Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life – Proverbs 4:23.
The heart is the seat of intellect, emotions, will, and moral consciousness. The heart is presented as the seat of conscious life and the fountainhead of life.
The heart plays a very important role in our lives. The heart beats about 100,000 times within twenty-four hours. This continuously pumps about eight pints of blood around our body through a network of blood vessels called the circulatory system.
The heart is also where the issues of life will flow from (For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornication, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness – Mark 7:21). Evil thoughts include evil surmisings, imagination, devising, wanton lustful, lasciviousness thoughts; any mind activity not brought to the obedience of Christ.
Jealousy, envy, false witnessing, covetousness, pride, worry, self-exaltation, religious zeal without knowledge, all these and more start in the heart that will bring about the issues of life. Most issues we encounter are not what Satan did to us but what we have caused ourselves.
Many relationships have been destroyed because we had to get the people straight or we had to give them a piece of our mind rather than stay silent or walk away from the person. Sometimes we allow the spirit of anger to take full control of our emotions, and we take our anger off on people who haven’t said anything but hello.
We must guard our hearts to ensure we don’t allow anything in there that would be offensive to God and harm others. Sometimes, it takes a few minutes to examine ourselves to see whether or not we are thinking or feeling something different than what the Bible has instructed us to think or feel.
We may have crossed our ts and dotted our i’s, but do we worry? This flows from the heart and is carried to the mind; it brings about anxiety, misery, distress, fear, and sleepless nights. To stop worrying, ask yourself if you can do anything about it; if so, resolve the problem. If not, don’t worry; go to the Father with the problem and ask Him to give you wisdom to resolve the problem.
Thoughts will come, but it does not mean we must carry out the thought. Control your mind; when you’re thinking about something that you know is wrong, shut it down! Think about something that will not harm you and others.
When not aligned with the Word of God, our thoughts will bring others into the scenario, causing conflicts and hurt. Take time to listen to your thoughts; if they are harmful, you need to keep them in check and under submission to you and not your feelings.
We have control of what we allow in our hearts and in our minds. Whatever you allow, God will allow; He will never go against your will. Guard your heart; keep it satiated with the Word of God, and listening to worship music and songs that will assist us to live in the spirit and not fulfill the desires of the flesh.
Before action is carried out, it starts in the heart and meditates in the mind. As we meditate on it, the thought will eventually be carried out. Faith is choked when we continue to meditate about the other things that could happen. Anger is produced when we continue to meditate on what made us angry. The same things go with hurt, keep meditating, and we will be full of hurt.
Keeping our thoughts in check will keep us from having life issues that could have been avoided.