Introduction
When I was in seminary, I lived in dormitories for four years. I had done that in college, but I was young and stupid then! I wanted to settle down, to have a place that was my own. I wanted to be near friends and family. I was pretty committed to staying in New England, and I really wanted to stay in Massachusetts. So, a month after I finished my last class, when I got a call from the pastor where I had done my internship saying his associate would be moving on to another church and inviting me to apply to replace him, I was thrilled. It seemed like God was just opening the doors.
We worked out a deal where I would essentially be the interim associate, but we called it a “contract” position, which would enable me to apply for the permanent position. I was sure this would be perfect. There was just one little thing. The focus of the position was Christian Education and Youth. I had no background in Christian Education, but I had done Youth Ministry long enough to know that that WASN’T my calling.
But other than that it was so perfect! I got along well with the pastor, I already knew the people and they had been wonderful to me.
But as the days and weeks turned into months, I was increasingly ill at ease in this position. The things that I most liked to do were the things that were essentially the Sr. Pastor’s job, things I did when he wasn’t available – preaching and teaching, hospital visitation, planning adult Bible studies.
What I like the least were the things that were really my job – like trying to start up a Jr. High Youth Group, that kind of thing. The longer I was there, the less competent I felt. It wasn’t that people were unkind to me, but I just knew I wasn’t doing the job I was supposed to be doing. And yet, I wanted desperately to make it work. I was sure I could, somehow.
After 3 or 4 months, a search committee was formed to find the person for the permanent position. Many people in the church assumed this was just a formality, that the committee would review the profiles, and in the end, would call me as the Associate Pastor and we would all live happily ever after.
What fewer people were aware of was that I hadn’t yet submitted my profile to the Committee. And what no one knew was how I was struggling with the decision to even apply for the position.
At one point I was talking to the Chair of the Search Committee, a dear lady who knew me fairly well. I don’t remember the details of the conversation very much, but I remember the impact it had on me. She was telling me what I already knew, which was if I was going to apply, I needed to get my profile to them soon. I shared with her some of my struggle, saying I just wasn’t sure yet. She gently suggested that if God was calling me to that position, it wouldn’t be so hard to take such a simple step as sending my profile to the committee.
Finally in an agonizing conversation with my Sr. Pastor, he said, “Mary, I’m sure you can do this job if you want to, I’m just not sure you want to.” If he’d kicked me in the head it would probably have been easier to take. I realized that he saw through me; he saw clearly what I had refused to see at all. My heart just wasn’t in it. Shortly after that, I told the Committee Chair I would not be submitting my profile to be considered as a candidate for the position.
Why am I telling you all this? Because it illustrates the reality of our verse today. “Above all else, guard your heart for it is the well-spring of life.”
The Book of Proverbs is considered one of the “Wisdom Books” in the Bible
The Old Testament contains the Books of the Law, Historical Books, Books of Prophecy – and Wisdom Books
The book of Proverbs was written primarily to instruct young people in how to live wisely
Of course, even those of us who are no longer young still need to learn to live wisely
Especially in these first few chapters, we hear the voice of a father who is exhorting his children to listen to the instruction of the wisdom
and to learn to live wisely
In the midst of these many exhortations to “Grab hold of wisdom” we find these words,
“Above all –”
that is more than anything else
you may have said to your kids, “If you don’t listen to anything else I say, listen to this”
that’s what this father is saying
“Above all, guard your heart –”
Protect your heart
Keep your eye on it
Make sure it doesn’t get away from you
Make sure it doesn’t dry up because you’re not paying attention to it
Obviously, that doesn’t just mean eat lots of oatmeal so it’ll keep your cholesteral down
Although I suppose that’s a good idea!
The writer isn’t talking about taking care of our physical hearts
He is talking about taking care of our inner being
“Above all, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.”
Why should we guard our hearts?
Because the quality of your life is determined by the state of your heart
When we give our lives to Christ, the Scripture tells us that Jesus comes to dwell in our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
Sometimes this can be a difficult concept to get hold of
I heard a story about a 7-yr.-old girl who told her three-year-old sister that she had found Jesus and that she had hidden him in her heart. Not to be outdone, the younger girl later told her mother that she also had found Jesus and that she hid him under the bed.
Another little girl came up to her Mom and said, "I know that Jesus lives inside my heart. But how do I tell him I love him? Do you think if I write ’I love you’ on a piece of paper and eat it, he’ll get the note?"
But maybe the reason kids come up with this kind of stuff is because at least they’re trying to figure out what it means!
What DOES it mean that Jesus dwells in our hearts through faith?
