Keep your heart with all vigilance for from it flow the springs of life.
– Proverbs 4:23
Oh, what a good command instruction for us to hear and heed today. Keep your heart, guard your heart with all diligence. Be watchful over your heart, which biblically is the seat of who we are, the core of all we do. That’s why the verse goes on to say, from your heart flow, the springs of life.
Proverbs 4:23 teaches us to be mindful of what content we let into our hearts.
This is where we realize daily our need for Jesus to transform our hearts. And this is what it means to be saved. It’s what it means to become a follower of Jesus. It means for God to give us a new heart. We’re born again. We’re a new person with a heart that is forgiven of our sin and filled with his Spirit. God puts his Spirit inside of our hearts to then transform the way we think and what we desire and how we act and what we say and how we relate to other people around us.
And the whole purpose for which we live. It all flows from the heart of Jesus inside of us. So guard your heart today. Make sure that what you’re taking in is pouring fuel on the fire of the heart of Jesus in you. And it’s not squelching the heart of Jesus in you that what you receive in your mind, through your ears, through your eyes, is glorifying to God and is good for your heart. Guard your heart today.
Proverbs 4:23 teaches to not give our hearts to anything that is not God.
Make sure that the things you love, the things you want, the things you desire are ultimately centered around God and not the things of this world that you and I would not give our hearts to anything above God, that we would not give our affection supremely to anything but God. Love the Lord your God with all your heart. That’s the first and greatest commandment. And so we pray, God, help us to guard, to keep our hearts today with all vigilance.
We pray even now that you would examine our hearts and show each of us any way in which our hearts are drawn to anyone or anything else above you, any ways that we have not guarded our hearts, guarded intimacy with you, or any things we need to do, God in our lives to guard our hearts with more vigilance, knowing that from our hearts flow, the springs of life.
God, we want to live with the fall springs of life that you make possible for us. Jesus, we praise you for your love for us. We praise you for laying down your life for us on the cross, for your resurrection from the grave, and for sending your Holy Spirit to live in our hearts. Oh God, help us today to love you with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. We pray that you’d help us to be vigilant toward that end.
Prayer for Pipipa People
And oh God, as we pray for unreached Amazon tribes, the Pipipa of Brazil today, 1500 of them. I think about being in the Amazon, sharing the gospel and this man who’d never heard it before, saying, I realize I need a new heart. And God, we pray for the Pipipa of Brazil and other unreached, hard-to-reach, in many cases, totally unengaged people groups on the Amazon. God, we pray that they would be reached with the good news of your love for them, that their hearts might be totally transformed by Jesus. May it be so we pray in their hearts, even as we pray that you would help us to be vigilant in guarding our hearts. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
