Lucky for us. God, the creator of humans… loves us and deeply cares about us. He told us how to protect ourselves from spiritual, emotional, and relational harm. It’s all in the Bible. He told us to protect our hearts. So, what does that mean exactly?
Do we need to wear armor under our clothes or monitor our cholesterol?
Proverbs 4:23 says: Keep your heart with all vigilance. For from it, flow the Springs of life.
The Bible is referencing our heart as the source of life., It’s a source of our thoughts, emotions, actions. Let’s dig into what the Bible says about this. Just a little bit more. And I have a pro tip for you on studying the Bible.
#1 When we look at different translations of the Bible, it can help us understand even more. Let’s look at a couple of different ones.
The American standard version: Keep thy heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life.
King James version: Keep thy heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life.
New international version: Above all else. Guard your heart for everything you do flows from it.
The New Living Translation: Guard your heart above all else for it determines the course of your life.
Here’s another Bible study. Pro-tip:
#2 If we cross reference the English definitions for some of the words, it can help us understand even more. So I pulled out a couple of words from the different versions of the scriptures that we just went through, and then I applied the Google definition:
Vigilance: the act or state of keeping careful watch for possible danger or difficulties.
Diligence: careful and persistent worker effort.
Guard: watch over in order to protect or control, protect against damage or harm. Keep have a retained possession of cause to continue in a specified condition position course, et cetera,
Heart: Besides the organ that moves blood… it’s also defined as the central or innermost part of something.
God is telling us to protect our heart; our innermost being.
He says it in a strong way, because there’s something dangerous. We shouldn’t ignore such a serious warning by our creator. Let’s explore why he would tell us this. Why should we protect our heart?
From the scriptures that we just went through, we heard phrases like issues of life, everything we do, the course of your life, in the Springs of life. It sounds like what comes out of our hearts; our thoughts, our emotions, actions… come from our innermost being. If our inner being isn’t healthy or at peace, it could have a detrimental effect on our choices, our emotional wellbeing, our relationships, and it could potentially result in hurting ourself or the others around us.
From what we just heard, would it be fair to say that the quality of our life on earth, is dependent on the status of our heart.
It kind of makes you wonder, how did things get into your heart? How do things get into your inner most being. There’s a direct correlation of what gets into our heart, based on what we consume.What we see what we hear, what we allow into our mind. God is warning us to protect our heart by being very careful about what goes into our mind. It’s the same reason why we protect kids. We don’t allow them to see particular shows or movies or hear people speak language that might be inappropriate. We want to protect them. God wants the same thing for us.
Protecting our heart cannot be a passive thing. We need to be deliberate and make proactive choices. Let’s look at:
Four ways that we can proactively protect our heart.
1st – Prayer: we can ask for wisdom and protection and seek Jesus help to become more aware of those things or situations that could influence us in a negative way.
2nd -Accountability: We can seek support from our community of believers. As we share life together, we can encourage each other and speak up when we see or hear things that we know could harm us.
3rd – Forgiveness: When we let go of the negative feelings that we have when someone does something or says something that hurts us… It allows us to shield ourselves from bitterness and resentment.
4th: Be mindful of our intake: We should take an inventory of what we are consuming to make sure that we’re not putting thoughts, imagery or sounds in our minds that would negatively influence our hearts.
These are important, but I want to spend some more time on that last one: what we consume. I was listening to Sean Cannell from Think Media, He runs a very successful learning media company. You can find him on YouTube. He was talking about how much we’re exposed to advertising. In 1970, the average person saw between 500 to 1,600 ads a day. In 2007, that went up to about 5,000 ads and in 2022, it was between 6,000 to 10,000 ads a day.
Those numbers are for advertising. Those are people that are actively pursuing our attention. That doesn’t even include the things that we choose to watch or listen to. We have more choices about what we take in than probably any other time in history. TV, radio, podcasts, YouTube, streaming magazines, concerts, books, audio books, social media music, phones, touch screens, billboards, websites, and much, much more. The more we encounter these things. The more opportunities there are for thoughts, emotions, and actions to be influenced by what we’re taking in and they can become part of our life.
Not all media is created equal. There are some great forms of entertainment out there. But there are also forms of entertainment that are not so great. There are storylines, lyrics, words, and topics that do not glorify God. And in some cases, glorify sinful behavior. When we’re subject to content that celebrates sin, it influences our thinking about the severity of sin and over time, it could normalize it.
