Guarding Your Heart - #9845

A Word With You

The area around New York City is dotted with some scenic, protected bodies of water. They are reservoirs that supply the water for the millions of people that are in that area. Now, having lived in the New York City area for a number of years, we often took a weekend drive as a family and, well, we enjoyed looking at them. They're very, very scenic. You know?

But maybe I've seen too many articles and news reports on terrorism, but I got to thinking one day what a target those reservoirs might be. I mean, if a terrorist or some mentally deranged person wanted to destroy a lot of people, I figure all he would have to do is poison the water from which we all drink. Actually a strategy like that is already in the works.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Guarding Your Heart."

Now, our word for today from the Word of God comes from Proverbs 4, and I'm going to read verse 23. It starts this way, "Above all else..." Okay, that's like God clearing His throat. I mean, this is important! When God says, "This is above everything else" pay attention! "Above all else guard your heart." That's the "above all else" - guard your heart. "For it is," the Bible says, "the wellspring (or maybe we could say reservoir) of life." See, God's saying, "I want you to protect what you let into your thoughts and into your heart, because today's thoughts produce tomorrow's actions.

Now, how could the devil plant his ideas in your mind so he could gradually darken your view of love, your view of marriage, your view of the future? How could he put his ideas in there about sex, about the value of human life, and just kind of a slowly growing darkness? How could he do that? Well, obviously he's not going to walk right up to you and say, "Hi, I'm the devil and I'd like to plant a few of my ideas in your brain." He's a little more subtle than that and we're a little smarter than that.

No, he's going to do it the same way that a terrorist might get his poison into your body: poison the source; poison the water from which we all drink. Well, mentally, what's the water we all drink from? Well, television, movies, what we read, our music, what we watch on the Internet, magazines. The problem is this: Many believers, who would never drink the devil's poisonous ideas directly, routinely allow those ideas to sneak in through their entertainment, music, or website, or movies, or their videos.

See, the devil's cleverly disguised and attractively packaged ideas that are woven all through our media. For example, if you watch enough couples involved in premarital or extramarital sex, it starts to feel slightly more normal, a little more acceptable. You're not even aware your guard's coming down because you didn't guard your heart. You let it sneak in, "Hey, that was just entertainment, right, sown in the words of a song, or sown in something portrayed on a TV show, or a movie.

But it is still the outright breaking of God's moral law. Let's go back to Proverbs 4:23, "Guard your heart." Just say those words with me, "Guard your heart." That means I shouldn't be, I can't be watching or listening to a portrayal of something God is against. Stand back and maybe you'll see how you have kind of dozed off mentally and spiritually. The guard went to sleep! The guard needs to wake up and say, "Hey, no! You can't come into this mind; you can't come into this heart."

Put a guard in front of the reservoir. There's a lot of poison in the mental water around us. Why do we drink it so freely?