"Watch Over Your Heart"

Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. (Proverbs 4:23)

"Guard your heart." That's advice that I've heard ever since I became a Christian and frankly, I never really knew what it meant.

Since I come from a background where I lived by my feelings for years - with horrible results - I really related to  Jeremiah 17:9: "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" The first time I read that verse, I was stunned. I'd been told all my life to follow my heart. I had never considered that it could lead me astray.

So, I carried my understanding of Jeremiah 17:9 into my interpretation of Proverbs 4:23. I had to guard my heart, I thought, because otherwise it would deceive me. I had to protect me from my heart.

This interpretation was made easier to accept by a heavy dose of guilt. A friend who has lived abroad told me once that the U.S. is a guilt/fear culture. Basically that means guilt and fear influence more of our worldview than we realize. I also happened to grow up in small, fundamentalist churches that communicated an unhealthy degree of guilt and shame. For whatever reason, I was hardwired to translate "guarding my heart" as "waiting for my heart to try to attack me."

So last night as I was working through a couple of verses in Proverbs (part of my bedtime routine this year), I came across Proverbs 4:23. I saw right away that the speaker - communicating as a parent to a child - exhorts the listener to pay close attention to his words which will result in life and health. Then the speaker gives the first specific advice of the section: "Above all else, guard your heart". More than anything else - the top of the list - for life and health, guard our hearts. Why? "For it is the wellspring of life." I decided to dig deeper.

What I found has been nothing short of profound for me. I've been eager all day to share this new understanding. Let me unfold it with a couple of definitions:

"Guard" (or "keep" in some translations) is a word meaning guard, protect, maintain, watch, inspect. It's a word used in the context of guarding or maintaining a vineyard or a fortification as part of the city wall.

"Heart" is the "totality of man's immaterial nature" (Zodhiates), or the "middle of something". Think of the phrase, "the heart of the matter", for understanding.

"Diligence" is really another form of "keep" - it really means "above all keeping". 

So here is where I began to see the pieces fall into place. I summarized these definitions in the following paraphrase of the verse:

"Vigilantly watch over your inner being - inspecting it, protecting it, maintaining it preventively - because it is the source of life itself. (my paraphrase)" 

How do I "vigilantly watch"? Not in the sense of a prison guard, watching so the prisoner doesn't escape. Instead, I "vigilantly watch" as a vineyard keeper or watchman would - watching for cracks in the wall, blight on the plant; protecting by warding off attackers and providing nourishment; maintaining by daily attention to detail. Here's the key to my new look at this verse: You don't look for your wall or vineyard to do something wrong ... you take care of them.

Guarding my heart is a lot more about protecting it from attack than protecting me from my heart. As Jeremiah 17:9 notes, the heart is deceitful -- the old heart. Ezekiel 36:26 tells us that God gives us a new heart in the New Covenant: "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh." (Ezekiel 36:26, NIV). My new heart is a wellspring of LIFE. In the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament, used by Jesus and the early church and the source of over half of our New Testament quotes of the Old Testament), the word "life" in Proverbs 4:23 is translated "zoe" - the life of the spirit or soul. It's the same word used for our new life in Christ. When God gave me a new heart, He didn't give me a deceitful one. He gave me one filled with life. With Him.

Can my flesh still deceive me? Absolutely. Do I need to make sure that I'm not being deceived and guard myself from walking in the flesh. Of course. Walking in the Spirit will always be a choice I have to make, a choice empowered by the Holy Spirit and the freedom He gives. However, this new insight has given me a new appreciation for God's transformative work in my life. My heart has been under attack lately, and I had wrongly thought that my heart was attacking me. Yet God showed me this new angle, this new prism for Proverbs 4:23 and I realized that I have a new heart, which I am to guard and protect. It won't attack me (though the old one might) - but it can be attacked.

1 John 3:19-20 says that God is greater than our heart. Whenever our heart condemns us, we can set it to rest in His presence by knowing we are of the truth as we see evidence of love in our actions and in our truth. So when the accuser comes in like a flood with thoughts that attack my life-filled heart, I have to protect it. I have to raise up the only banner that works - the cross of Christ - and quiet my heart in His presence with the truth of who He's made me to be, evidenced by the life He lives through me, flowing out of that new heart.

I've learned to see guarding my heart from multiple angles now. Sure, I don't want to be deceived. But I also don't want to sit in fear of my heart when God has so thoroughly redeemed and transformed it. I'm learning to see guarding my heart as watching over something valuable. We guard what we treasure. We protect it. We don't wait for it to attack us. We just make sure nothing attacks it.

Maybe you haven't had the struggle with interpreting this verse that I have. And I'm sure that I'll be learning more about this for the rest of my life. But I'm rejoicing tonight in a freedom, a lifting of a condemnation. I'm singing one of my favorite Keith Green songs - "River of Life". Share it with me as part of this worship medley below. And enjoy the life flowing from your new heart.