Guard your heart

I will never forget the day I read the scripture that says Guard your heart...... or maybe I read a commentary on it or heard a speaker speak on it, but it really made a lot of sense to me how important it is to guard your heart. Proverbs is suppose to be a book of wisdom and wisdom it is and more !!! 
You have heard the saying, garbage in and garbage out... well that is it in it's simplest form, yet so much deeper than that.
" Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life." Proverbs 4:23(NIV)

So why isn't this burned in our minds as a child? why can't we possibly understand this until we are in our 20's, 30's or even older when we have lived a life of low self esteem and low self worth and we are searching for that significance, that purpose and we realize... "oh well we must guard our heart". 

I was thinking the other day, ok I have met way too many girls and women with low self worth and low self esteem and these are not all women with absent dads, or women that have made wrong choices these are your everyday good girls, salt of the earth people that have failed to guard their heart.... well not really....

   This world we live in teaches us at a young age that we are not good enough, we are either not the perfect size, or we are over weight according to TV or we are underweight according to our normal size friends or our hair is too thin, too thick or too curly or too straight, we are taught at such a young age that we are not good enough. We don't look like the models and actors on TV therefore we are not worth what the WORLD says is great. It may be even that you were protected some from the world and didn't watch a lot of TV but Satan still gets in your mind, and there's that friend that seems perfect and we start comparing ourselves before we even give ourself a chance!!!!!......and it starts, we start on a journey to find that worth, that validation that sometimes leads down a road of broken relationships, premarital sex, drugs, alcohol and even more striving to find that worth, validation, those compliments to make us feel like we are more. 

    Somewhere along the way we failed to grasp on to that wonderful relationship we could have in Christ  or we never knew it and here we are broken, claiming to be a Christian or just broken never knowing even Christ's love. Somewhere along the way... we never knew, never understood that we must guard our heart. We must keep it pure, keep it holy, another version of the Bible says because out it "are the issues of life".... our heart... 

  I heard a preacher just the other day preaching on purity and I thought read the scripture about guarding your heart... I have told youth" guard your heart, don't make wrong choices, they will lead you down the wrong path" and what happens they still make those choices and go down the wrong path, we fail to guard our heart, we fail to repent, we fail to turn from our ways and walk in his way, we often choose our way and that is when we become broken. "There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.(Prov 16:25) "But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it."(Matt 7:14)

  Well I want to tell you today, to guard your heart, what goes in to your mind, defintely has some significance on your heart, guard it with all diligence.("Keep thy heart with all diligence; For out of it are the issues of life." ASV)  Claim Christ's love, and his promises, claim his hope!! He wants you to live a life of abundance not heartache and lack of self worth. Even if you have made poor choices in the past, he wants you to turn from that, repent and claim a life with him, a life of love, and significance and purpose a life for him, helping others a long the way, he wants us to guard our heart so we can have what he promised. He came to heal the broken and mend the hearts, claim his love today !!!!