Matters of the Heart, Matter

I have a confession.

I refer to a lot of verses as "Christian cliché". I will mentally roll my eyes at you when you quote these clichés to me. I will skim over them when reading my bible. I will virtually tune it out when I hear it because I know what your going to say, I've heard it 1000 times if not more.

This happened to me this morning.

We are going through a pretty intense series in my church all about over coming over whelming circumstances, like depression, anxiety, loneliness. It's only the second Sunday of the series and I've noticed I have a lot of "heart issues"

One of the major ones is the thought that I can't protect myself.  I lost my mom at the end of 2007 and I felt completely alone. That lead to me being in a severely abusive relationship for most of 2008. That abusive relationship taught me that I can't protect myself. I tried for months to protect myself but he won every time and eventually, I had to call in other people to protect me. Because I couldn't protect myself.

This causes me to freeze up when confronted. To over analyze every thing you say to me. And If your someone who matters to me, it's very easy to offend me and bring me to tears. Because I have learned, I can't stop you from hurting me.

I was trying to find a biblical way of over coming this issue and the first verse I was directed to was
Proverbs 4:23 "Above all else, guard your heart for from it flows the springs of life"

This is one of my "Christian cliché" verses. I tune it out, I roll my eyes at it, I skim over it. But today I had to look into it because it seems counter-productive. It just cant be true that this scripture is telling us to be self-defensive. Because that would lead us to keeping relationships shallow, holding everyone at an arms length, and not letting anyone really get to know our hearts. We know this isn't God's will for us. He wants us to bear each others burdens. To be loving and compassionate. To love others genuinely, which according to dictionary.com means "with all your heart". To serve and be of one body. So what does it really  mean to "guard your heart"?

When we refer to our "heart" in todays culture, we are not talking about the organ that pumps blood. We are referring to our emotions. But biblically speaking it has a much deeper definition.The Hebrew word for heart in Proverbs 4:23 is "lêbâb". It means "Inner Man". The totality of who we are. The words we speak flow out of our hearts (Matthew 12:34) The choices we make flow from our heart (John 1:12-13) And in salvation God takes our dead heart of stone, and gives us a new heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26). So guarding our hearts is really just being mindful of our thoughts and actions.

There is another verse that talks about guarding our hearts, but it doesn't refer to us doing it. "And the Peace of God which transcends understanding will guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus"- Phillipians 4:7

So rather than us racking our brains trying to figure out how to protect ourselves, God has already provided that protection in his son Jesus.

The LORD is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts, and I am helped; my heart exults, and with my song I give thanks to him.  Psalm 28:7

I guard my heart by trusting God with all of it. By allowing him to be my shield and my strength when I'm feeling vulnerable. And by doing that, I can trust that I will be perfectly protected by Him.