The Bible, especially throughout the book of Proverbs, is full of invaluable advice and wisdom. The scripture mentioned above is but one of those gems. However, this scripture, just like many others, is often misunderstood and therefore misused. The true wisdom in it is lost through that, unfortunately.
For a long time, I considered Proverbs 4:23 to be a very vague statement. I’ve never doubted the validity of the scripture per se, but I’ve never really had a good grasp for what it truly meant, either. However, despite my lack of understanding of this scripture, whenever I would hear it being used outside of a sermon, I always got the feeling that it was being misused. More often than not, “guard your heart” is used as a defense mechanism of sorts; used to prevent one’s feelings from being hurt (again). From helping others to friendships to romantic relationships, many have extended their hearts, only to have them dropped, broken and trampled on by others. At first glance, Proverbs 4:23 seems like an endorsement from God to place one’s heart on lockdown and throw away the key. However, as always, my inquisitive mind wouldn’t allow me to leave it at that.
Protecting one’s self from pain is a natural human reaction. When we experience pain, our minds instinctively react by avoiding the source of that pain. This is especially the case with matters of the heart. Emotional wounds are not (usually) visible like physical wounds are, but they often hurt more and take longer to heal. Because of this, many people do whatever is necessary to avoid pain and protect their hearts from further damage. This rings no truer than in the area of relationships. Many women do what a good friend of mine calls “The Heisman,” stiff-arming any guy that tries to get near their heart because they’ve been hurt by men in the past.
Likewise, many guys end up becoming “players” to avoid loving again, due to having been burned by love before. Women take their hearts and lock them away in a dungeon at the bottom of a castle guarded by a fierce dragon. Men place their hearts in the middle of a minefield surrounded by razor-wire and sentry guns. This is all done in the name of “guarding their hearts.”
As I considered all of this, I really couldn’t accept that this is what God meant for us when he encouraged us to guard our hearts. I thought about how Jesus commands us to love one another (Matthew 22:39, John 13:34). This command and many others like it imply that we must give our hearts. I asked myself, how can I give my heart and protect it at the same time? I can’t possibly give my heart and guard it too. Well, not if I’m guarding it in the way that I’d seen others do, anyway. You can’t give your heart if you’ve got it locked away in a safe. This reminded me of Romans 12:2, which tells believers that we cannot conform to the patterns of the world. This further convinced me that our society’s method of heart guarding was not what God had in mind when he had the author of Proverbs write down chapter 4, verse 23. I realized I now had a pretty good handle on what guarding your heart is not, but I still had a while to go before I realized what guarding your heart does mean.
As I began my own research, I consulted some of my spiritually-minded friends on the subject. The scripture that most of them pointed me to was Philippians 4:7-8. I learned that to truly guard my heart, I must focus on what is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, and praiseworthy; the things that God would want me to set my thoughts on, and trusting in God and his peace to do the guarding for me. Verse 7 mentions that this peace “transcends all understanding.” This, I take it, is no coincidence, as most people would not understand it if you tried to tell them to release all control of their heart’s security and hand it over to God. As I stated earlier, matters of the heart are very serious, and most people wouldn’t trust anyone but themselves to take care of their hearts. At the end of the day, however, we must realize that God can do a much better job of protecting our hearts than we ever can. We have to stop leaning on our own understanding (Proverbs 3:5) and trust that he will protect us if we go about things his way.
After this revelation, the last half of Proverbs 4:23 stood out to me a bit more. It refers to the heart as the “wellspring of life.” The first thing that came to my mind when I read “wellspring” was a literal freshwater spring; a natural source of water. I thought about how when water first emerges from a spring, it is pure and free of any contaminates. I then thought about what may happen if said source of water became polluted. All forms of life that depended on this source of water would suffer from it. As I began to marinate on this, a friend of mine that I sought advice on this subject from informed me that the ancient Hebrew text of Proverbs 4:23 also included “mind” and “thought” along with the heart. Philippians 4:7-8 began to make more and more sense. We guard our hearts, not by building a fortress around it, but by keeping a careful watch on what we allow into our minds. What we set our thoughts on directly affects our hearts, and if our minds are polluted, so will our hearts be. Once the heart is poisoned, everything else goes with it.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think God is telling us to throw all caution to the wind and leave our feelings and emotions out in the open for anyone to attack. Our feelings are indeed included in the process of guarding our hearts. However, studying this out revealed to me that guarding your heart goes so much deeper than just protecting your feelings. It involves one’s entire state of mind and attitude. Keeping these things pure and pleasing God with our very thoughts will keep our emotions far out of harm’s way. As I thought about the true meaning of guarding my heart, I realized that I need to take inventory of what I’ve been allowing into my thoughts. I think we all could stand to take a moment and assess the things that we allow ourselves to see, hear, and think about on a daily basis. If these things are not pleasing to God, we must consider the possibility that our own thought processes are leading us to the things that we feel are putting our hearts in danger in the first place.
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