guard your heart

Proverbs 4:23  Above all else, guard your heart; for out of it are the issues of life.

source

too often we are fooled with surface appearances. we thought that if a person looks good and acts well-behaved in church he or she is a true picture of holiness and exemplar christian living. 

a deeper problem is usually not visible with the naked eyes. we may have observed that we are too often very adept in hiding what is the true condition of our heart. we masked it, we hide it well because we don't want others to know that we are weak and we need help. i think this is also because we sometimes see our that problems are the same with what others are undergoing and they seem to be well-equipped and strong enough to overcome it with the sheer power of their will. we are embarrassed to admit that when we face the same problem we do not have the strength (enough) to go through it on our own. so we hide it... we cover it in our laughter, we cover it in more work/ministry, we slap others on the back, we entertain, we encourage but deep inside us we are crumbling; we long for release, we want to cry out, we clamor for help and too often we are too hurting to heal on our own.

we fail to realize that the problem usually runs deeper. when we see people with bad temper or insulting attitude we think, "that man needs to keep his cool',  but unless that man realize that his reall problem is his heart , the motives, the desires, the longing, he could not really "keep his cool". 

too often we get busy with life. we get preoccupied with something else that we are not observant that we have let the ability of our heart to function like it's supposed to, to long and want and desire for the things that is of God.

my heart is wrung-out, tired, achy, numb, and stony. i look forward to God's promise in this verse: 

Ezekeil 36: 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.