“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” (Proverbs 4:23)
I watched as the treads and bucket of the backhoe destroyed a small section of my lawn. After a few minutes of digging, the lid to our home’s underground septic tank was finally exposed. In the years we had lived in this house, we had never had a problem with our septic system, but I wanted to have it inspected and pumped before we put our house on the market.
When the serviceman had checked over everything, he walked toward me with a puzzled look on his face. He told me that a second tank had been placed in the ground alongside the first but that the home’s builder had placed the patio directly on top of it. As a result, it couldn’t be accessed and had never been pumped—in nearly twenty years! (It’s recommended that a tank be pumped every three.) The man’s confusion was due to the fact that he couldn’t figure out how the system had never backed up and filled our home with sludge.
The Bible says that the heart is “the source of life” (Proverbs 4:23), and therefore we should guard it—that is, protect and care for it. If we don’t, we’re bound to have a disastrous backup in our lives. Jesus said something along those same lines: “A good man produces good out of the good storeroom of his heart. An evil man produces evil out of the evil storeroom, for his mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart” (Luke 6:45).
Take care of your heart: Spend time filling it with good things from God’s Word. Invite your Creator to speak to your heart’s desires. After all, He designed your heart and set it within you.
The Ascent: A Devotional Adventure through the Book of Psalms releases August 2, but you can preorder it today.
Pages of Joy 