GUARDING YOUR HEART AND MIND
It is vitally important that you guard your heart and mind. Unless you consistently and faithfully do this, you’re defeated before you even get out on the battlefield! Psalm 31:1-24
Your heart and mind are where all the issues of life flow forth. They are the center of your existence where your entire moral and mental activity originates; where your thoughts, will, emotions, desires and mental abilities are located.
Above everything else — your physical body, your business, career, finances, everything you are and have — you must diligently guard your heart and mind. They are your most vulnerable point and are where Satan is attacking with greater intensity than ever before.
Guarding your heart and mind is not assuming a passive position of sitting back waiting for Satan to attack. It is an offensive strategy requiring aggressive action! In the game of football, there are offensive guards and defensive guards. The offensive guard is aggressive. With great forcefulness and power, he knocks players out of the way and blocks them to open the way for the runner to score a touchdown. The defensive guard’s responsibility is to use every maneuver, every ounce of strength and determination he has, to stop the running back from the opposing team and prevent him from scoring a touchdown.
This is the type of aggressive action that is necessary to guard your heart and mind. To have a powerful, one-hundred percent victorious mind that will enable you to defeat all of Satan’s strategies, attacks, deceptions, and weapons, you must keep a constant watch over your heart and mind.
We are exhorted: “Keep your heart with all diligence and above all that you guard, for out of it flow the springs of life” (Proverbs 4:23, TAB). To keep your heart and mind is to set a constant guard against all of Satan’s attempts to gain access into your heart and mind. It requires aggressive action to exercise control over your will, thoughts, desires, emotions, and motives and bring them into submission to the Holy Spirit and keep them there.
It is not only necessary to guard against Satan’s attacks and resist the thoughts, deceptions, and temptations he will try to use to defeat you, you must also guard against the carnal thoughts and desires of the flesh, the selfish inclination to follow your own will instead of setting your mind to seek after God’s will. When these carnal attitudes and desires are detected, you must take aggressive action to rid yourself of them. You must continually guard your heart and mind under all circumstances, in all places, at all times with the greatest possible intensity. Why not start today?
Make this declaration:
I will guard my heart and mind with all diligence, under all circumstances, in all places, and at all times with the greatest possible intensity.