MESSAGE OF THE MONTH APRIL 2024
Guard Your Heart
By Vladut Ciolan
“My son, pay attention to what I say; turn your ear to my words.
Do not let them out of your sight, keep them within your heart;
for they are life to those who find them and health to one’s whole body.
Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.
Keep your mouth free of perversity; keep corrupt talk far from your lips.
Let your eyes look straight ahead; fix your gaze directly before you.
Give careful thought to the paths for your feet and be steadfast in all your ways.
Do not turn to the right or the left; keep your foot from evil.”
Proverbs 4:20-27
I preached this sermon on the fifth anniversary of becoming the pastor of what is now called Vision Church here in Bromley. I prayed and prayed and chose one verse from the passage above that the Holy Spirit has used to guide, teach, rebuke and correct me, and I believe, with hindsight, to mature me, and I pray He will continue to do so.
If there is one piece of advice I tend to give when pastoring one of the Lord’s lovely people, it is: “Guard Your Heart”.
• Guard what goes in your heart.
• Guard what comes out of your heart.
(Just thinking of physical hearts for a moment, a Readers Digest article offered an amusing analysis of some of the dieting trends affecting our culture.
•The Japanese eat little fat and suffer fewer heart problems than Americans or the British.
•The French eat a lot of fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the U.S. or Britain.
•The Italians drink a lot of red wine and have a lower risk of heart problems than their western neighbours.
What can we conclude from these facts?
You can eat whatever you want, but speaking English will kill you!)
Sandwiched in the middle of our passage today, rests what seems to be the number one advice that the WISEST MAN ON EARTH (apart from Jesus) could give his son:
“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”
If something needs guarding, it’s either because it’s fragile, weak, and feeble, or because it is precious. Your heart, and my heart is both puny and precious at the same time.
Our heart is puny because, as we read in Jeremiah 17:9
“The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately sick - who can understand it?”
That is why, as believers, we do not FOLLOW our HEART, WE FOLLOW our GOD.
But this sickness of the heart is itself one of the reasons as to why you must GUARD YOUR HEART!
An unguarded heart is vulnerable to outward attacks that can shatter it to pieces.
Over the past 5 years I’ve had to learn to guard my heart because my heart is fragile.
- It’s fragile to destructive criticism.
- It’s fragile to gossip and judgemental words.
- It’s fragile to lies meant to destroy it.
- It’s fragile to betrayal.
- It’s so fragile that unless I would learn to guard it, my two natural responses to any form of attack are FIGHT or FLIGHT; neither of these options are God’s desired response for my heart.
Even though I have experienced all the above-mentioned situations, I’m not a victim, nor am I a hero. Rather, I hope that by God’s grace, I am a humble guardian of my own heart.
So yes, my heart needs guarding because it’s puny.
But at the same time, my heart needs guarding because it’s also PRECIOUS.
Romans 5:5 tells us the following:
“Hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts
through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
Your heart and my heart are precious because God has poured His PERFECT LOVE inside of them!
Our hearts need guarding because of this deposit of divine love that has been poured in by God through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
At the moment of salvation, God has poured out His love.
We could rightly say that God has poured Himself out, through God the Spirit, into our hearts.
Your heart is too precious to leave unguarded.
Your heart is too puny to leave unguarded.
Both of these adjectives, rightly describe the state of our heart!
Our hearts aren't perfect, but there is a goodness in them by Jesus' work within us that needs to be protected and guarded.
But more important than both of these is a 3rd and greatest reason as to why we should guard our hearts:
“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”
Two other helpful translations are found in NKJV: “spring the issues of life” and ESV: “flow the springs of life.”
The picture is that your heart is like a stream of water that's continually flowing out to touch and impact people around you that you encounter.
Throughout the Bible, God puts high importance on the condition of people's hearts.
While our hearts will be fully pure after Jesus returns, in this time between Jesus' resurrection and his Second Coming, our hearts need to be guarded.
I am very self-aware of my own heart, every time I stand at the pulpit before God and His people.
- If my heart is full of unforgiveness because it’s been hurt by venomous words, then my words will be sprinkled with poison, without even planning to do so.
- If in my heart, I harbour resentment, I will taint God’s pure word as it comes out of my mouth.
- If my heart is full of self and pride, then my interpretation of the Bible may be perfect, my doctrine may be sound, but self and pride will also be what I communicate.
Proverbs 4:23 helps us see the heart as a wellspring and its “outgoings” as the life-giving waters that refresh wise persons and those around them.
We need to guard the wellspring of our hearts because everything we do, flows from it!
How do we guard our heart? I’m going to be practical and biblical at the same time.
“My son, pay attention to what I say; turn your ear to my words.
Do not let them out of your sight, keep them within your heart.”
- TURN YOUR EAR TO MY WORDS – “Pay attention to what I say”.
- KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN – “Do not let my words out of your sight”.
God has already placed 4 little guardians over our precious and feeble heart: Two ears and two eyes. Our eyes and ears are the default guardians of our hearts!
