There is a God and you’re not him. This God has created you in his image and blessed you with a heart, but when his written revelation talks about your “heart,” you shouldn’t envision the muscle in your chest that pumps blood throughout your body. Your “heart” is the wellspring of what your Creator refers to as your “inner being.” It’s the center of your consciousness and the source of your thinking. Your heart is the fount of your feelings, the seat of your affections, the root of your decisions. Those things that Solomon described as “the springs of life” in Proverbs 4:23—your emotions, dreams, attachments, allegiances, determinations, words, actions, and reactions—all flow from the fountain of your heart. As a result, your heart has immeasurable value.
Keep your heart with all vigilance,
for from it flow the springs of life.
Here’s the one thought I really want to keep at the forefront of my mind today and I challenge you to do the same: my heart can so easily be turned. If my heart is the fount of my feelings and the source of my thinking, as my attention and affections turn, so the course of my life is ultimately determined.
How sadly ironic that the wise author of Proverbs 4:23 is the tragic subject of 1 Kings 11:1-8:
Now King Solomon loved many foreign women, along with the daughter of Pharaoh: Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women, from the nations concerning which the LORD had said to the people of Israel, “You shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they with you, for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods.” Solomon clung to these in love. He had 700 wives, who were princesses, and 300 concubines. And his wives turned away his heart. For when Solomon was old his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the LORD his God, as was the heart of David his father. For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. So Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the LORD and did not wholly follow the LORD, as David his father had done. Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Molech the abomination of the Ammonites, on the mountain east of Jerusalem. And so he did for all his foreign wives, who made offerings and sacrificed to their gods.
Solomon loved many foreign women. How did that come to be? His attention and affections were turned. The fount of his feelings and the source of his thinking did not remain “wholly true to the LORD his God.” Solomon saw, wanted, took, and “clung to” the very influences God had repeatedly warned him and his forefathers about. In the “clinging,” his heart was “turned away” after other gods, and that turning ultimately determined the course of his life. “Solomon went after” and “did” and “built” as a result of the turning of his heart.
The circumstances are different and a lot of history has unfolded since, but this core truth is worth meditating upon throughout the day: my heart, your heart, can so easily be turned. Want to make that practical? What will get your attention today? In what directions and on what subjects will you focus? What will you read? What will you watch? To whom will you listen? What or who will be the guide of your wandering mind? How will you spend your down time? What will fill the margins and form the background of your day? What voices have access? What personalities have a seat at the table of your heart?
There is a God and you’re not him. He’s blessed us with hearts–wellsprings of emotions, dreams, attachments, allegiances, determinations, words, actions, and reactions. Let’s fortify and guard those hearts today, keeping them “wholly true” to him, the fount of every blessing.
O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness like a fetter
Bind my wand’ring heart to Thee;
Never let me wander from Thee,
Never leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.
– Robert Robinson (1758)