Keeping the Heart
by John Flavel
"Keep your heart with all diligence;
for out of it are the issues of life."
Proverbs 4:23
If all that has been said by way of inducement is not enough, I have
ten MOTIVES for keeping the heart to
offer you:
1. The studying, observing, and diligently keeping your
own heart, will surprisingly help you to UNDERSTAND the deep mysteries of
religion. An honest, well experienced heart is an
excellent help to the head. Such a heart will serve for a commentary
on a great part of the Scriptures. By means of such a heart you will have a
better understanding of divine things than the most learned, but graceless
man ever had, or can have. You will not only have a clearer—but a more
interesting and profitable apprehension of them. A man may discourse
orthodoxly and profoundly of the nature and effects of faith, the troubles
and comforts of conscience, and the sweetness of communion with God—who has
never felt the efficacy and sweet impression of these things upon his own
soul. But how dark and dry are his notions, compared with those of an
experienced Christian!
2. The study and observation of your own heart will
powerfully secure you against the dangerous and infecting ERRORS of the
times in which you live. What is the reason why so many
professors have departed from the faith, giving heed to fables? Why have so
many been led away by the error of the wicked? Why have those who have sown
corrupt doctrines had such plentiful harvests among us—but because they have
met with a race of professors who never knew what belongs to practical
godliness, and the study and keeping of their hearts?
3. Your care and diligence in keeping your heart will
prove one of the best evidences of your SINCERITY. I know no
external act of religion, which truly distinguishes the sound from the
unsound professor. It is astonishing how far hypocrites go in all external
duties; how plausibly they can order the outward man, hiding all their
indecencies from the observation of the world! But they take no heed to
their hearts. They are not in secret what they appear to be in public! And
before this test no hypocrite can stand. They may, indeed, in a fit of
terror, or on a death-bed, cry out of the wickedness of their hearts; but
such extorted complaints are wholly of no regard. No credit, in law,
is to be given to the testimony of one upon the rack, because it may be
supposed that the extremity of his torture will make him say anything to get
relief. But if self-jealousy, care and watchfulness are the daily workings
and frames of your heart—you have great evidence of your sincerity.
4. How comfortable and how profitable would all
ORDINANCES and duties be to you, if your heart was faithfully kept.
What lively communion might you have with God every time you approach him,
if your heart was in a right frame! You might then say with David, "My
meditation of Him shall be sweet." It is the indisposition of the heart
which renders ordinances, and secret duties—so comfortless to some. They
strive to raise their hearts to God, now pressing this argument upon them,
then that, to quicken and affect them. Yet they often get nearly through the
exercise before their hearts begins to be interested in it; and some times
they go away no better than they came! But the Christian whose heart is
prepared by being constantly kept, enters immediately end heartily into his
duties; he outstrips his sluggish neighbor, gets the first sight of Christ
in a sermon; the first love-token from Christ in an ordinance; the first
communication of grace and love in secret prayer. Now if there is anything
valuable and comfortable in ordinances and private duties—look to your heart
and keep it, I beseech you.
5. An acquaintance with your own heart will furnish you a
fountain of matter in PRAYER. The man who is diligent in
heart-work, will lie richly supplied with matter in his addresses to God. He
will not be confused for lack of thoughts; his tongue will not falter for
lack of expressions.
6. The most desirable thing in the world, that is, the
REVIVAL of religion among a people, may be effected by means of what I am
urging upon you. O that I might see the time when professors
shall not walk in a vain show; when they shall please themselves no more
with a name to live, while they are spiritually dead; when they shall be no
more a company of frothy, vain people; but when holiness shall shine in
their lives, and awe the world, and command respect from all who are around
them; when they shall warm the heart of those who come near them, and cause
it to be said, "God is truly among these men!" And may such a time be
expected? Until heart-work becomes the business of professors, I have no
hope of seeing a thing so blessed! Does it not grieve you to see how
religion is condemned and trampled under foot, and the professors of it
ridiculed and scorned in the world? Professors, would you recover your
credit? Would you obtain an honorable testimony in the consciences of your
very enemies? Then keep your hearts!
7. By diligence in keeping our hearts we should prevent
the occasions of fatal scandals and STUMBLING-BLOCKS to the world.
Woe to the world because of stumbling blocks!
8. Keep your heart faithfully, and you will be PREPARED
for any situation or service to which you may be called. This,
and this alone, call properly fit you for usefulness in any station; but
with this you can endure prosperity or adversity; you can deny yourself, and
turn your hand to any work. Thus Paul turned every circumstance to good
account, and made himself so eminently useful. When he preached to others,
he provided against being cast away himself—because he kept his heart!
