Tag: peace

Posted on

Guard Your Heart

I recently found the piece of paper that I was given at the last campus ministry large group service I attended before college graduation. On it is a single verse, a verse that I was told at the time was particularly for me:

“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it” (Proverbs 4:23 (NIV)).

At the time, at 22, I was a bit thrown off by this verse. What did that mean? What was I doing to make it seem like my heart was too exposed? Ten years later I can say,

I didn’t know what I was supposed to be guarding. 

But, I wasn’t aware of how to read the Bible for that information at the time. The Bible seemed very removed from my everyday experience. Though I found parts of it interesting, I simply could not see how the Bible could speak much to my present day life.

Over the next six years, my life gradually falling apart, I tried everything else I could think of to guide me instead. The Bible eventually came back into my purview as almost a last resort, when I was exhausted from running into dead ends. Gradually, I had unwittingly done the opposite of “my verse” and let my heart be influenced by almost anything and everything else besides the Truth of the Bible. 

The heart can be manipulated when you don’t know its worth.

The worth of anything can seem different depending on who you ask. But God, the Creator of all things that have worth, determines the true value of our hearts. To uncover why it is so important to guard our hearts, I first needed to understand, from God our Creator’s perspective, what the heart really is and what it is worth.

In looking at the heart closer by how God hardened Pharaoh’s heart in Exodus and how Jesus quoted Isaiah 29 in Matthew 15, we can discover that in the Bible, the heart of a person is referring to the sum of their intellect, will, and emotions. It is like our steering wheel; wherever our heart goes, we will follow. The human will and emotions will surely wander into dangerous territory if they are not rooted. Jesus quoted Isaiah 29:13 which says, “their hearts are far from me. …” in describing the Pharisees, who had staked their lives on being the opposite! We must guard our hearts from getting far away from God, because where the heart goes, we will go with it. 

The heart is so significant that it is what the Lord judges us by. 

Every individual’s heart is precious and valuable. God made us this way. As our Creator, He knows where to look to see our true selves. 

“But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart’” (1 Samuel 16:7). 

When our hearts are aligned with the Lord’s character–His love, peace, and grace, we are no longer so prone to having our hearts manipulated. Knowing God’s character is knowing the Truth, which sets us free (John 8:32). 

If your heart is not planted in Truth, you will believe lies. 

We see this in Matthew 25:24-30 in the parable of the talents (sum of money). While this is a familiar and oft-taught passage, I had never caught the fatal error of the heart that the servant made before:

“He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground …’ . ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? … . …cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness….’” 

Did you catch it too? The error of the servant was not so much what he did with the talent as it was his misperception of his Master’s true character! In this parable, the Master represents the Lord. It was the servant’s false assumption about who his Master was that determined both his fear and his resulting behavior. His heart had come up with a lie about the character of his Master, and he had believed it without testing whether it was true. 

Your heart is not the source of truth, but it can feel good in the moment to believe it is.

That our hearts will always lead us correctly in life is perhaps the most dangerous lie that pervades today. 

We all need a guiding principle to live by, but if it does not align with the Truth of who God is and what He is really like, we will be misguided. Believing our hearts are our guiding principle, or that simply “following your truth” will lead us correctly is simply false. We are not guarding our hearts wisely when we place it in a station in our lives higher than it was intended for. 

It is not popular to say that God’s Truth is the only truth. But, following a different principle only keeps us slaves to whatever lie we fancy most. 

Our false beliefs keep us in bondage, but only the Truth sets us free.

The thing is that deep down in a really honest place, our hearts know that they are not to be trusted to the level of a guiding principle. Over time, hearts fail us. They misguide us. They lie to us when we ask too much of them by treating them as the source of truth. But, when we surrender our hearts to the will of God, putting them in their rightful place under God’s authority, there they are properly guarded. There they will thrive. There our hearts can align with life itself and be the wellsprings that God intended. 

Friends, if you struggle with guarding your heart, I encourage you to ask for God’s help to test your own heart and see where you’re believing things that aren’t true, and where your will is coming against His. Trust that God knows what He is doing and that He knows what is best for your heart because He made it in the first place. No one knows your heart better than the Lord. Surrender your heart to Him today; you will never regret it. 

“And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7).

Thank you for spending some of your time journeying with me. If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to the blog, and like & follow the Facebook page; it truly helps me continue writing about Life with the King. Grace and peace. 

Posted on

The Spiritual Disciplines: Solitude

For many of us, as we continue to practice social distancing to slow the global pandemic, solitude may be on our minds now more than ever. 

