“Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.”
– Proverbs 4:23
What a simple command. What a significant command that we must heed. “Keep your heart with all vigilance.” We’ve got to guard our hearts, our affections, our mind’s attention, our heart’s longing, what we focus on. There’s a reason why, when Jesus is asked what’s the first and greatest commandment, and his reply is, “Love the lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength.”
Proverbs 4:23 Helps Us in Temptation
That this is the spring from which everything in our lives flow. We are so tempted every day to give our hearts to things in this world in ways that pull us away from the God, in ways that taint the purity of our hearts before God, the wholehearted nature of how we’re intended to love him. Where we place our affections and where we fix our minds is going to direct everything in our lives.
Where we place our affections and fix our minds is going to direct everything in our lives.
This Verse Helps Us Fix Our Affections on God
God help us, we pray, to fix our affections on you, to not give our hearts away to things, to people in a way that pulls us from wholehearted love for you. For od, we look to you, help us to love you with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength in a way that then frees us to love other people as we do ourself, in a way that frees us to love other people rightly and to live in righteousness because we’re seeking you with all of our hearts.
God, help us to guard our hearts. Help us not to be casual with where we place our affections. God, nurture our hearts. Help us to grow today in love for you. In desire for you, in longing for you. Even as we reflect on your amazing, incredible, unfathomable love for us. Help us to keep our hearts with all vigilance today, we pray in Jesus name, 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.
