Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. Proverbs 4.23
Scripture describes our heart as being the center of our feelings, reasoning, and thought – in a sense, the core of who we are as individuals. It’s reasonable to think that God is very much concerned with how we safeguard our heart and protect it from evil – for it may turn evil itself. If you do a simple search throughout Scripture on heart you’ll find many passages that make mention of things like “the Lord looks at the heart,” “the human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked,” or “O Lord, you have examined my heart and know everything about it.”
So how are we doing on guarding our heart? What about the hearts of our kids? Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be breaking down several areas where we as parents are called to guard the hearts of our kids – and ourselves. These areas will include movies and television, music, internet and phone usage, and online gaming. We hope that each week we can give you a practical tip and resources that’ll help you in leveraging those things to fulfill your calling.
In Philippians Paul gives us a great list of things that we should fix our thoughts on: And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. 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. Philippians 4.8-9
And the God of peace will be with you. What a powerful promise. If we as parents fix our thoughts on what is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and worthy of praise – then we can have and experience the peace of God in our homes in ways we’ve never imagined.
Practical Tip: Pray for the Lord’s help in guarding the hearts of you and your children.
One of my favorite biblical prayers is the prayer of David in Psalm 19.14: May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.
We’ve been taught and teach our kids this simple truth – garbage in, garbage out. If what we consume is garbage in the eyes of the Lord we can know that garbage is what we can expect to come out in our attitudes, our conversations, and in our homes. Instead, may the prayer of David be the prayer of our homes. That the words said, the things we think on, what we watch and consume, may they be things that please the Lord - and then we can expect the peace of God to be present in our lives.
- Pastor Matt
Be sure to check out the upcoming posts for practical tips in many areas on how we can guard the hearts of our kids in the home. As we post, we’ll link back to them on this blog as well.