Above all else, guard your heart, for it affects everything you do.

Prov. 4:23 Above all else, guard your heart, for it affects everything you do.

How well are you guarding your heart? What are you doing to protect if? There are several things we all should be doing. We should first of all determine in our hearts that we are not going to let sin in. If the will is not there, nothing else we do is going to matter much. We must make a commitment to the Lord that we are going to strive to protect our hearts. We must watch what we feast on. What goes in through our eyes affects what our hearts are made of. We must be careful what we listen to. What we hear often lodges in our brains and filters down into our hearts. If we don’t make a covenant with the Lord regarding what we see and hear, our hearts will be poisoned with sin.

We guard our hearts by spending much needed time with the Lord in the Word, prayer, worship, and fellowship. We cannot rob ourselves of the time we need with the Lord and expect to have a heart that is right with Him. The more we are with the Lord, the more of Him we assimilate into our lives.

We guard our hearts by spending quality time with other believers. We learn from each other how to live in Christ in a world that hates Christ. We learn that there is joy and peace in Christ. We learn that it does matter to others how we live.  We learn that there are others just like us who struggle with living by faith and are doing it.  We learn that together we can accomplish great things for the Lord that we can’t do on our own.

Guarding our hearts is not easy and is never ending. We need to always be on the alert for danger. We must never compromise the integrity of our hearts. What is in our hearts affects everything we do and say.  And, what we say and do is our witness in the world.  In all you do, do it as unto the Lord and you will be blessed.