| Guarding Your Heart | | Print | |
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By Kimberly Demont
Lately, I have been thinking a lot about the direction of my life. More specifically, I have been marveling at how easy it can be to find yourself so many mess-ups away from where you once wanted to be in your relationship with God, that you're not even sure which tiny decision to disobey first veered you off-course – or whether you now have the heart to overcome your own subsequent apathy. If that seems like a depressing way to kick off this article, imagine the weight in the pit of my stomach when recently, I was called to examine the way I've been living. I realized I've allowed myself to become so cold that in a very short amount of time, were I to continue along the path I've been forging, I may very well end up throwing away the only thing that has ever made sense to me. Suddenly, just when I am supposed to be learning and growing more than ever, approaching the prime of my existence, my heart knowledge has been reduced to this simple but sorry truth: I don't have the first clue about living my life right. What's infinitely worse is the fact that even if I did know which steps next to take, I no longer feel positive (like I used to, as recently as a year and a half ago) that I could muster the resolution necessary to love God and others with the passion I wish I had. During this time (which has felt like the lowest point of my spirituality to date), I've remembered with contrition a passage of scripture that puzzled me up until very recently. (Perhaps you've heard it quoted before.) Proverbs 4:23 says, “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” Personally, whenever I have heard this verse cited in the past, it has been in the context of “guarding one's heart” against things like unhealthy and/or premature romantic relationships, excessive busyness, crude humor, or angry rock music. Against things that might snatch your thoughts and attention away from God and weaken your conscience. Against negative outside forces. Against the types of things that I have invited, over the past eighteen months or so, little by little (and without necessarily intending to), to tempt and influence me away from the pure love God offers. Against the types of things that have made those months some of the most miserable I have ever spent. Yet while I believe, without reserve, that I need to check my exposure to these things – because each of them has ensnared me in some way at one point or another – I still cannot accept what I've always been taught: that they alone form the roots of my despondence. This verse says to “guard our hearts.” So what exactly does a heart consist of? The definition given within the passage itself is that the heart is “the wellspring of life.” Elsewhere throughout the Bible, however, our hearts are described as “deceitfully wicked,” as “evil,” and as prone to leading us astray. In fact, another translation of this very same verse states, alternatively, that “from [the heart] spring all the issues of life.” I know from my personal experiences that as surely as an unwavering heart can accomplish great feats, a heart out of sync with God's purposes can cause a devastating amount of damage. Perhaps the definition of the term “heart” in this scripture, therefore, is two-fold. On the one hand, it refers (for lack of a better explanation) to the parts of us that have somehow “glimpsed” God. Our interactions with him, and the places where our desires match his, are what make us feel alive, what keep us going, what fill us with more than enough gusto to not only “hang in there,” but to encourage the people around us no matter what we are going through. From this angle, our “hearts” are comprised of whatever has resulted from the work of his love in our lives. On the other hand, each of our hearts also contains the potential to be deceived and tempted to rebel against God. Hence, a heart consists of all the good things he has put inside it, combined with that which opposes him. When the Psalmist refers to the heart as the entity from which “all the issues of life spring,” then, I believe he refers to both of these aspects. It is true that constant communication with God expands and “feeds” our spirits, meanwhile weakening the grasp of our sinful nature. As we spend more and more time in his presence, the revelation of who he is and of his glory shining in us transforms us more and more into his image, making us want to spend more and more time with him (and so on). It is also true that without this communion, our hearts become progressively unresponsive to his love until we start turning to lesser sources to make us feel the way he makes us feel (only, the things we latch onto to supplant his power don't truly satisfy like he does – even if it seems at first like they can). The more we reach for those things to fulfill us, the less satisfying they seem, and the more difficult it becomes to abandon the habits they produce and return to God, whom we have grieved (and who, it would seem, would only be angry with us if we tried to “cut back in” on his mercy now, anyway). It seems to me, then, that the verse itself is neither positive nor negative; it is neutral. It is both a fatal warning and a beautiful invitation, neither of which I have ever fully understood. It doesn't mean that everything within our hearts is absolutely good (and hence, a source of life for us). It also doesn't mean that everything within our hearts is absolutely bad, and must be suppressed and “guarded”; lest our emotions show. It simply means that with every moment, challenge, and blessing, we choose to either let life drive us closer to or farther away from God. The whole “warning and invitation” bit enters the scene when you realize that either option will take you farther than you ever envisioned yourself going. The latter, which seems fun at first, will devastate you beyond belief. The former, which seems like a sacrifice at first, is the only choice you will ever not regret making. If this is a true interpretation of these terms, then wandering eyes, lewd imaginations, anger, and greed are not essentially the things the psalmist implies we need to guard against. While these have the power to (and do) pull us farther from him once we have already set the downward cycle in motion, they are more symptoms of “missing God” than they are the primary malady. (Otherwise, if they were our main problem, it would not make sense that someone could get as discouraged while attending church every Sunday and being a “good person,”all the while missing out on the deeper things of God, as somebody