“Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.”
Proverbs 4:23
The Exhortation {the urgent advice or counsel, encouragement} of this verse is to:
“keep your heart” and the
How to keep our hearts is
“with all diligence”.
The last part of the verse tells us
Why we should keep our hearts diligently: “for out of it flow the issues of life.”
John Flavel wrote in 1667 in his book currently published with the title Keeping The Heart -
“The heart is the source of all vital actions and operations.”
“It is the spring and original of both good and evil, as the spring in a watch that sets all the wheels in motion.”
“What the philosopher says of waters is as properly applicable to hearts; it is hard to keep them within bounds.”
“It was the sad experience [David] had of the divisions and distractions of his own heart in the service of God that made him pour out that prayer “…Unite my heart to fear your name.” Psalm 86:11
Luke 6:45 “The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.”
“…the hand and the tongue always begin where the heart ends.”
As parents our hands and words are almost constantly influencing our children. This is an important part of the WHY we should keep our hearts-
because everything, all our words and actions trace back to the heart.
Flavel says
“The keeping and right managing of the heart in every condition is the great business of a Christian’s life.”
The keeping of our own hearts is vital to our children’s spiritual, emotional and mental education.
Application: So you know you want to do this. You have heard the exhortation and
the little or not-so-little feet padding down the hall, or the cry of a hungry baby. Ugh! Suddenly not feeling so spiritual anymore! (Isn’t it crazy how fast those feelings can change?) Your quiet time is ruined! Or is it?
While silence and solitude is desirable-
Our Savior, in the midst of his busy ministry years, set this example of withdrawing to places of solitude to pray (Mt. 4:1, 14:23, Mark 1:35, Luke 4:42). It is in solitude that we can most effectively focus our hearts and minds on hearing the Voice of God. In his book Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life Donald Whitney says
“…it isn’t absolutely necessary to get far away from noises and people in order to hear God speak, otherwise we’d never perceive His promptings in the course of everyday life, or even in peopled worship services. But there are times to eliminate the voices of the world in order to hear undistracted the voice of God.
According to Jonathan Edwards, this was a secret of the Godliness of his wife, Sarah. In his first record of her, penned while his future wife was still a teenager, he wrote, ‘She hardly cares for anything, except to meditate on Him…She loves to be alone, walking in the fields and groves, and seems to have someone invisible always conversing with her.’ Where Sarah had ‘fields and groves,’ we may have to walk in the park, around the block, or find another place for regular solitude. Wherever it is, we need to find a place to be alone to hear the voice of Him whose presence is unseen yet more real than any other.”
Yet we go through seasons of motherhood and homeschooler-hood where it seems next to impossible to get a moment alone, even if you move like a ninja and don’t make a single noise, some babies and children just know when you are awake. It can be aggravating but it doesn’t mean your efforts are wasted.
Some children may be content to sit in your lap while you read and pray. At the very least your child has seen you doing (or attempting to do) the work of heart keeping. I have memories of seeing my homeschooling-mom sitting in the middle of the day with her Bible. That had a profound effect on me. It is powerful for children to see their parents model the great work of a Christ follower.
So what is something you can do when it looks like your quiet time just isn’t going to happen today? You do what homeschool moms do: get creative:) Maybe we can grab a few minutes in the bathroom to pray later, but for now we can do at least a part of our heart work with our children.
Taking in Scripture is a big part of keeping our hearts and that is something we can do together.
What works for our family right now is to read at the table while we are finishing up our breakfast. We use a free app called Read Scripture. The Gospel Project guys have made these great short overview videos of each book of the Bible (sometimes there are 2 videos per book) and these are included in the app, right along with the reading plan. The videos are amazing and hold all my kid’s attention (from age 6-14). At this season we are in now my older children can take turns reading out loud, but before I had confident readers, back when I was usually holding a baby or getting up every few minutes to deal with a mess or feed somebody, we often used another app called Bible.is. That app plays audio, either just read or dramatized, of the whole Bible.
Some days we get all the assigned reading done for that day, sometimes we just get part in and some days we miss our reading time, but at all times
Our God is lavish with His grace.
While I still strive for times of solitude for personal Bible reading, this ensures my heart is getting a daily wash of Scripture, and at the same time my children are hearing and reading God’s Words and we are modeling the daily work of heart-keeping.
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