The Heart - Part Three
How do we protect our hearts when the people we're around the most have the easiest access to it?
The people we're around the most have the easiest access to our hearts, whether we know it or not. Our coworkers, friends and, obviously, our spouses have the ability to speak directly to our hearts. Hopefully this is a good thing in all of our lives. We need people who can speak the Word and life into us when we lose sight of who we are in Christ.
There are people who do the opposite though. Some people speak negativity and doubt and, because they are close to us, or we respect them, we allow those words into our hearts.
This is so important because we will become like the people who have the most influential voices in our lives. If these people are angry, negative, self-absorbed and filled with doubt, then we shouldn't be surprised when our behavior becomes a reflection of theirs.
One thing we must know about this truth is that even if we spend our time filling our hearts with the word of God and worshiping Him, we can still have a hard heart because of our relationships.
1 Corinthians 15:33 says, "Do not be deceived: 'Evil company corrupts good habits.’ "
We can spend time cultivating good spiritual disciplines and keeping a sensitive heart toward God, just to have it undone by the worldly-minded people around us.
Sometimes we can fight against this by simply removing these people from our lives. This might sound harsh, but if certain people are constantly trying to move our focus away from our heavenly father to the negative circumstances around us, then we don't need their voices in our lives.
However, sometimes we can't just walk away from certain relationships. If your spouse is a negative person, then you obviously can't remove him/her from your life. In these circumstances you have to learn to strengthen yourself in the Lord the way King David did in 1 Samuel 30:6.
Everyone around David was distressed and angry, and they decided to turn their anger to David. Instead of giving in to their anger and believing what everyone was saying about him, David encouraged himself with the words of God.
This is what we should do when the people that are closest to us only seem to speak death. Instead of allowing those words to penetrate our hearts and influence our lives, we simply need to speak the word of God to ourselves. This will keep our hearts from becoming hard towards our heavenly father. It will also help keep our hearts from becoming hard towards the people around us.