Treat Your Heart Like A Garden
Your life is dictated by what comes out of your heart.
Recently, I’ve been wondering what life would be like if we had a garden. Fresh fruits and veggies. Wonderful aesthetic. A built-in responsibility for our daughters and a way to teach them about cultivation and trusting God to produce vegetation.
Quickly, I’m able to see reality, and that garden would take much more work than my fantasies assume and would be significantly more difficult than I can comprehend in this season of life.
But it does have me thinking—what would it take to keep a garden?
I was reading in Proverbs the other day when I stumbled upon a familiar verse:
Keep your heart with all vigilance,
for from it flow the springs of life.
—Proverbs 4:23 (ESV)
Just like a garden—fullness of life flows from a well-kept heart.
So what does it take to keep a heart? There’s at least three things.
Protect your heart from enemies trying to invade.
Any well-constructed, ancient city was surrounded by walls. These walls were designed to keep any unwanted predator or military enemy from entering the city unannounced. In a similar way, people who “keep their heart” need to be people who build walls designed to keep unwanted enemies out.
We live in a day that celebrates a lack of boundaries, but what if that’s destroying us? I’m not talking politically here with borders. I’m talking about relationships, media we consume, and screen time. Our lack of boundaries and filters on everything has left us vulnerable and subject to being destroyed by anything and everything.
When a garden is left without walls or a fence around it, you can almost assume there will be something that tries to steal its produce. Just take this adorable groundhog for example.
Keeping our heart means protecting it from anything that wants to come in and eventually destroy us.
Uproot the enemies that have already invaded your heart
An unfortunate reality of being human is that we all have a plethora of lies that have actually already made their home in our hearts. At the same time we’re working hard to keep enemies out of our hearts, we must work hard to remove the enemies that have already invaded our hearts.
What if you have a deeply rooted belief that you should feel ashamed for some past sin? Then, as good as the news of Christ’s redemption is for you, you’ll have a hard time receiving it because of a deeper-rooted shame you’re holding onto.
What if you have a deeply rooted belief that you’re only lovable if you have something to offer? Then, as nice as rest in Christ’s finished work sounds, you’ll never be able to receive His rest because you’ll believe you need to have something to offer Him.
To be people who “keep our hearts,” we need to be people who uproot every evil thing that’s already taken root.
Consider a flower garden full of weeds. The flowers will not flourish when surrounded by a bed of weeds. We must do the hard work of uprooting the weeds in our heart.
Provide your heart with everything it needs to flourish.
Just like a garden, our hearts won’t flourish unless we cultivate the proper conditions for its flourishing.
Our hearts need the Word of God.
Our hearts need communion with the Trinity through prayer.
Our hearts need worship services.
Our hearts need to be worked out through physical activity.
Believe it or not, our hearts need suffering.
We need fresh soil, so to speak. Jesus spoke of this in his parable of the sower.
There are four types of soil:
The hardened path
The soil with thorns in it
The rocky soil
The good soil
We actually play a role in cultivating good soil. By continually cultivating a combination of confessing sin, practicing the spiritual disciplines, and falling in love with Jesus, we will keep our hearts in good soil. This parable can be found in Matthew 13:1-23, Mark 4:1-12, and Luke 8:1-15.
As I’ve sat with Proverbs 4:23 I’ve come to realize some important realities:
My life is a result of what’s going on in my heart.
If I don’t like some fruit that I’m bearing, I need to do heart work.
Any lack of “flow of life” means something’s wrong with my heart.
Nothing will change until I “keep my heart.”
Fullness of life comes from taking God’s Word seriously and allowing Him to do heart work in me.
It’s well-intentioned, but we’re often instructed to do work that only God can do—renewing our minds, purifying our hearts, living spirit-led. These are miracles that only God can perform in us. Our responsibility is to draw near and let Him do His work. He is faithful to do it.
Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next week.
Brandon
So very good. I needed that.