Verse: You, God, are my God earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water. - Psalms 63:11Topic: What does it mean to "Guard Your Heart?
Personal Piece: A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to speak in the two Campus Life clubs that I help out with. For those who don't know, Campus Life is a club that takes place in high schools around the country. It is an opportunity for students to connect with other Christian students in their schools, grow in their faith and most importantly introduce their non-Christian friends to the love of Christ. This particular week I was asked to speak on what it meant to "Guard your Heart". Over these last few weeks I've discovered that guarding and longing go hand in hand. So let's take a closer look.
Thought of the Week: "Guarding Your Heart" is a popular part of Christian lingo but very few people really talk about what it means or why it's important. I grew up my whole life "Guarding M
y Heart" but to me it meant following a bunch of rules that eventually led to me building really thick walls around my heart in an effort to "Guard". No one ever taught me that keeping my heart safe didn't necessarily mean closing out the pain. Let's just get one thing straight before moving on, pain happens, you CANNOT escape it. But what happens to your heart when you encounter that pain, makes all the difference.
At the end of last year, I took a six week vacation. One of those weeks I spent at the International House of Prayer (IHOP) doing one of their week-long intensives studying the Song of Solomon among many other things. I think I learned more about God in that one week then I did in my entire 4-years of Bible College. I ended my vacation by returning to Kansas City for IHOP's annual One Thing Conference. As amazing as the conference was, I felt like I had hit a wall. I didn't feel possible for me to learn anything else about God after all the revelation I had received just three weeks before and was still processing.
Toward the end of the week I was sitting during worship and conversing with God. I told him that I didn't feel like crying. I wanted to encounter him and receive new revelations of him but I didn't want to feel the pain. Shouldn't being with him be pleasurable? I could feel his presence in the room but the walls around my heart were keeping him at a distance. His presence is overwhelming and I didn't feel like being overwhelmed. I'm glad I didn't hold up against it because what followed was one of the most amazing experiences I have ever had.
I could feel the presence of God moving around me, could see him touching others while I sat there, refusing to be moved. My friends were engaging and I wanted to engage too, I just didn't want to cry. I had resigned myself to not having that kind of experience. It was fine, I thought, I don't have to have an emotional reaction every time. I could still sing his praises and experience his presence next time. Then he simply whispered to my heart "I am about to birth something in you beyond your imagining. But you have to stop fighting the labor pains." I don't think I could ever quite express the effect that those words had on me. I can only say that I've never felt closer to my Jesus as I did in that moment.
It was in that moment that I realized (though I couldn't put it into words at the time) that I had been guarding my heart so closely that I had even been guarding it from Jesus. I have since learned that guarding my heart doesn't mean to keep it closed off and protected from those who might want to harm me, though I do need to be wise in my interactions. Rather guarding my heart means to fill the longing in my heart with the only one who can truly fill it.
We all have that longing deep within us that cannot be fully explained. Most young people want to fill it with relationships of any kind that they can get their hands on. When I was in high school I stayed in far too many relationships that were not healthy in an attempt to fill that longing in my heart. I stayed with friends who were fake and a boyfriend who was immature but none of them could fill me. When adults tell their children to guard their hearts, they are generally telling their children to be careful when they're dating, to not expose too much to quickly or to stay pure in their thoughts and emotions. But it goes so much farther than that.
I still fight to guard my heart and yes, I do still want to remain pure in my thoughts and emotions, I still want to be careful in my relationships with both friends and any guy I might date. Not everyone has our best interests in mind and not every person we might be attracted to is going to encourage your purity. We have to be careful to guard our hearts. And how do we do that? By filling the longings of our heart with Jesus. Only he can heal our hearts when we've been hurt. Only he can protect our hearts when we take a chance at love. Only he soften our hearts when we've been betrayed. Only he can truly understand the longings of our hearts because he is the one who put them there. When we stop expecting others to fill that void only then can we experience true freedom and healing.
Digging Deeper: For more information on the International House of Prayer and it's various programs click here.
If you want to know about Campus Life or would like to get involved in your area click here
Challenge: Take some time to meditate on what it means to guard your heart and evaluate how well you have been guarding your own heart. Are you letting betrayals and the circumstances of life harden you or are you allowing God to keep you soft?
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