Guard Your Heart—Two2Grow, June 11
Guard Your Heart—Two2Grow, June 11
Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. Proverbs 4:23 (NIV)
The heart in biblical thought isn’t just the blood-pumping organ. It is an image of the center of our being, the headquarters that governs our thoughts, desires, and actions. That is why we are told to guard our hearts!
Think of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The serpent gave them a false narrative, claiming that the tree of knowledge of good and evil was actually something that would help them and that God had kept the fruit back because He was selfish and wanted to hoard His power.
Yet it was all a lie! When Adam and Eve believed the serpent rather than God, it changed their hearts. Like putting on colored glasses, the devil’s narrative altered their view of reality, which led them to act in rebellion against God. The world fell into sin because they didn’t protect their heart!
The devil still works the same way today. He will try to influence the way we see the world, playing into either our secret longings or deep-seated fears. When we let his crooked perspectives enter our hearts, we will end up living in sin.
For example, if you let the thought into your mind that a certain person dislikes you, it will make you insecure and more self-conscious, so you begin to act differently toward them. When our oldest daughter was born, we became good friends with a couple who also had their first baby at about the same time. From birth, the mother was convinced that her baby didn’t love her. Regardless of how crazy that sounds, we couldn’t help her break that thought, and the lie caused her to have a strained relationship with the baby from the start.
I encourage you to pray that the Holy Spirit reveals any deception in your worldview and resist the lies of the devil with the power of God’s Word. Spend time in prayer, worship, and fellowship with other believers. God uses those times to expose deception and to ground our heart in reality.
Holy Spirit, help me to protect my heart from the deceptive narratives of the devil. Show me where I need to change so that I can live in the truth. Amen.
Pastor Mikael Stenhammar, PhD
The heart in biblical thought isn’t just the blood-pumping organ. It is an image of the center of our being, the headquarters that governs our thoughts, desires, and actions. That is why we are told to guard our hearts!
Think of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The serpent gave them a false narrative, claiming that the tree of knowledge of good and evil was actually something that would help them and that God had kept the fruit back because He was selfish and wanted to hoard His power.
Yet it was all a lie! When Adam and Eve believed the serpent rather than God, it changed their hearts. Like putting on colored glasses, the devil’s narrative altered their view of reality, which led them to act in rebellion against God. The world fell into sin because they didn’t protect their heart!
The devil still works the same way today. He will try to influence the way we see the world, playing into either our secret longings or deep-seated fears. When we let his crooked perspectives enter our hearts, we will end up living in sin.
For example, if you let the thought into your mind that a certain person dislikes you, it will make you insecure and more self-conscious, so you begin to act differently toward them. When our oldest daughter was born, we became good friends with a couple who also had their first baby at about the same time. From birth, the mother was convinced that her baby didn’t love her. Regardless of how crazy that sounds, we couldn’t help her break that thought, and the lie caused her to have a strained relationship with the baby from the start.
I encourage you to pray that the Holy Spirit reveals any deception in your worldview and resist the lies of the devil with the power of God’s Word. Spend time in prayer, worship, and fellowship with other believers. God uses those times to expose deception and to ground our heart in reality.
Holy Spirit, help me to protect my heart from the deceptive narratives of the devil. Show me where I need to change so that I can live in the truth. Amen.
Pastor Mikael Stenhammar, PhD