A Guarded Heart

“Dating is a bit like diving in the deep end. Sometimes you’ve just gotta throw yourself in.”- Rebecca St. James What is he thinking?

What does it mean to guard our hearts? Glad you asked. I have been thinking a lot about matters of the heart lately, and how sometimes we (myself included) over spiritualize dating/relationships. God totally revolutionized the way I saw a guarded heart recently and I pray he is going to do the same thing for you. This is one of those times when I would just love to sit down with each of you over coffee and hear all different phrases that you would use to describe this thing we call "a guarded heart."

Here are a few that may come to mind:

Discernment in our relationships, just that word “guarding,” seems to draw this mental image of a shield over our hearts. To protect our hearts--there is a protection that goes with guarding. Well, we've got to be careful what we let in our hearts. We've got to be wise, deliberate, and watchful. We need to not always believe our hearts" (Jeremiah 17:9).

Now I want to say something to you because I think it is very important to make this interjection and to make the distinction between the two (guarding & not believing our hearts). When we are filled by the spirit of God, and when I use that terminology this is what I mean:  That when we come to receive Christ Jesus as our personal savior, his Holy Spirit comes to dwell in us immediately. Not later, immediately! And we are as filled by him as we are yielded to him. So the more I want to follow after him, the more I seek to walk with him, the more I yield to his authority and to his freedom and to his precepts and the more filled I am by the spirit and the more he has overtaken me. So really, it is only the heart in its natural state, in its carnal state, if I have not given myself over to the spirit of God that day -- now he hasn't gone anywhere, he is just quenched within me -- but if I'm just going to live out of my flesh that day, then my heart will deceive me. But I do want you to know if you're walking with God and you're filled by the spirit and he is sanctifying your heart there are a whole lot of things that you can believe that your heart tells you -- a whole lot of things. So it depends on what shape our hearts are in. I am not saying be led by feelings, but what I am saying is that our emotions and feelings do get to be of some factor.

Dating shouldn’t be the minefield we make it out to be. Dating/Courting is simply intentionally getting to know someone to figure out (with God) if this is whom He has for you to marry. You don’t have to already know if this is the person you will spend the rest of your life with to go out for coffee or dinner, and this is were “guarding your heart” comes in.

“Dating often feels so threatening, doesn’t it? It’s like being put to the test, over and over again. Braving the potentially cold, possibly shark-ridden waters of relationships can be ultra scary. But let’s face it…it’s worth it. The joys of dating, the lessons learned and the potential life mate that will come of it are the lollies, music, and spinning ride of dating. Fear must be put aside. “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear” (1 John 4:18). We cannot let fear reign in our dating decisions. Like many other things in life the dating experience is full of ups and downs, lessons to be learned, and things to discover about yourself, God and others. - Rebecca St. James: What Is He Thinking?

This thought has been on my mind and heart the last few days in terms of what it means to guard our hearts in dating:

Watch over what you let in and out of you heart because everything in life will be affected by the condition of your heart—so keep watch over. When we think of guarding our heart we typically mean guarding them from someone, and that has a place, but I am learning that in the context of relationships we need to learn to approach them with wisdom, and discernment so that we are, get this, freed up in our love.

When people would say, “guard your heart” I would translate that to mean that I needed to “be careful, or be fearful of this person” not just simply “approach this with wisdom.” If you are anything like me when someone tells me to guard my heart that means that I need to put walls up around my heart and not let anyone in, and that is not what that verse is telling us at all.

To guard is to: watch over, to keep in view of. Not, live in fear of that person hurting you or breaking your heart; so be sure to keep them at a safe distance so no one gets hurt. To love anyone (not just romantically) is to risk being hurt. Jesus is the only one who will not break our hearts or hurt us. But, that doesn’t mean we never love or trust anyone. It means we have to learn what it really means to guard our hearts!!

Our hearts affect every area in our lives, included who and how you date. That is why it is so important to keep watch over the condition of it. “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way of everlasting.” (Ps 139:23-24)

In Exodus 34:7 we pick up in the middle of God giving his self description, but I want us to lock in on some of the wording in verse seven where is says, “maintaining love to thousands…” Now at the very beginning of verse seven, no matter what translation you have, it is being translated from the same Hebrew word. But it is the same word for love that is translated so many times elsewhere.  It is that "khehsed.” But it means a fierce and loyal love. It means steadfast love. It is fiery, zealous love that is always based on some kind of bond. Guess what? That is exactly in its lexical Hebrew form exactly the same word we would find in Proverbs 4:23 for: Above all else, guard your heart for from it comes the wellspring of life! Here's what I want you to know and I found so revolutionary to me. If we want to know what it means to guard our hearts, let's see God in action guarding his heart. He maintains his love. I don't know if that ministers to anybody else but that minster to me; that he maintains his love towards me.

