Why Your Heart Is Your Greatest Treasure to Protect

Unlock the power of heart change through a real and intimate connection with Jesus. Explore the practical steps to deepening your relationship.

Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.
Proverbs 4:23

The only one who can desire heart change for yourself is you. The only one who can help bring that change is Jesus. All the sermons, books, inspirational quotes won’t help you if you don’t truly desire a deeper relationship with Jesus. If you aren’t putting His Truth into action in your life, His power won’t be released.

The practical works you do don’t mean much if your heart isn’t devoted to Jesus. A real, intimate connection with Jesus is the only way to bring heart change. The choice is in your hands.

There are many things the Bible addresses when it comes to the heart but we’re going to focus on just two.

Store Up Good Things in Your Heart

A good person produces good out of the good stored up in his heart. An evil person produces evil out of the evil stored up in his heart, for his mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart.
Luke 6:45a

As a follower of Jesus, your heart is linked with heaven. The good you feed it is stored there. Good deeds. Good thoughts. Good things. Anything done in love which comes from God is stored in your heart and any action you take from that good is treasure that is stored up in heaven.

The Word of God, love, forgiveness, grace, faith, wisdom, joy, humility, gratitude…just to name a few.

Guarding your heart and storing treasures in it is your greatest gift back to God.

The more good things we sow, the more Jesus will overtake our hearts. But there are two sides to this coin. We must also purge the evil from our hearts.

Purge the Evil Things Out of Your Heart

Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
-James 4:8

“The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick; who can understand it? I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.” –
Jeremiah 17:9-10

The evil or worldly things we allow to be stored in our hearts don’t produce anything good. They often promise us false hope and fulfillment that they never deliver on. Instead they rob us of Truth and choke out any good we stored up.

Intellectually, we know that good is more powerful than evil so we think we can handle consistently taking in lustful romance novels or coveting the lives we see on social media. We justify it to ourselves and believe we’re strong enough to handle it and not allow it to effect us.

But just like a garden, good plants can only take so many weeds before the weeds begin stealing all the nutrients from them. A constant concentration of evil desires will eventually suck out all the good and destroy us.

Maybe for you it’s not lust or envy. Maybe it’s gossip or lying. Perhaps it’s selfishness and the world needs to revolve around you and your feelings. Things that destroy relationships tend to be at the center of what God sees as evil—Slander, pride, arrogance, lying, causing discord.

Other evil things include those that destroy your relationship with God more directly: idolatry, hypocrisy.

So how can you protect your heart from evil?

3 Ways to Protect Your Heart

1. Fill it with the Word of God

I cannot stress this practice enough: we must be in the Word every day. We are so blessed to have access to the Bible and the ability to read it. We should not take that for granted but instead take much advantage of the opportunity. If we say we are following Jesus, we need to know His Truth to follow Him.

If you struggle to understand the Bible, there are so many tools out there to help you. Start with Jen Wilkin’s “Women of the Word”.

2. Avoid idols of the heart

Anything that is bigger than God in your life is an idol. If it’s your problems, if it’s your career, if it’s your children or your spouse. Relationships are important to God, yes! All of His commandments center around having an intimate, powerful relationship with Him as well as having deep, healthy relationships with others. When we begin to put things above God—especially ourselves, not only does it taint our intimacy with Him, it will hurt our relationship with others. He must be bigger and above all things.

3. Take care what you put in your mind

Certain movies, books, media, music, social media can all have an impact on cultivating the soil of our hearts.

I have to say, I think the biggest offender today is social media. We scroll, we watch, and we listen to people—whether in the faith or in the world—offer wisdom, share snippets of their lives (skewing reality), influencing us to think a certain way. We soak it in because we do it every day—many times a day. It absolutely begins to take root in our hearts.

Now, not everything on social media is bad. There are lots of people doing plenty of good and sharing God’s word. But there are lots and lots of illusions, too. Even among Christians. It’s not that people are bad or wrong for not sharing their entire lives on the Internet. No one should do that. But our brains don’t actively seek out to separate that what we see isn’t the full picture.

We keep scrolling and most every person shares the best highlights of their lives. So our brain creates these pathways that we automatically go to, believing real life is always centered around me and constant perfection all the time.

Conversely, we take in all the negativity of other people, so we walk around with a negative mindset all the time. We start to believe everyone is out to get us or that life is depressing. This is all breeding ground for allowing evil in and then spewing it out on others.

Jesus’ sacrifice cleansed us of sin, yes! We simply need to worship Him with our lives because He is worthy of that. His gift was free but following Him will cost us wanting to do things our own way.

But He promises His ways are so much better — so what does it really cost us?

Dear Papa God,
Your Word has much to say about the heart and though it may be painful to be confronted with, please search mine and show me what I need to purge. Replace the evil with your goodness. In Jesus’ name. Amen

Meditate on this Truth: I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Psalm 119:11

For Further Study: Matthew 13:1-23

For Further Reading: Seeking a Heart Like His {A Bible study on David} by Beth Moore

Christin Slade