I am currently on Day 11 of self quarantine. I work from home, so the quarantine has not changed my lifestyle that much. However, the spiritual practice of solitude has come into sharper focus for me. In wanting to use this time well and in a healthier place than the uncertain climate might try to dictate, I’ve been asking questions like, “How did Jesus practice solitude, and what does practicing solitude look like for us today?” Because, let’s be real, not many of us can just go walk up a mountain like He did.   

Before getting into it, I think it’s important to note that the spiritual discipline of solitude is not the same as simply “being alone.” Just because you are in quarantine or are isolated in your home doesn’t necessarily mean you are practicing solitude. Solitude is actually about fellowship, and it takes resolve (Mark 1:35), even from Jesus. 

The practice of solitude is about the inner fulfillment and inner peace God has provided. 

Peace is something I for one have been needing to hold on to in these strange days that seem to run together and yet go by slowly. Solitude can heighten our awareness of the peaceful presence of God, and how He is at work in us. Who He is provides, and has already provided, our very fulfillment and peace. It is when we resolve to be there, focus, and connect with Him in solitude that we become aware of it. 

Jesus Himself practiced solitude to draw close to God the Father. In his book, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, John Mark Comer wrote that solitude, or the wilderness in the spiritual sense, was actually a place of great strength for Jesus. Comer argues that solitude in the wilderness was actually a good thing as Jesus was being tempted. 

He was “led by the Spirit into the wilderness” (Luke 4:1), which is important to note. Jesus was deliberately alone during His testing period with Satan. Whereas isolation is commonly known to be a place of weakness for individuals, Jesus showed that being alone can be a place of great strength when He overcame all the temptations put before Him. Perhaps Satan missed something when he agreed to test Jesus alone. 

In solitude, you aren’t actually alone; God is present and communicating with you. 

Jesus knew this. He “often withdrew to lonely places and prayed” (Luke 5:16). Even in solitude, Jesus said He was never alone; in John 16:32 He said, “you…will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone for the Father is with me.”

I’ve wondered why Jesus would need to be alone if that was the case. If He is God and God was with Him, what was so important and why was it necessary for Him to be alone? Couldn’t He focus on God in a crowd just as easily? 

But I think we can easily forget that Jesus was also human. He was susceptible to distraction like us. He was stretched to His physical limits and bombarded by the needs of others around Him. He also came to show us the rhythm of a healthy God-honoring life. That included solitude–withdrawing alone to be with God and no one else. 

Solitude makes us more aware that God provides the spiritual strength needed to endure and overcome.

Comer writes that Jesus valued solitude over sleep, at certain points. Solitude must be truly vital to our souls if Jesus Himself had to practice it! Especially now during self isolation or quarantine, it is the perfect time to practice solitude and incorporate it into our rhythm of life if it’s not already part of our routines.  

Again, solitude is about inner fulfillment. It’s a place where we can slow down enough to recognize where we might be grasping for fulfillment apart from God, and pray for His help to let that go. In solitude, we make time and space to remember that true fulfillment comes from God alone. In that way, solitude is just like worship. 

Solitude is a form of worship.    

The wilderness, or a place of spiritual solitude, is a recurring place in the Bible. It is a place of testing (Psalm 106:14), a place of purification (Mark 1:3-4), and a place of strengthening (Matthew 4:1). In the wilderness, all the focus is on God (Deuteronomy 8:15), and people are sustained by Him, lacking nothing (Nehemiah 9:21). 

Jesus started His ministry by first spending forty days and nights alone in the wilderness. 

The wilderness can be a place of refinement, a place of gaining confidence, even for Jesus. For us it could be a place where we learn patience, trust in God, and dependence on Him. In Matthew 6:6 solitude allows for more exclusive focus on God. Matthew 14:23 shows solitude as a place of concentrated prayer. Again in Mark 1:35 it is an intentional place of great fellowship with God. Solitude can be a wonderful help in our spiritual journey. Yet it, or any spiritual discipline, isn’t the point.  

The point isn’t the spiritual practice itself, the point is connecting in relationship with God. 

Like all spiritual disciplines, solitude is a tool. Doing the practice is not the end goal. Connection with God is. Prayer is. Worship and communication is. But solitude can be a wonderful place, as Jesus demonstrated by withdrawing often to practice it. It doesn’t always have to be seen as the means to an end, although learning and growth for what is next often occur there. God shows us that being where we are, right where we are, is part of the journey of life that He takes us each on. It takes faithfulness on our part now with what we’ve been given in order to advance to the next step of our journey.

Solitude, or your own spiritual wilderness, may be a beginning place for something amazing in your life. Press in. Talk to God about what that might be and what He’s teaching you while you’re in the wilderness. 

Jesus is the whole point of solitude.

I encourage you to press into the discipline of solitude. As the world is on hold, may you use this unique time to draw close to Jesus.

Proudly powered by WordPress