THE VICTOR’S MENTALITY 23 (Guard Your Heart)

I want to welcome my beloved readers to today’s article. It’s my prayer that the Lord will encounter you in His Word. By God’s grace, I’ll continue from where we stopped in the last article.

We spoke about the spiritual function of the heart and looked at the contrast between the heart and the soul. The reason we explored this is that the breastplate of righteousness directly protects the heart, and we saw its significance. Before delving deeper into the breastplate of righteousness, I feel the need to continue what I shared last week about the heart. I want to focus on what it means to guard your heart with all diligence.

“Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life” Proverbs 4:23 NKJV. 

Here, when the Bible uses the word “keep,” it also means to guard or protect. It’s like a soldier watching over a fortress or territory. This makes sense because our anchor text in Ephesians 6 describes a soldier putting on complete armor to protect himself and fight the enemy. When a soldier watches over something, they do so diligently. They are disciplined, not carried away by distractions. Their focus is on protecting and defending what they’re tasked to guard.

The Scripture also asks us to guard our hearts with all diligence. This means above everything else. It means making the protection of your heart a priority. Why? Because everything that flows from your life comes from your heart—your thoughts, words, attitudes, behaviours, decisions, and relationships. All these affect your destiny. So, how your life looks is a function of how your heart looks. Now we see why we must guard and protect it with utmost priority.

So, where is this leading us? It’s to generate a question and answer it: How can we guard our heart? I found a parallel scripture to Proverbs 4:23 in the New Testament:
“But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you” (Matthew 6:33 NKJV).

“Seek first the kingdom and His righteousness…” This is the priority mindset Proverbs 4:23 calls for. Time won’t permit me to show that Jesus Himself is the Kingdom of God, and the righteousness mentioned is the righteousness of Christ. Therefore, to “guard your heart with all diligence” is the same as saying: “Let your heart remain covered, anchored, and focused on Christ’s righteousness above everything else.” I repeat: This is how to guard your heart!

Let me break it down a bit: It means anchoring your identity in Christ, relating to the Father based on the finished work, and believing that the Father relates to us on the same ground. There’s a common ground on which we must relate to God. We often say, “Oh, we need to relate to God based on the finished work of Christ,” but many don’t believe this is how God relates to them. When they do wrong, their minds expect God to judge them with sickness, poverty, or the like. Their hearts quickly forget that their acceptance wasn’t based on their performance in the first place, nor is it the basis on which God releases His blessings (all other things). 

Everything God has done for the resurrected Christ—raising Him from the dead, lifting Him above every limitation, putting all His enemies under His footstool, and seating Him at the right hand of the Father—He has done for us because of Christ’s righteousness. He has released the Holy Spirit to perfect this in us, even right here and now. The Holy Spirit is committed to making you like Christ in every way. He won’t give up on you because of Christ’s righteousness. You need to believe this is true. That’s how to guard your heart.

When you forget that you are righteous in Christ, you become vulnerable to:
1.  Condemnation
2.  Comparison
3.  Legalism
4.  Self-effort

In the next article, we’ll explore these four elements we easily fall into when we don’t guard our hearts with righteousness.

My beloved readers, prayerfully meditate on these things. God bless you, and see you in the next article!

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