The heart then, is like a vault within which whatever comes through our eyes and ears is stored.
When watching something online, it’s not only about entertainment, but rather, it’s about something being deposited within the vault of your heart!
Every single day of our life, people, circumstances, words, feelings and emotions will queue up before the window or our heart represented by eyes and ears, to deposit and invest things.
- Netflix will deposit movies and series.
- YouTube will deposit videos.
- School will deposit information.
- Your friends will deposit character and behaviour.
- The Internet could deposit almost an infinite number of things.
- Your spouse will deposit words and feelings.
- Your family members will deposit other things as well.
But there will be moments, too many of them, when things and/people will not care about queuing up and politely give you the option to accept the deposit. Rather, in moments of weakness, some of the things that will be deposited in your heart will be sin, pain, heartache, betrayal, gossip and abuse.
In those moments, your eyes and ears will have failed you and your heart is left vulnerable and wide open to even more attacks.
In those moments you will need the right people around you, as guardians of your heart!
Over the past 5 years, I’ve been blessed with human guardians I trust and love:
1. My wife Naomi, not only for having put with me in my moments of depression and heartache, but for loving me with the truth, correcting me with grace and building me up with wisdom and God’s Word.
2. Our Leadership Team who I highly respect and truly look up to in so many ways.
a. Their commitment to the church is a blessing word cannot describe.
b. Their love for me has carried me through many hard moments.
c. Their wisdom helped me take godly decisions.
d. Their labour for the church and God’s kingdom has freed me to focus on ministering to our church within my role.
I thank God for the elders and deacons of Vision Church.
The way they protect my heart is by speaking openly and lovingly into my life:
- Pointing out to my blind spots.
- Helping me be aware of my own insecurities.
- Hearing me when I’m in a good place and when I’m in a painful season.
- Praying for me, praying with me.
3. I have guardians in form of friends I pray with every single week.
4. I have guardians in form of people like Pastor Paul whose wealth of experience in pastoral ministry and life has been a sounding board over the past 5 years.
a. If I come across as wise at times, that’s because Pastor Paul receives texts from me where I ask him “What would you do in this situation?”
I’ve learned to guard my heart by inviting and giving permission and authority to godly people to speak into my life, whenever they see fit.
Recently I was being interviewed for a Ministry Training Process I might start this year and one of the questions I was asked was about my “support network”. I was once again reminded in my answers that I am truly blessed, not because I have a support network, but because I have GUARDIANS of MY HEART!
“The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good,
and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil,
for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.”
Luke 6:45
Out of the overflow of the heart, the passage from Proverbs above says:
“Keep your mouth free of perversity; keep corrupt talk far from your lips.
Let your eyes look straight ahead; fix your gaze directly before you.
Give careful thought to the paths for your feet and be steadfast in all your ways.”
While our eyes and ears serve as guardians of our hearts, our mouth, lips, hands and feet serve as conduits from which the water of the heart flows in either fresh or stale form.
Whatever your mouth will release comes from the reserves of your heart.
More important than what comes out of my mouth is what I store in my heart.
Christianity was never supposed to be a religion for behaviour modification.
Christianity is about the Gospel that produces HEART TRANSFORMATION!
The reserves of your heart will determine the integrity of your walk.
“Do not turn to the right or the left; keep your foot from evil.”
I don’t like to call myself a man of integrity, but I can say that I aim for integrity in my speech and conduct, intentionally. And if I’ve been successful in this at times, it’s not because I focus on the outward behaviour, but I focus on the inward transformation of the heart.
- God is calling us to guard our hearts before we guard our behaviour!
- God is calling us to guard our hearts rather than guarding our IMAGE before others!
If we desire to be a healthy church, or church leaders, we must first become healthy disciples of Christ. And health comes from the inside out.
Spiritual Health is a Fruit of a Guarded Heart.
Speaking to my own congregation I said:
“We need to guard our heart as a church as well!” Over the past 5 years, that’s what our desire has been - for Vision Church to be a healthy church. We don’t aim for perfection, that’s futile. But we aim for health. Healthy things grow - but we must grow healthy at a sustainable pace. And most importantly, we must grow healthy according to Jesus’ Vision for us.”
The Church has her own Guardian as well.
- A Guardian who promised to build the church.
- A Guardian who promised to protect the church.
- A Guardian who promised to Sanctify the church.
Ultimately, though my eyes and ears may fail in protecting my heart. Though my wife, leaders or friends may not always have the strength and energy to guard my heart, I know someone who is the ULTIMATE GUARDIAN.
He is the strongest, most powerful wise GUARDIAN AND PROTECTOR OF THE HEART!
His Name is Jesus!
“And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding,
will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
(Philippians 4:7-8)
And this verse continues with something quite practical that can serve as a “checklist” for whatever we allow in our heart:
“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right,
whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable
—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.
Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me
—put it into practice.
And the God of peace will be with you.”
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