Guarding our hearts

My story

When did I first hear of the concept of guarding my heart?

I’m not sure. I know that I’d heard it before, that others had mentioned it. But it never really came home to me until my senior year of high school, when I started chatting with this guy online.

He was a friend of a friend and we started talking because I had questions about a college program he was in. Our conversation quickly took us beyond proximity intimacy (the program, our mutual friend), sped right through head intimacy, and rushed into heart intimacy.

I shared my hopes, my dreams, my fears, my heartaches with this guy–and he too had shared his heart with me. We barely met face-to-face, never touched one another (except maybe a handshake)–but we had been emotionally naked with one another.

And when God, through my parents, told me that our relationship was inappropriate and needed to end–it hurt, big time.

That’s when I started to recognize the wisdom of Proverbs 4:23.

“Above all else, guard your heart,
for it is the wellspring of life.”
Proverbs 4:23 (NIV)

The heart is the wellspring of life, a source of our being. And as such, we ought to carefully guard it.

Not everyone can or should have access to this part of you. Like a private place open only to those who have been given the access code, your heart should be kept guarded, protected.

Does this mean you allow no one access to your heart? Does this mean you harden your heart to avoid getting hurt?

By no means.

Some have certainly taken this Scripture to that extreme and have barricaded their hearts to allow no one entrance.

But part of the promise of God in Christ is the promise of a heart of flesh rather than a heart of stone. God designed our hearts to be tender.

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.”
Ezekiel 36:26

Practically speaking

So then, what does it mean to guard our hearts–and how do we do it, practically?

The first and most important step in guarding our hearts is found in Philippians 4:6-7

“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”
Philippians 4:6-7

Above all, we guard our hearts by presenting them to God. HE then guards them far better than we ever could.

You have needs, desires, longings, fears, and struggles–present them all to God. Give Him your heart. He will guard it. He will protect it.

The opposite of this is what psychologists call codependency–an unhealthy emotional dependence upon another person. Instead of presenting our hearts to God, we pour out our hearts to another person–a person who is incapable of protecting or tending our hearts properly.

The truth is that no one can protect or tend our hearts completely–no one apart from Christ, that is. We can only share our hearts with another person in good confidence if we have first given our hearts over to God’s protection. Only once our hearts are safe in God can we have confidence in allowing others access to them.

Second, I think we need to realize that we simply cannot be “best friends” with the opposite sex.

I’ve heard way too many girls talk about how they’re “best friends” with this guy and they tell each other everything and this relationship is just so wonderful. No, they’re not romantically involved. They’re just friends. But then these girls are surprised and hurt when the guy starts pursuing some other girl and is no longer best friends with them anymore.

It’s time we stopped deceiving ourselves about the power of heart-intimacy. Heart-intimacy is one of the deepest forms of intimacy we can have–and we should guard it carefully. Just like we wouldn’t casually undress in front of our “guy friends”, we shouldn’t casually undress our hearts with guys.

Our relationships with those of the opposite sex should, of necessity, comprise mostly of proximity-intimacy and head-intimacy.

Does that mean we should never share our hearts with someone of the opposite sex? No. But we should place boundaries over when and to what degree we share our hearts with the opposite sex. Just like boundaries are required in a physical relationship, boundaries should be set in a heart-to-heart relationship.

In the relationship I spoke of earlier, with the friend of a friend, I had set no boundaries for what I shared. I just opened up my heart and handed it away. That guy had made no commitment to me. I had made no commitment to him. I had not promised to guard his heart; he had not promised to guard mine. And thus we grew in heart-intimacy without any thought to protecting ourselves or each other.

Heart-intimacy can and should take place between a man and a woman as they move towards marriage–but this heart-intimacy should develop slowly, in step with their commitment to one another and to guard one anothers’ hearts.

Third, we must be aware of how our thoughts influence our hearts and must guard our minds to guard our hearts.

Have you ever had a relationship where you thought maybe there was something, well, something there that turned out to be nothing? You had a bit of a crush, you kinda wondered if he didn’t like you back. You created this whole big thing in your mind and maybe even started doodling his name and yours together on your notebook. You talked to your friends about it–and maybe your friends even encouraged it. “I think he does like you.” You replay every interaction, desperately seeking to decode the messages you are sure were hidden in his “How are you tonight?” And then it turns out that really it was all in your head.

I’ve done that before. I called it a crush, but really it was a one-sided emotional affair. When it turned out to be nothing, I was truly crushed. “How did I misread that situation?” I asked myself. But I’d given away a piece of myself to that person, if only in my thoughts–without him EVER EVEN KNOWING! I’d placed my hopes and dreams, my heart, on that person without him ever even knowing.

That wasn’t guarding my heart. Sure, I wasn’t overtly sharing it with the other person. I was only doing it in my head. But my thoughts impacted my heart–and caused me great hurt when that relationship didn’t turn out as I’d supposed it would.

Ladies, especially, need to take this caution to heart: Unless a guy has specifically told you that there’s something more, assume there’s nothing more than friendship. Don’t let your heart go to places it hasn’t been invited. You’re only opening yourself up to be hurt–and you’re the only one to blame when you end up hurt. That fellow made no promises to you. He didn’t invite you to give him your heart. You’re to blame when he doesn’t fulfill your ill-placed expectations.

And girls? Guard your sisters’ hearts by not encouraging their suppositions. Let’s not encourage one another to make conjectures about what some guy is thinking or feeling. Let’s not do the “I think he likes you” thing that too often leads only to heartbreak.

Guys–you can guard your sisters’ hearts by being honest with them about where you’re at and by not initiating emotional or physical intimacy unless you have first made a commitment to them (which you have articulated, by which I mean said.)

In review

So, in review: Heart-intimacy is an incredibly deep form of relational intimacy. As such, we should place boundaries over who has access to our hearts and when. We should guard our hearts. We guard our hearts by 1) entrusting them to God, 2) avoiding heart-intimacy with the opposite sex outside of committed relationships, and 3) guarding our thoughts in relation to the opposite sex. Guarding our hearts does not mean hardening our hearts–it means protecting them as the treasure that they are.