Everything in which he excelled seems to have had a close connection with
his diligence in keeping his heart.
9. If the people of God would diligently keep their
hearts, their COMMUNION with each other would be unspeakably more inviting
and profitable. Then "how goodly would be your tents, O Jacob,
and your tabernacles, O Israel!" It is the fellowship which the people of
God have with the Father and with the Son—which kindles the desires of
others to have communion with them! I tell you, that if saints would be
persuaded to spend more time and take more pains about their hearts, there
would soon be such a divine excellence in their lives, that others would
account it a great privilege to be with or near them.
It is the pride, passion and earthliness of our
hearts—which has spoiled Christian fellowship. Why is it that when
Christians meet they are often jarring and contending—but because their
passions are unmortified? Whence come their uncharitable censures of their
brethren—but from their ignorance of themselves? Why are they so rigid and
unfeeling toward those who have fallen—but because they do not feel their
own weakness and liability to temptation? Why is their discourse so light
and unprofitable when they meet—but because their hearts are earthly and
vain? But now, if Christians would study their hearts more and keep them
better, the beauty and glory of communion would be restored. They would
divide no more, contend no more, censure rashly no more. They will feel
right one toward another—when each is daily humbled under a sense of
the evil of his own heart!
10. Lastly—Keep your heart, and then the COMFORTS of the
Spirit and the influence of all ordinances will be more fixed and lasting
than they now are. Do the consolations of God seem small to you?
Ah, you have reason to be ashamed that the ordinances of God, as to their
quickening and comforting effects, should make so light and transient an
impression on your heart!
Now, reader, consider well these special benefits of
keeping the heart which I have mentioned. Examine their importance. Are
they small matters? Is it a small matter to have your understanding
assisted? Is it a small matter to have your endangered soul rendered safe?
Is it a small matter to have your sincerity proved? Is it a small matter to
have your communion with God sweetened? Is it a small matter to have your
heart filled with matter for prayer? Is it a small thing to have the power
of godliness? Is it a small matter to have fatal scandals removed? Is it a
small matter to obtain a great fitness to serve Christ? Is it a small matter
to have the communion of saints restored to its primitive glory? Is it a
small matter to have the influence of ordinances abiding in the souls of
saints? If these are no common blessings, no ordinary benefits, then surely
it is a great and indispensable duty to keep the heart with all diligence.
And now are you inclined to undertake the business of
keeping your heart? Are you resolved upon it? I charge you, then, to engage
in it earnestly! Away with every cowardly feeling, and make up your mind to
encounter difficulties. Draw your armor from the word of God. Let the word
of Christ dwell in you richly, in its commands, its promises, its
threatenings Let the word of Christ be fixed in your understanding, your
memory, your conscience, your affections. You must learn to wield the sword
of the Spirit (which is the word of God) familiarly, if you would defend
your heart and conquer your enemies. You must call yourself frequently to an
account. Examine yourself as in the presence of the all seeing God. Bring
your conscience, as it were, to the bar of judgment. Beware how you plunge
yourself into a multiplicity of worldly business—how you practice upon the
maxims of the world—and how you venture to indulge your depraved
propensities. You must exercise the utmost vigilance to discover and check
the first symptoms of departure from God, the least decline of spirituality,
or the least indisposition to private meditation, and holy conversation and
fellowship with others. These things you must undertake, in the strength of
Christ, with invincible resolution at the outset.
And if you thus engage in this great work, be assured you
shall not spend your strength for nothing! Comforts which you never felt or
thought of, will flow in upon you from every side. The diligent prosecution
of this work will constantly afford you the most powerful excitements to
vigilance and ardor in the life of faith, while it increases our strength
and wears out your enemies. And when you have kept your heart with all
diligence a little while—when you have fought the battles of this spiritual
warfare, gained the ascendancy over the corruptions within, and vanquished
the enemies without—then God will open the gate of heaven to you, and give
you the portion which is promised to those who overcome! Awake then, this
moment; get the world under your felt, pant not for the things which a man
may have, and eternally lose his soul! Bless God that you may have his
service here, and the glory hereafter which he appoints to his
chosen.
"Now may the God of peace, who brought up from the dead
our Lord Jesus—the great Shepherd of the sheep—with the blood of the
everlasting covenant, equip you with all that is good to do His will,
working in us what is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom
be glory forever and ever. Amen. Brothers, I urge you to receive this
word of exhortation, for I have written to you in few words." Hebrews
13:20-22
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