My Heart to Those Whose Hearts I Don’t Want Broken

A broken heart is a tragic thing, but it should never be labeled an accident because anyone who has had a broken heart knows that it came with much time and effort. As humans, we are hard-wired for relationships, and with relationships comes transparency, and with transparency comes vulnerability, and with vulnerability comes risk. The more we risk, the greater potential we have for pain or joy. We can pour our hearts out for years on people, yet there is nothing guaranteeing us that they won’t just turn around and break us to pieces. Humans will always be known for their imperfections because sin covers what we could have been and affects who we are.

I’ll admit to dealing with my own heart being broken and the devastation that comes with it. I was consumed by something that I thought was worth being consumed by. My world was marked by this one individual, and when that individual left my world, it fell apart. I have no one to blame but myself. I was given good advice. I saw the warning signs. I knew the potential risk. But nothing could prepare me for the enslavement that I felt to my emotions. I was captive to my own twisted emotions, and my twisted emotions were captive to my unguarded heart.

The Bible gives a simple command to us in Proverbs 4:23: “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” Why “guard your heart”? Why guard it “above all else”? We are called to guard our heart simply because it is the wellspring of life. The imagery the word “wellspring” gives is one of a water source of a waterfall. The heart is the very center of the human and feeds the life of the individual. This is not something to take lightly. This is not a recreational sport that we can flippantly deal with. A corrupt heart feeds a corrupt individual, and a corrupt individual walks directly away from the God that can save him and directly into the Hell that will destroy him.

This command even applies to the area of dating, the most recreational game played in America. Dating is portrayed in such a negative picture that it belittles God’s design for relationships and degrades the biblical portrait of what it means to be a man and woman of God. First of all, if we claim to love God with all our hearts, we cannot give our hearts to those who don’t claim to love God. As Christians, we are called to look different than the world in areas where God has called us to be different, yet we seem to have misunderstood this. Furthermore, we should not recreationally date as the world does, nor should we throw our hearts out as though we are invincible. Our dating life should not look like an episode of Greys Anatomy but should look as though we are marked by the Holy Spirit of the God who called us out of darkness into His marvelous light. The way we do this is by protecting our hearts. So, how do we protect our hearts?

1. Wrap your heart in God so that those who pursue you must go to God to find your heart.
   • Your heart has a natural craving for that thing which it was created to crave. And your heart was created to crave the most glorious thing in the entire universe, namely God. God is the all-satisfying object of your soul, so if you miss this, you will miss the true craving of your heart.
   • If you understand that God is the all-satisfying object of your soul, your heart should reflect that. The reflection of your heart will be a wrapping of your heart around God.
   • If your heart is wrapped around God, your heart will be held by Him. If your heart is held by him, anyone who pursues your heart will have to go to God to find it.
     
2. Your heart’s water source should flow from whose you are, not who you are.
   • Who I am is nothing great but whose I am makes all the difference. God makes it clear that we cannot serve two masters (Matthew 6:24). We will hate one and love the other. Make no mistake—your heart, your life, and ultimately your destiny will be defined by whose you are, not who you are.
   • We are confused and tossed to and fro by identity crises, but the real crisis is an ownership crisis and submission to that ownership. We are willing to allow God to be our Savior but hesitate to make Him Lord and Treasure. We cannot separate all of these. Either God is everything to us—Lord, Savior, and Treasure, or He is nothing.
   • God created us and gave us His word so that we could know whose we are and live in such a way that our hearts flow from the well spring of His love and care for us.
   • If you are truly living in glad submission to your creator, your heart will be aligned to His, and guarding it will be a duty of delight not a lifelong fight.
3. Your heart should be consumed with fulfilling the first and greatest commandment, not being filled with your first and newest desire.
   • It is a foundational, necessary, vital, and all-encompassing commandment without which all things fall apart: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind,” (Matthew 22:37).
   • We, as humans dragged around by the tail of our sin, forget that our lives should be filled with a passion of love for God instead of a consumption with the selfishness of our own longings to be filled with something that is not of God.
   • God calls us to love Him with everything, not because He doesn’t want us to love other things, but because He is the only thing that is truly worth all of our love. God is not a cosmic kill joy; instead, he is the source of all and any joy that we will ever receive.

Guarding our hearts is a joint venture between us and God. We cannot do what God must do, and God will not do what we should do. So, please live for and love God in such a way that when you come to the end of your life, you have your heart in hand and fully preserved, ready to be presented to God as a sacrifice of sweet fragrance. And “above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.”