of vital importance. And because of its significance, he writes to his sons (Proverbs 4:1) to watch over their hearts with everything they got (Proverbs 4:23).
Specifically, he writes, “Watch over your heart with all diligence, For from it flow the springs of life” (Proverbs 4:23). In part one and part two of this article series, I would like to consider Solomon’s words in Proverbs 4:23 to his sons and even more so God’s words to all His children (John 1:12) regarding the discipline of keeping watch over our hearts. We’ll do this by looking at 1) The Command, 2) The Manner, and 3) The Reason in the following two articles.
The Command to Watch Over Your Heart
Solomon begins with an explicit declaration. Watch over your heart. The ESV says “Keep your heart” while the NIV says “Guard your heart.” One Hebrew dictionary defined the action of “watching over” as to “keep, maintain, protect, i.e., cause to be safe from danger, implying a relationship with the protector.”[1] The picture that we get is of a person protecting a most precious possession like an expensive piece of jewelry or a family heirloom. In Hebrew, “watch over” is imperative. Meaning this is a command. Solomon commands his sons to watch over their hearts, and God commands His children to watch over theirs.
Right from the beginning, Solomon showed the importance of this duty by communicating it via command. So important is this business that merely suggesting it or recommending it will not suffice. Solomon As he writes to his sons, Solomon lets him know that it is imperative that they keep watch over his heart. And while you and I are not Solomon’s sons, the Holy Spirit intends these words to be for you and me today as well. Undergirding this command is the supreme love of not only a human father (i.e., Solomon) but a heavenly Father (i.e., God the Father) for their children. A love that desires nothing but the best for their children. God desires that you and I live a life for Him that not only leads to His glory being made manifest in the world but also an indestructible joy in our lives. And this is only possible through the keeping of our hearts.
To keep watch over your heart is to actively keep your heart in a right and healthy frame before God. It is to have a sensitive heart before God and not hardened towards Him. It’s to keep your heart set on eternal rather than temporal matters. It is to protect your heart from becoming intoxicated by the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life (1 John 2:16). To guard your heart is to set a guard around it so that nothing that would seek its destruction can get to it. Just like the protection and nurturing of our physical hearts is important the protection and nurturing of our spiritual hearts is far more important.
And the importance of keeping watch over your heart is further emphasized by how we are to watch over it and the reason we are to watch over it. And we will consider both of these in part two of this article.
[1] Swanson, J. (1997). In Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains : Hebrew (Old Testament) (electronic ed.). Logos Research Systems, Inc.