We have taken some steps at our house to help us filter out content that we think can be negatively influencing our thoughts, emotions, and actions. These don’t make you a Christian or make you a better Christian. These are not Christian rules that everybody must follow. These are not specifically in the Bible but there’s simple ideas for you to consider. If you want to take God’s warning to protect your heart more serious, maybe a few of these would sound good to you or maybe all of them do. What is important is that you’re talking to Jesus about it. After listening to this podcast, You are now more aware of God’s instructions. Talk to Jesus about what he would like you to do with this information and how to best apply it to your life. One thing that has worked for our family is to have agreed upon responses, predetermined boundaries. That are based on our own personal temptations, past experiences, triggers and our own personal desires for obedience.
People are different. So it’s important to consider what may trigger your spouse or children, just as much as what might trigger you. Not only have we had specific conversations about what we want to avoid, but we’ve also talked about what we would do if we were surprised by an encounter with content that we know is not desired. We have agreed ahead of time that we will honor each other’s requests. Either of us can ask the other to turn the channel, turn it off, can we leave together? Throw it away, return it, hang up or pray together and we’ll do it. We’ve made a family commitment and plan to help us try and protect each other.
Here are some other practical ideas for you to consider:
TV and movies: Don’t watch anything that’s rated R for language, vulgarity or violence. Be careful of storylines that celebrate or encourage the heroism or normalization of sin. Did you know that some theaters will refund your ticket if you don’t like the movie and leave early? It’s worth asking if it happens to you.
Music: Don’t listen or attend concerts that have content with foul language, or if it has vulgar or sexualized words. Find entertainment options that glorify God that encourages growth, love and lifting up others in positive ways.
Phones and Tablets: Having them is not a sin at all, but what are you doing on them? Are you spending so much time on devices that it’s preventing you from growing closer to God? Or are there apps on your devices that maybe shouldn’t be there.
Block content from streaming services: This was a great one for our family. We removed all Mature Audience shows and movies from our home screen and search results. Now we don’t even know they exist. They don’t even come up as an option to choose.
Not all streaming services have this functionality. Some just have a kid setting or an adult setting. While other services let you pick more precisely what content that you want or don’t want to see. It’s a one-time setup, which requires a little extra time, but it could really help you so it’s worth it.
Consider apps that promote family friendly or even Christian programming. Angel Studios, Up Faith and Family, The Great American PureFlix. All have apps that can be downloaded to smart TVs or devices. Services like Vid Angel, that connect to your streaming service and allows you to skip the bad stuff in shows and movies. They even offer a free seven day trial. You can go to www.vidangel.com if you’re interested in learning more about that one.and use promo code: good news.
Unfollow and hide social media content: The algorithms that determine what to show you in your social feed can be taught and influenced by your actions. You can easily unfollow specific people or brands that are posting content that is not appropriate, but you can also hide the content that social platforms try and suggest to you. The more you hide it the less often you should see it or things like it. You can also snooze people that you need a break from for 30 days. Some platforms like YouTube allow you to rate content as a way to give feedback on what you like or don’t like and that information is used to determine what is suggested to you. And while you’re there be sure to like this episode so that the algorithms can share it and suggest it to more people like you.
You don’t have the limit of how to protect your heart to just media or entertainment. Take a look at the things in your life that influence you and just take an audit to determine whether or not this is something that you should limit or maybe change the way you approach it in the future.
I often hear people say that what they watch on TV or in the movies doesn’t have a negative effect on them and maybe it doesn’t. But sn’t that something that the enemy would want you to think too? The enemy wants to steal, kill, and destroy anything that God loves, including us and he’ll be very deceptive in doing it.
I know I experienced this firsthand when my husband and I started watching a show, not our typical show but we were so pulled in by the amazing story that was being told. Unfortunately, the language. It was so bad. So foul. I don’t think of those words on any kind of regular basis but within hours and days after watching the show, some of that language started coming into mind. I was really not comfortable with it. So we made some adjustments.
Everyone’s different. But the good news here is you get to choose. How serious do you want to be about protecting your heart? Do you believe that there would be benefits in protecting your heart? Is there something that came to mind as you were listening that you need to pray about?
Protecting your heart is a lifelong process that requires intentionality, discipline and reliance on God’s grace. It’s worth taking small steps and you can get started today. Just pick one thing.
Good News at Work is a marketing affiliate of VidAngel.
