Keeping Your Heart With All Diligence

"Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life." (1)

"When wisdom enters your heart, and knowledge is pleasant to your soul, discretion will preserve you; understanding will keep you, to deliver you from the way of evil." (2) It is out of the abundance of the heart that good or evil comes into our lives, "A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks." (3)

"For as he thinks in his heart, so is he." (4) Since the issues of life spring from the heart, a man is defiled by what comes out of him "Those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and they defile a man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man." (5)

Sin is the indulging of the desires of the sinful, deceitful human heart, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings." (6) Thus the need for diligence in keeping the mind surrendered to God, who alone can keep it pure, "This I say,-- that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart,-- and be renewed in the spirit of your mind." (7)

"Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy - meditate on these things. --and the God of peace will be with you." (8)

1. Proverbs 4:23.
2. Proverbs 2:10-12.
3. Luke 6:45.
4. Proverbs 23:7.
5. Matthew 15:18-20.
6. Jeremiah 17:9, 10.
7. Ephesians 4:17, 18, 23.
8. Philippians 4:8, 9.