Proverbs 4:23-27
“Keep your heart with all diligence, For out of it spring the issues of life. Put away from you a deceitful mouth, And put perverse lips far from you. Let your eyes look straight ahead, and your eyelids look right before you. Ponder the path of your feet, and let all your ways be established. Do not turn to the right or the left; remove your foot from evil.”
The sense of “keep your heart” is that we need to exert more vigilance in guarding our minds than men do over anything else. Governments go to great pains to guard their institutions, plans, and secrets, but God says that it is even more important to guard what we allow to reside in our minds.
Why is this instruction so important? It is because our hearts, our minds, guide and direct everything we do, and if we do not guard and protect them from the ungodly ideas, beliefs, and entertainments, they can cause our spiritual downfall. It is in our minds and hearts that our characters are shaped, and if we allow perverse and unrighteous character to enter, the righteous character that God wants to see in us will never form or take shape within us.
Many of the other instructions that Solomon gives throughout the proverbs have the “keeping of our heart”, as their central theme. We are told to ponder and control what comes out of our mouth and what we allow our eyes to view. We are told to make sure our feet stay on the right path, as well as to work on establishing our habits and manner of living. We are admonished not to become involved in insensitive, hasty, careless, and destructive actions. The prophet Haggai puts all this very concisely, “Consider your ways!” (Haggai 1:5, 7). When we consider the dire events of many biblical prophecies and the instructions to consider and change our ways, as well as “keeping our hearts” from the ways that are contrary to God’s instruction, we see that there is a path to avoidance of those dire events.