The word in the Hebrew if you like this kind of stuff just happens to be NASAR: and it is a word that means to watch, guard, or keep. So God is constantly maintaining this love:  He guards it, he protects it, he keeps it in view, he constantly looks at it, he guards his love.

But listen carefully because this is going to be the key. God's idea of guarding his heart is to guard himself against diminishing love. He guards his love. Now if that doesn't become revolutionary to us I'm not saying it right.  Because when you and I think about guarding our hearts, we think about guarding our hearts from people, God guards his heart for people. He is constantly protecting his heart toward you so that no matter what you do, no matter where you've been, no matter what you've experienced he will not diminish in his love for you. He protects his love for you. He never sets his enormous abounding love for you aside so that he can make a “clear-headed” decision. AMEN! HALLEJIAH!

We, on the other hand, are constantly figuring out what we need to guard our hearts against. And let's be careful not to... and let's not let this in and let's not let that out. I'm not saying that none of that applies, it does! There are things we need to be tremendously discerning about.

Philip 1:9-10 the Apostle Paul gives us such a beautiful word picture of the balance: “And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ,”

Paul wants us to love more and more, just don’t do it blindly. I want you to do it with knowledge. The Lord wants us to know our situation so that we are freed up in our love. That would be the picture, if you wanted the balance of what this guarded heart is like, when we compare how he tells us to guard our hearts and how He guards his own, that would be it. We want our love to overflow but we need to do it with wisdom and we need to do it with discernment.

But what I am about to share with you, when I finally got some of my heart and mind around it totally changed how I saw a guarded heart: the biggest priority we have would not be what we are protecting our hearts against, even though that has a place, but what we are protecting our hearts for.

Are you protecting a big love? Do you love big and do you protect your right to love big? Because what the scripture is talking about is that he guards himself against any diminishing love.  That no matter how rebellious his people would be, he would forgive if they would come to him and bend the knee -- he would forgive. So, this doesn’t just apply to dating but, friendships, family members, spouses (all sorts of relationships).

He guarded his heart consistently so that it would overflow constantly with an abounding kind of love.

Is that the way we guard or are we so scared of getting hurt that we withhold our hearts? Do we forgive quickly or do we hold onto bitterness and resentment because if we do, get this, we are not guarding our heart!

You cannot withhold your heart anyway really, our heart are always in it—it may be a cold heart, fake heart, fearful heart, doubtful heart, cynical heart, bitter heart, or happy heart, but whatever heart you’ve presently got that is the heart you are spraying all over everything and everyone in your life, because our hearts are the “wellspring of life.”

In the dating dance, shall we say, we have to learn to extend grace, and not allow the hurt that loving people can bring to take root in our hearts to the point that we become bitter, fearful or cynical about dating and relationships.  Like, I said before if we are allow those kinds of things (sin) in our hearts and take root we are not looking after the condition of our hearts. It may be that we need to allow the Lord to tend to some brokenness in our hearts. Jesus was sent to bind up the brokenhearted and proclaim freedom for the captives…to give us beauty for ashes…a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. (Isa 61:1-3)

“If you’re anything like me, fear can get in the way in dating. I sometimes feel like I want to bail before really getting to know someone, simply because it will hurt more if we’re further in emotionally and it doesn’t work out. My mum said something very wise early on in my dating years. She said that I needed to see through every relationship that had the potential for being “it” until I knew why the guy was or wasn’t the one for me. Then I could be single with a clear conscience, knowing I had done everything in my power to develop a relationship that could have led to marriage. I would then know that I hadn’t missed the one for me because of fear or not giving someone a chance.”- Rebecca St. James: What Is He Thinking (p.14)

Love is a risk, but if we learn to guard our hearts dating does not have to be this scary monster we have to be so afraid of. It can be seen as a time to simply get to know a fellow brother in Christ and seek the Lord’s will and direction for your life and his. Dating really can be fun--as long as you guard your heart.