Life #36 - Love is the Heart's Guard



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Existing within the heart are two great extremes, love and hate. We’ve just learned in Blog #35 how love can strengthen us in the face of prolonged difficulties; how love, if maintained, neither diminishes with passing time, nor collapses under escalating challenges and stresses. Yet, if left unguarded, the heart, which is a source of power, also has the capacity to hurt!

For practicing Christians, love can be a guard that prevents the heart from deliberately hurting anyone. Still, it will require a lot of effort on our part to continue to love and remain loving. Isn’t it difficult to love someone we don’t like? To try to replace hate with love not only irritates us, it confuses our mind. It even agitates our sin-nature, which treats love as a foreign object, to be thrown far away. However, until we get rid of our hate, we will always fail at love. If we fail at love, then we will also fail at life. That’s why, after we clean the heart, Scripture advises us:

“Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life” (Proverbs 4:23 NIV).

Proverbs state that those who keep words of wisdom and understanding within their hearts will find life and health for their bodies. Furthermore, and most important for those who want to remain alive until the Lord’s return, Christians who guard, protect, and maintain their hearts in an environment of love, will enjoy an unending flow of life (Proverbs 4:22, 23 NIV)!

Scripture quotations from the New International Version (NIV) unless otherwise noted; excerpts are taken from our book to be released next year.