else could from “testing the waters” with members of the opposite sex.) The true disease runs deeper than our actions; it results from feeling separated from God. Does this mean we should abandon our attempts to avoid harmful influences? Not at all! Quite the contrary. We should avoid them, but not merely for the sake of avoiding them or being “righteous” in our own minds. Instead, we will avoid them as the natural outcome of experiencing for ourselves that even based on the tiny indications we have to go on of how consumingly awesome he is, God's noticeable presence in our lives is worth an infinite deal more than everything this world has to offer, combined. Besides, we are foolish if we think that the world will spare us its trials just because we dispense with cussing or inappropriate television shows. At one time or another, no matter how well a given person behaves on a day-to-day basis, life has a tendency to beat us up and back us into corners. Sometimes heartaches, even mistakes, are inevitable. Again, this is not to say that we should welcome sin! It is merely to highlight that the point of this scripture is not to get us to shut ourselves off completely from the rest of the world, thinking that then we will be set for a lifetime of sinlessness. We cannot always evade our own shortcomings (or those of others), much less life's batterings. Rather, the aim is to protect the means by which we might heal and learn from those struggles, so that when life comes against us we won't be left to fend for ourselves using our own inadequate defense mechanisms. Through his bond with us, God teaches us how to navigate our lives more wisely and effectively. He also heals and comforts us in times of trouble. As long as this connection remains functional and protected, we can receive from him and give to others what is really needed. Thus, what we must really be on guard against is so much more essential than the “heavy-duty” sins. What we must avoid is our tendency to neglect his presence and become calloused in the first place – no matter what form this negligence takes – because that's where everything else originates. Another story always comes to mind when I get to feeling this low about the way I have lived. It's the story of David, a king (once passionate for God) who ends up cheating with another man's wife, then having her husband killed in order to conceal his offense. After God has revealed David's actions to a prophet and the prophet has rebuked David, he cries out to God in repentance: “Against you and you only have I sinned!” The thing that strikes me about this response is that David understands that his truest sin was not adultery; nor was it murder. These are crimes we commit against other people. David realizes that his first and most dangerous sin was the way in which he allowed himself to stop “going after God” in his heart. It was this primary offense that caused him to do the other stuff – not the other way around. If it is true, however, that outward sins begin with inwardly distancing ourselves from God, it must also be true that no matter how badly we've messed things up, realigning our hearts with God's will can result in a progressive lack of desire for sinful pleasures, and a renewal of our joy. And if this is true, it is also true that, in fact, the only way we can regain our closeness is to repent. (That is, it is impossible to get closer to God by changing our outward behavior, which means treating our symptoms rather than curing the disease.) We must stand to our feet in the midst of the mire and determine to return to our father – knowing that he deserves much more than we can offer him, but that through Jesus' sacrifice, we have access to a perfect righteousness we could never earn for ourselves. When we approach him humbly and ask him to reverse the damage we've done by straying, he is faithful to give us back the pieces of our hearts that were stolen or given away in the process; as well as to reestablish our sense of acceptance and identity in him. I have no idea whatsoever why God would want to use someone like me. I can tell you as many times as I want, no doubt with some degree of accuracy, that being a human is difficult. Becoming an adult is difficult. Life is a rocky, uphill journey, fraught with temptations and challenges and failures. Just ask David or his mistress... or any pastor in the world. But the truth of the matter is that I am a lousy excuse for a follower of Christ. Thank God I don't rely on my own ability to do what's right in order to be made whole! My only comfort comes from the hope that God would not command me to do something at which it was impossible to succeed; and though he knew every area of disorder in my life, he still told me to guard my heart, the wellspring of life. He still told me that I have the potential to grow so close to him, and to know so intrinsically who I am in him, that I don't need empty thrills to satisfy, distract, or validate me. He still told me that if I relinquish my inclinations to rebel and to try and fit in, I can have within me a well of his peace and goodness to draw from in times of hardship that is so deep, I won't be able to imagine turning elsewhere for fulfillment. Thus far, I have not done a stellar job of keeping in tune with what God wants for my life. I'm still not sure I know what step I'm supposed to take next, or whether my dreams will ever come true the way I envision them happening. I cannot promise that tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that (or on my last day of college, or on my wedding day, or on my death bed), I will have remained faithful to what is truly important in life. I still have questions, doubts, fears, and wrongdoings. I can't even say that before falling asleep tonight, I will look back on the past twenty-four hours and feel sure that even half of the decisions I made today were the right ones. I can't guarantee that fifteen years (or minutes) from now, I will be loving and experiencing God to the fullest of my ability. All I know is that right this second... and this second... and this second, I want to – with more of my heart than I realized I still possessed. If God could use David on as little faith as that, and if he truly doesn't distinguish between people based on how “good” or “bad” they are or how much they have accomplished (Acts 10:31), then perhaps he will find it in his heart to do the same for me – and if I can move on from my sins and be close to him again, then so can anybody else. After all, if that isn't the basis of the gospel, I'm honestly not sure what is. |
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