Guard Your Heart

by Catrina LeSure

I remember it like it was yesterday.  I felt like I couldn't breath.  I just knew my heart had stopped and prayed that my mind would stop spinning with the horrific news.  We'd been together for five years.  How could he do this to me?  I should have seen it coming.  The secret cell phone...the calls he took in another room...it all should have pointed to her.  But it didn't.  He'd found a way into my heart and I had chosen to ignore all the warning signs as a result.  I cried for weeks and would never reveal just how much chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream I ate because it's far too cliche.  When my heart was broken the overflow was pain, misery, contempt, and loss.

I poured my heart into these kids.  They were my life.  We shopped for campouts together, prepared for the flowers honor as a team, and organized service projects as one.  So how could one man ruin all of this? How could one person's opinion be more valuable than the ministry I built with my own blood, sweat, and tears?  I had given my heart to this ministry.  To lose it for the sake of one thought was horrific, I became bitter, angry, and vengeful.

Regardless of how romantic or noble your choices, giving your heart to the wrong things will end in heartbreak.  There is only one place where your heart can be truly safe and that's in the hands of Jesus.  In truth, there is no better way to describe the breastplate of righteousness than the hand of God.  It is the great protection of our hearts.

Breastplates aren't really the war icon that some other pieces of armor are.  Nowadays, they get covered under shirts more often than not.  But at the end of the day they are always something you have to put on.  No one is born with a built in breastplate.  Similarly Solomon declares, "There is none righteous!"  In truth, the breastplate of righteousness is a source of great praise to God.  There is no way to get the breastplate of righteousness without Him.  There is nothing within us to protect our hearts from the sin that is already within them.  Instead we need the hand of God to remove the threat from within and protect from the threat from without.

So long as we attempt to protect our own hearts, we will fail.  The only way to find success in protecting our hearts is to place it in the hands of the One who created it.