Growth
Protecting Your Heart
Guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.
Scripture commands us to guard our hearts above all else because everything flows from it. Your heart is the wellspring of your life: your desires, motivations, decisions, and actions all originate there. What you allow in shapes what comes out. A polluted heart produces a polluted life.
Guarding your heart isn't about being closed off or emotionally unavailable. It's about being intentional about what you let in and what you cultivate internally. It's about protecting the source of everything that matters.
What Threatens Your Heart
What you consume: Media, content, conversations. Everything you take in affects your inner life.
What you dwell on: The thoughts you let linger become the thoughts that shape you.
Who you spend time with: Relationships shape your heart more than you realize.
Unprocessed wounds: Hurts that aren't healed fester and poison from within.
Temptation: Things that pull your heart away from what matters most.
You don't accidentally end up with a pure heart or a corrupted one. It's the result of thousands of small choices about what you let in, what you dwell on, and what you cultivate.
Guarding Practically
- Filter inputs: Be intentional about what you watch, read, and listen to.
- Manage thoughts: Don't let destructive thoughts run unchecked. Challenge them.
- Choose relationships wisely: Spend time with people who strengthen, not weaken, your character.
- Process wounds: Deal with hurts rather than letting them fester.
- Set boundaries: Know your vulnerabilities and protect against them.
What to Cultivate
Guarding is defensive. But you also need to cultivate the good: gratitude, love, truth, hope, faith. Fill your heart with good things, and there's less room for the bad. What you feed grows. What you starve dies.
Your Action Steps
This week: Audit what you're consuming. Is it building you up or tearing you down?
This month: Identify one thing that's corrupting your heart. Eliminate it.
This quarter: Build practices that cultivate the good: gratitude, prayer, time with good people.