Articles
Heart Exam: A Guarded Fount
“And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:7 NIV)
Imagine that you are a beautiful fountain. People everyday come in and throw pennies in, come in and wade in and splash around. They try to disturb your waters and the true beauty of the fountain you are.
Our heart is left impure. We have done wrong, and let ourselves get caught up with other people or our temptations. Our heart is left impure, and the only one who can make it clean again is God. God is our water filter; He is the one who can clean our heart and make us pure again (Psalm 51:10).
We need to try to prevent getting our heart disturbed in the first place, so that we can always be the beautiful fountain that God planned for us to be. To begin with, we have to drive out the temptations in life; they are the things that keep us from enjoying the life that God has laid out for us (Colossians 3:5). We also need to be careful who we spend our time with. Whether it be our co-workers, friends, people we meet online, and any other person that has a bad influence. Some of these people don’t see eye to eye with our beliefs, and they might not even respect our belief. We need to avoid them if they are not open to learning more about what makes us as happy or as grateful as we are (1 Corinthians 15:33).
We should seek God in our times of need, and in times when we are blessed by His creation. We should avoid the people that try to get in our way of our love of God. Media such as music and movies could have bad influences that could make us think of things we shouldn’t.
Just as dirty shoes or old coins can make our fountain unclean and unfiltered, a filter can make our fountain clean again. The filter is through the renewing of our mind with things that are not of this world, and the ways that we use our bodies as a living sacrifice to God each day (Romans 12:1-2).
