Admit it, if you were born before 1990, you’ve got the sound of a wicked guitar riff in your head right now, you’re probably on the verge of shouting out the next line of the song. You may possibly have an irrational urge to reach for a can of Aquanet.
If you were born after 1990, you have no idea what I’m talking about and you should probably stop reading now. Just kidding, this post has nothing to do with a 1980s hair metal song. I just had the lyrics running through my head as I started to write and I wanted to get them stuck in your head, too. You’re welcome. As much wisdom as Bon Jovi packed into their lyrics, I want to talk about a different source of ancient wisdom relevant to our hearts.
Have you ever snapped at your kids, felt frustrated with your wife or husband, or felt resentful toward your boss or coworkers? Have you ever gotten angry in traffic, been impatient with other people, or rushed to judgment? I find myself doing these things far more often than I like, and they always leave me feeling regret, remorse, and revulsion. What if there was a way we could limit the occurrences of these outbursts and protect ourselves against them?
King Solomon, who is known as the wisest man who ever lived, in both Biblical and non-Biblical circles, left us a piece of wisdom that we often overlook. In a section of the Proverbs where Solomon was trying to impart wisdom to his sons, he says:
Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.
Proverbs 4:23 NIV
We’re really good these days at guarding things. We have locks on our homes and our cars. We’ve also added security doors and ring doorbells. The door locks on our cars aren’t enough either, we have to park them in garages. We have fences around our yards. Many of us have security systems, cameras, and floodlights. That’s a lot of effort and money that goes into protecting our physical stuff.
We’ve also found ways to guard our information. We have passwords on our accounts. But a password isn’t enough for most accounts these days, we must have two-factor authentication, 3 different security questions, fingerprints, social security numbers, and the name of our 5th cousin on our mother’s side. We can’t even use the same password for multiple accounts anymore, and we have to change them every 2 hours or we get locked out. We’ve gotten so concerned about guarding our digital information that there’s a whole industry dedicated to managing our passwords for us, and protecting us from viruses and malware.
As a species, we’ve gotten very good at guarding our things and our information. But we often forget to guard the one thing that the wisest man in history counseled us to guard above all else. Guarding our stuff is easy. There are visible mechanisms for doing it well, and there is history showing us what works and what doesn’t. Guarding our hearts is more difficult. What does that mean, why is it that important, and how would I do it even if I wanted to?
I heard something from Dr. Wayne Dyer once that has always stuck with me. He posed the question: “What comes out of an orange when you squeeze it?” No, it’s not a trick question. The answer is obvious. What comes out is orange juice. Why does orange juice come out of an orange when you squeeze it? Because that’s what’s inside the orange. Dr. Dyer contends that the same is true of people. When you squeeze people, through fatigue, stress, trauma, or anything else, what comes out is what was inside of them.
Solomon told us the same thing roughly 3000 years ago:
For pressing milk produces curds, pressing the nose produces blood, and pressing anger produces strife.
Proverbs 30:33 ESV
It’s also something Jesus discussed with his disciples:
For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.
Matthew 15:19 ESV
The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of the evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.
Luke 6:45
If we carry around discord, jealousy, anger, hostility, selfishness, slander, gossip, conceit, and disorder (2 Corinthians 12:20) then that’s what comes out when we get squeezed. If we are filled with love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23), then that’s what comes out when we get squeezed.
Guarding your heart is just like guarding anything else. You’re trying to keep the right things in and the wrong things out. You do that the same way Solomon would have done it 3000 years ago. You construct strategic barriers, post watchmen, and install sophisticated alarm systems.
Practically speaking, this means barriers like content blockers on your web browsers, avoiding movies that celebrate or condone the things you don’t want in your life, and limiting the amount of time you spend with hateful and discouraging people. It means having friends to act as watchmen; friends that you’ve given the responsibility of holding you to your own standards.
I enjoy consuming educational and motivational content. I recently discovered Gary Vaynerchuk, or GaryVee as he’s more commonly known, and I really liked him. He doesn’t pull his punches. He’s brutally honest and forces you to face uncomfortable truths about yourself, but he manages to do it in a motivating way.
I subscribed to his YouTube channel and started listening to him a lot. The only problem with that (for me) is that his favorite word starts with an F. I don’t consider myself a prude or anything, so I continued watching and listening to him.
Then one night I woke up from a dream that was full of cursing and the type of language that I don’t want to be known for. Can you guess why that came out of my mind while I slept? Because that’s what I was filling it with. In the software world, this is known as garbage in, garbage out. As much as I enjoyed his message, I decided to unsubscribe from GaryVee.
Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying that you should never hang around with anyone who has bad habits. I’m not saying that you can never listen to or watch anything with occasional bad language or violence. I am saying that you should pay attention to your behavior and consider the effect that those things are having on you. If you’re going to consume that sort of media, then I’m suggesting you do it consciously with full awareness of the potential impacts.
Another key to guarding your heart is pausing to pay attention to the alarms when they go off. Excess stress, health problems, sleep problems, anger, and depression. All of these and more are alarms that tell us we need to spend some time examining our hearts.
Keeping the right things inside the heart is easier than keeping the bad things out. Sometimes the best defense is a good offense. The more you fill your heart with the things you want in there, the less room there is for the things that you don’t want. Anyone who has ever taken care of a lawn knows that the best way to keep out the weeds is to make sure there’s plenty of grass.
Read, watch, and listen to things that fill your heart with stuff worth guarding and protecting. Things like the Bible, poetry, or philosophy. Things that spark gratitude and thankfulness. Movies that celebrate morality, heroism, and goodness. Music that is uplifting and full of peace and joy.
Solomon, the wisest man in history, told us to be very careful what we watch, what we listen to, what we read, and what we feel, because ultimately those things drive who we are and what we do. The Roman emperor and famous stoic Marcus Aurelius echoed that sentiment when he wrote:
The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.
Marcus Aurelius
In today’s information age, we are exposed to more media on a daily basis than any other generation in history. With the algorithms of Facebook and YouTube, the recommendations of Netflix, Prime, and Hulu, and all of the other marketing out there, we no longer even have complete control of what offers we see. That’s what makes guarding our hearts vitally important today.
In Proverbs 4:23 Solomon tells us that “…everything you do flows from it.” I think the orange analogy perfectly illustrates what Solomon meant. You have to be on guard about what you allow into your heart, because when you get squeezed (and you will, often) whatever you’ve stored up inside will come out. You get to decide what comes out by controlling what you allow in. So above all else, guard your heart, because whatever the state of it, you’re to blame.