At least in part, it means that where Jesus is – is in the deepest parts of our being
And maybe the reason we feel so out of touch with Him at times is because we are so out of touch with our own hearts.
When I was struggling about my decision to try to keep the Associate Pastor position in Mass., I didn’t want to listen to my heart.
I prayed and begged God to show me the answer, but I wouldn’t listen to the answer – which was so obvious when I stopped letting my desires for lesser things get in the way.
I REALLY didn’t want to move again
I wanted to stay in a familiar place
It felt comfortable and safe – at least in some ways
I didn’t want to start over AGAIN as a stranger in a strange place
And yet, my heart was telling me to move on
And I was expending huge amounts of emotional energy to ignore it.
I had not guarded my heart, I had beaten it into submission. I had done everything I could to keep it quiet, because the truths it was telling me were too hard to hear.
In Ezekiel 36:26, the Lord says, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”
When we come into relationship with Christ, it is our heart that is transformed
It is in our heart that Christ dwells
And it is our heart through which God speaks to us.
And that is why we need to guard our hearts
Henri Nouwen, who was a Roman Catholic priest and a man of deep devotion to Christ said this:
I often think: "A life is like a day; it goes by so fast. If I am so careless with my days, how can I be careful with my life?" I know that somehow I have not fully come to believe that urgent things can wait while I attend to what is truly important. It finally boils down to a question of deep and strong conviction. Once I am truly convinced that preparing the heart is more important than preparing the Christmas tree, I will be a lot less frustrated at the end of a day.
So often we take these new hearts given to us by God, these hearts of flesh that have replaced the hearts of stone, and we clutter them with so much trivia that we lose the sense of what is truly important.
Years ago a little booklet was published with the title “The Tyranny of the Urgent.”
The title is so good you almost don’t need the booklet!
In it, the author talks about how easy it is to allow our lives to be so consumed with whatever is screaming the loudest that we lose track of what is truly important
One of the values of something like New Year’s Resolutions is that the writing of them causes us – at least for a few brief moments – to consider the bigger picture, to think about what is really important in life.
A. W. Tozer, another wonderful devotional writer said this:
The widest thing in the universe is not space; it is the potential capacity of the human heart. Being made in the image of God, it is capable of almost unlimited extension in all directions. And one of the world’s greatest tragedies is that we allow our hearts to shrink until there is room in them for little besides ourselves.
When was the last time you sat back and took stock of your priorities?
What is most valuable in your life?
Once you have thought about that, take a look at whether your life reflects those priorities
When you ask the question, “What is most important in my life? If I knew this was the last year of my life – if I knew I’d meet Jesus face to face before I celebrated another New Year’s – what would I do with the next several months?”
And if that’s what’s most important, why am I not doing it now?
And if I don’t make the time to do it now, why do I think I’ll find it tomorrow or next week or next month or next year?
Conclusion
I read the story of a man whose car overheated and was stranded in the desert out West. As the sun baked down on him, he knew he had to find water and get help soon. He wondered in around in an area that looked like there might have been some kind of settlement there at some point. Soon, his throat became raw from lack of water. When he realized he wasn’t even perspiring anymore, he knew his body was rapidly becoming seriously dehydrated. Just then, he saw what looked like an old pump handle with a tin can hanging from it. Inside the can was this note:
Dear Friend,
I fixed up this old pump and it works fine – But the leather washer dries out and the pump has to be primed. So under the white rock to the north I’ve buried a bottle of water, out of the sun and corked up.
There’s enough water in the bottle to prime the pump, but not if you take a drink first. Pour about one-fourth of the water and let it soak the leather washer. Then pour in the rest medium fast and pump like crazy. You’ll get water all the water you could want.
This well has never run dry. Have some faith. Then, when you’ve pumped all the water you need, fill the bottle and put it back where you found it for the next feller who travels this path.
The note was signed: Desert Pete
That old pump was the source of life for the one who was wandering around in the desert, just like our hearts are the wellspring of our life. But just like the pump, if we don’t take care of it, we will find our hearts dried up and empty.
The tyranny of the urgent would say, “If you find a bottle of water in the desert, drink it now!!” But how short sighted it is to drink a little bottle of hot water, when you could have a river of clean cold fresh water.
Jesus said.
John 7:38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him."
The inmost being = our hearts.
After agonizing over whether to give up a fairly secure ministry position, one which I was poorly suited for and which I really didn’t enjoy, I listened to the Lord who had been speaking all along in my heart if I had slowed down enough to listen. And when I gave up my great plans for my life… that really weren’t working out all that great for me, God gave me what was truly the desire of my heart.
