It's a precious thing that can impact people beyond belief, but then it can break much more quickly than you give it away.
So you're told to guard it.
But what does it mean to "guard your heart," exactly? It almost at times seems contradictory, because we are taught to be loving and open our hearts up to people, but how can we do that if we are constantly guarding them? Even Proverbs 4:23 says, "Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it." That's a pretty big thing to be protecting—the key part of that being protecting.
It makes me think of the final scene in The Little Mermaid. King Triton obviously doesn't want his daughter to be a human and away from his sea kingdom forever. He would rather guard her and protect her. But, at the same time, he knows that the only way for her to experience the love she's found is to let her leave and be with Eric, the man who has proven to be the one with whom she is supposed to spend the rest of her life. Our hearts are a lot like Ariel—yes, we must guard them, but we also must let them flourish and allow love to be what wins.
I don't think that when young women are told to guard their hearts that it's meant for them to shelter themselves from others and never let their hearts have feelings that are stronger than they've ever known. But, at the same time, it isn't good to give your heart away so quickly that it's more vulnerable and at risk of being easily broken. There's a fine line and a balance, though it's often difficult to know what those are.
And that's where complete surrender comes in.
When we trust God with all of our hearts, that balance is easier to determine. If we're seeking Him first, we don't have to worry as much about giving our hearts away too fast, because their in tune with His. The One from whom we never have to guard our hearts is there to guide us and protect us, and He is also there to comfort us when we do experience those heartbreaks that at first seem like they will never go away.
I recently realized the need for complete surrender of my heart when it became quite apparent in something I had been praying about a lot that I wasn't giving it completely to God. I was praying what I knew I should—that everything was in His hands and for Him to take certain feelings of my heart away—but, in the back of my mind, I really wanted things to work out the way I wanted them to. I wanted those feelings, and I wanted them returned.
But that wasn't in His plan.
When I felt the Lord prompting me to give Him all of my heart and obeyed, everything changed instantly. I know longer felt the heartache I had been, and I knew it was right. I knew that, in order to guard my heart better, I needed to let it be fully in the Lord's hands all of the time. The more we hold on to the things we desire that aren't part of what He has in store for us, the more pain we will feel, and the harder it will be to understand. But, when we completely surrender our hearts, we are able to guard them and let them flourish at the same time.
We also have to guard our hearts against bitterness and resentment so that we don't fill them with unforgiveness—that would defeat the purpose of letting our hearts love. With complete surrender, we can find the grace to extend to others and to ourselves—and we can find it in that very thing that contains more power than we might ever know.
With such a magnificent thing in each of us, it's just one more reason to guard the heart with care yet let it shine for the whole world to see.
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