Guard Your Heart (Emotions)

Verse of the day: Proverbs 4:23 Keep your heart with all diligence, For out of it spring the issues of life.

Think about what is your most valuable possession. What do you do to guard it and make sure that it is always safe? Many of us would go to extremes to protect and safe guard anything that is valuable to us. With that said; what steps are we taking to protect and guard our hearts? Why is it so important to “keep” our hearts? Plainly answered, it is because we often make decisions based on the heart, or how we feel; which cannot always be trusted (Jer 17:9). What we feel is often contrary to what God says is true, and contrary to how we should respond. So how do we bring our emotions, and feelings, in line with God’s truth? First, we must know God’s truth. That requires that we spend much time reading and studying God’s Word. According to this Proverb, we are not only to know the Word, but keep it before us, and in our hearts. We are to meditate on it. Too often, rather than keeping God’s Word before our eyes, we focus on things that are not pure, and that do not provoke godly thinking (some of the novels we choose to read or programs we choose to watch on television or our computers, tablets, phones, etc.; Deut 4:9; Job 31:3; Ps 101:3; Phil 4:8). We are not only to hear truth, look at truth (read and study), but we must also practice truth; being doers of the Word, and not just hearers (James 1:22-25). We are to be careful to guard our tongues, and our mouths (Ps 34:13). With that ground work set, we must remember that God did create us in His image (Gen 1:26), and therefore we were created with feelings and emotions, and there is nothing wrong with having them, as long as they are not the primary guide in our decision making. The worse thing we can do, as emotional beings, is try to suppress our emotions, because eventually we will explode, and the end result is not pretty. We often try to refrain from anger to the extreme, only to eventually be set off by something minor, but responding in a major way. Anger is not wrong, as long as we do not express it in a sinful way. The Word tells us to be angry and sin not (Eph 4:26). There are situations, injustices, in life, that will make us angry, but how we handle our response is what will make the difference in whether or not our anger is sinful. Feeling love toward someone is not wrong, but when we allow our feelings of love lead us to an unhealthy and unholy relationship with someone, that is wrong. Especially when true, biblical love is more about what we do than what we feel. How often have we, or someone we know, made a wrong decision because “we felt” it was the right thing to do at the time? How often have we chosen our emotions over God’s truth because it “felt” right? How often have we heard someone say, or how often have we said, “I feel that this is how God is leading me”? Yet, the path we chose was not in line with God’s Word? For this reason we must do all we can to guard our hearts, and be ready to override our emotions, when they contradict God’s truth. There will be those moments when we will be tempted to feel like God does not care, has forsaken us because we stumbled, or feel like He no longer loves us because of some painful circumstance? Yet, all of those feelings are so contrary to God’s truth. He does care (1 Peter 5:7). He will never forsake us (Heb 13:5-6); and He will always love us (Rom 8:38-39; 2 Thess 2:16). The bottom line is that when we are at the crossroad of deciding what to do, in any given situation, we must stop and ask if our emotions or feelings about something are based on God’s truth or something other than God’s Word. Our God is faithful, and His Word is true. Should we be in a position to question what is right, based on what we feel because of advice from someone or something other than God; then “let God be true, and every man be a liar” (Rom 3:3-4).

The truth is that God’s salvation comes by faith, and not some emotional experience (Eph 2:8-9). He promised that if we believe that He died to pay for our sins, and call upon Him, in faith, we will be saved. Call upon Him today (Rom 6:23; 10:9; 13).