Tips for a Healthy Heart

SOME PRACTICAL TIPS to help ensure that your heart does not get captured by someone outside of marriage:

1. Invest in your marriage. Have fun with your spouse! Marriage is work, but it should be fun too. Sometimes we quit having fun together. Date your spouse weekly; take an annual time away without kids.

2. Watch for red flags. Are you spending time talking to someone of the opposite sex (other than your mate) about you inner thoughts and feelings?

3. Don’t hide relationships or friendships with the opposite sex from your spouse. Make your email, text and voice messages, facebook account, and other online relationships open to your spouse. Give him/her your password, or set it up for your emails, etc. to come to him/her also.

4. Don’t have private chat sessions (online or on the phone) with members of the opposite sex.

5. Use a filter on your computer that will send addresses of sites you visit to your spouse.

ABOVE ALL ELSE ....

During this Valentine season,
we will all no doubt see lots of hearts on cards, advertisements, and many other places. After all, it seems the heart is the universal symbol for that holiday. The heart symbol represents love – our love for another person. This is certainly the case for husbands and wives as we express our love to one another.

But, have you thought that “guarding your heart” might just be one of the best ways to show your love to your spouse?

Proverbs 4:23 says, “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” Those words were deathbed words spoken by Solomon to his son. The wisest man to have ever lived was telling his son, and us, that more than anything else in life – “guard your heart.” He is talking about moral purity.

Our hearts are our very core. The heart is everything. It’s the source of all life. It’s the gateway to our emotions and our relationships. A wellspring is the head or source of a stream or river. It’s the source.

So, Solomon is saying that we must guard our hearts, the deep inner source of who we are, from deadly contamination. If we do not, the toxins we’ve allowed to seep into our hearts will taint everything that flows out of our lives. They will affect everything we touch: our marriage, our children, our jobs, our friends, everything!

Our gracious heavenly Father has given us “guardrails” in His Word for us to incorporate into our lives so that we can protect our hearts. Some of the most important Biblical guardrails protect us from sexual misconduct, something we all desperately need living in our morally decaying society.

One of those guard rails is our thought life. “Guarding our heart” begins with our thoughts. The apostle Paul provides us great words of instruction and encouragement regarding our thought life in Philippians 4:7-8….”And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus …whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things.”

This Valentine’s day, and every day, make sure you have a guarded heart!