Guard Your Spiritual Heart
Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it
Proverbs 4:23
For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart. (1 Samuel16:7) We live out of our spiritual heart, because it contains our beliefs, desires, and thoughts. The Lord looks at our hearts and determines if we believe his Word, if our desires are to serve him motivated from a heart of love, and if our thoughts reveal he is first in our lives.
Satan desires to get a foothold into our hearts because he knows it is not pleasing to God. Do not give the devil a foothold. (Ephesians 4:27) With the power of our own justification, it is easy to give Satan a foothold without even realizing it. We justify our desires because we are biased when we evaluate our hearts, and we cannot always evaluate that our hearts that is pleasing to God. To overcome this situation, we take a careful inventory of ourselves looking at our heart from God’s perspective. We pray and ask the Lord, “Am I doing anything that may not be pleasing to You?” Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you–unless indeed you fail the test? (2 Corinthians 13:5)
Satan is always tempting us to deviate from a heart for God by causing us to have a divided heart. Satan knows God looks at our hearts and his desire is to slightly change our hearts so we don’t even notice. Let us test and examine our ways, and return to the Lord! (Lamentations 3:40) Satan is the great deceiver and knows how to attack each of his because he monitors our actions and know our weaknesses.
Today guard your heart, through prayer, knowing the truth of the Word, and through Christian fellowship. Be aware of any temptations from Satan, because all his temptations are not pleasing to God.
Prayer: Lord, let the Spirit guide me today, and help me to not be deceived by Satan’s temptations to divide my heart. I know that I am biased in my evaluation, so let the Spirit guide me in your truth. In Jesus name, Amen