Guard Your Heart (11)

Previous blogs to read first: Welcome, Too Much, Too Soon (1), Too Much Icing, Too Little Cake (2), DEFECT! (3), A Whole New World [er, Attitude] (4), and Looking Up "Love" In God's Dictionary (5), The Right Thing At The Wrong Time Is The Wrong Thing (6), Purity: A Direction, Not A Line (7), Put It Behind You (8), A Clean Slate (9), Just Friends in a Just-Do-It World (10) [See blog archive.]


"The human heart doesn't like taking orders from the mind...The sooner we get acquainted with the contents of our hearts, the better...If we'd really examine our hearts, we'd find lies, selfishness, lust, envy, and pride," begins Joshua Harris.

Jeremiah 17:9 says, "The heart is deceitful above all things... Who can understand it?"

Guarding our hearts means protecting ourselves from our heart's sinfulness. Our heart is so deceitful that something can "feel" right and be completely wrong. Do whatever it takes to guard your heart and keep it in submission to God.

Proberbs 4:23 describes our heart as the "wellspring of life." Joshua Harris reminds us, "If we fail to keep our hearts clean, the rest of our life will stagnate and become dirty.


So, what do we specifically need to guard our hearts from? What are the pollutants?

1 John 2:15-16 warns us, "Do not love the world or anything in the world...For everything in the world - the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does - comes not from the Father but from the world."

"These 'pollutants' specifically manifest themselves in relationships as infatuation, lust, and self-pity," says Harris. We'll examine all three more closely:


INFATUATION

The Merriam-Webster dictionary describes infatuation as, "To cause to be foolish; deprive of sound judgment; to inspire with a foolish or extravagant love or admiration."

Josh warns us, "Any time we allow someone to displace God as the focus of our affection, we've moved from innocent appreciation of someone's beauty or personality to the dangerous realm of infatuation."

Often we become infatuated because we think that a human relationship will fully satisfy our every desire...WRONG! "When we place God in His rightful place in our lives, we don't struggle so much when human relationships let us down," Harris comments.

A way to avoid infatuation is not to feed attraction. "Attraction only grows into infatuation when we pamper it," states Josh. This applies itself practically by not letting your mind wander or fantasize about this person before it's appropriate. Don't encourage friends' attractions by giggling about them all night long, and vice versa, for yourself. Do whatever it takes to stop infatuation, to not feed the attraction.


LUST

Josh begins by telling us, "To fight lust in our lives, we have to detest it with the same intensity God does."

Something that really stuck out to me was a simple reminder of how much I hate homosexual lust. It is so disgusting, do you not agree? Well guess what? God hates a man's lust for a woman, or vice versa (heterosexual) just as much as He (and we) hate homosexual lust! Something the think about, eh?

We need to ask ourselves if we are as repulsed by lust in our lives as we are by lust in others.

Beilby Proteus writes, "What we are afraid to do before men, we should be afraid to think before God."

To make it practical, we need to avoid things that encourage wrong desire. It's different for each person. It might mean throwing away romance novels, not watching soap operas, or playing seductive video games. Whatever it is in your life, find it, and toss it out!

Josh reminds us, "When we evaluate our lives honestly enough to recognize our own lust and see the sorrow it causes God, we'll want to destroy lust... before it destroys us."


SELF-PITY

Harris describes self-pity as a worship of our circumstances... indulging in feeling sorry for ourselves.

If you consider giving up dating up a sacrifice, don't sigh over what you've chosen to "give up." That selfish, self-focused sacrifice doesn't impress God. Ultimately, not dating isn't a sacrifice. It's obedience if you understand it the way I do. Obeying Him with joy does please Him!

Josh warns us, "Stop basing your happiness on how you compare with other people." I once heard it said that as Christians we should never have a "bad day" because everyday we have our never-failing God who provides our salvation!

Also, get your focus of your "needs," and help meet someone else's.

Next, see your feelings of lonliness as God drawing you closer to Him. Really, we're never alone and we should be satisfied in God.


1 John 3:20 gives us hope, "For God is greater than our hearts, and He knows everything." Awesome!