Fight For Your Heart.

“Above everything else guard (vigilantly watch over) your heart with all diligence, because from it flow the springs of life (ie that’s where life starts).”
proverbs 4:23 – various translations of the book

Random Points On Why It Matters.

You hear GOD through it so NEVER allow it get hardened.
Your enemy understands its importance so he will use anything at his disposal to attack it.
You must consciously and constantly fight to keep it soft and yielded to GOD. Soft doesn’t mean weak it just means you ensure it remains pliable to GOD’s management.
the devil’s trick is to wound you into hardening it in self defense for “self preservation” but the unintended consequence is it becomes simultaneously duller in hearing GOD. What you used to be sensitive enough to hear GOD say once now doesn’t even register anymore.
Protect your heart from the attacks of the world through people and circumstances but don’t let it grow cold and numb. Fight by insisting on keeping it right before God no matter what is thrown at you. The Bible says “Never be weary in doing good” because it recognizes there is a real temptation to get tired of righteous living especially these days. Righteousness is now all but penalized. Sadly, this trajectory will only increase from here on out. Trust God for the strength to stand and the peace that passes understanding even while in pain from the attacks. What your enemy is after is your heart and your joy is at the center of that but guess why, he knows that God says THAT IS YOUR STRENGTH. Whether you believe it or not your enemies definitely do. “The joy of the Lord is our strength” so let’s hold on to it no matter and be strong as it provides. A hard heart is not a necessity for strength, God’s joy in us is.
Remember that YHWH judges us men by our hearts. Strong not hardened, soft not weak are His preferences. Learn the fine lines and maintain them ruthlessly.
When you have a good heart, do everything necessary (under GOD’s standards) to keep it good. No matter how trifling people and the systems get.
My father was very big on this issue of the heart. In fact the only prayer he ever allowed anyone pray concerning my marriage was that my husband would have a good heart. “Edo enyo” he’d say. That always stuck with me.
These days good hearts are rare but praise GOD they are not extinct. Yet.
Guarding one’s heart starts by refusing to be offended, but expect to be tempted to be though. We are basically guaranteed in the Bible that offenses will come, just don’t “take” them when they do.
You can establish a system that helps you drop offenses and pains quickly and move on untethered by them or their perpetrators. Remember the part B of the verse that guarantees us that offenses will come says “but woe to those through whom they come”. Understand that nobody ultimately gets away with anything.
Here are strategies that don’t work for handling offenses and injuries to the heart; Avoiding it, ignoring it, pretending not to be offended or hurt, sweeping them under a rug instead of facing it, none of those fake remedies will help you.
Acting like nothing happened (basically gaslighting yourself) is dumb and doesn’t work either.
Process it and consciously decide to let it go. Be very open and honest with God about the pain and trust Him to help you will. Don’t try to hide it from Him and don’t keep resurrecting it in conversations with people cos it just festers and becomes bigger than it already was.
A numb heart started as a gradually hardening heart.
Remember the Gold Standard for hearts with GOD is Texture on soft, Temperature on warm, Nature on strong, Aesthetic on clean. If it contradicts then then satan wants that setting for you not God. The devil can never want better for you than GOD.
Evil will become nothing to one with a hardened heart condition. Things that God considers wicked will become easy for you to do. Over time you will no longer even recognize darkness when you see it in people and places and situations. At that low level, guess where God is not anymore, Inside you. And guess what you’re become at a risk of, dying and going to hell.
Remembering that forgiveness is a command will help you can avoid a hardened heart because your love for God and eagerness to please Him by your obedience will or should be ranked higher than any need to get even or stay angry at people, (even the most trifling ones who believe you’re being calm because they’re so big and bad and your afraid or unimaginative to personally handle their bullshit) some of whom are hell currently bound anyway. When I WANT to deal with you but i fast forward your life and see you in the lake of fire at the end, I loose all motivation to punish you. Nothing can be worse than that. Forgiveness becomes easy at that point. Very easy. Weighing EVERYTHING against eternity will help you have the right perspective on their true importance or lack there of and help you let them go a bit easier and quicker.
If you want an example of what God does to men with hardened calloused hearts then make sure to read how He intentionally, systematically and utterly humiliated pharaoh in front of his whole nation and the entire world from the first day Moses warned him all until the man died by the body of water that God returned back to its rightful place after publicly parting said sea. That was utterly embarrassing from the beginning to the end. If only the loss of his son and heir was pain enough to soften his heart. One lesson from his life though is that you have control over your heart but God has complete access to it too. (Manufacturers privileges and all) honestly, The sheer number of times the book states “and pharaoh hardened his heart” is astounding. What a dummy.
Don’t allow yourself to need to be humbled by God into softening your heart and don’t allow the devil win by weaponizing wicked people and terrible circumstances to make you harden it either. You can humble yourself before God, keep on the breastplate of righteousness to protect your heart from satan’s antics, apply wisdom amongst people so that only a godly few have access to your heart and intentionally obey God in practicing forgiveness.