John Flavel
1. What it means to keep the heart. To keep the heart is the constant diligence of a renewed man to preserve his soul in that holy frame to which grace has brought it and daily strives to hold it there. Though grace has, in a great measure, rectified the soul and given it a habitual, heavenly temper, yet sin often unsettles it again. Even a gracious heart is like a musical instrument which, even if it is never so exactly tuned, a small matter puts it out of tune again; indeed if you put it aside for only a little time, it will need retuning before you can play it again. So it is with gracious hearts; if they are in a frame for one duty, yet how dull, dead and disordered when they come to another?
Therefore every duty needs a particular preparation of the heart: “If thou prepare thine heart, and stretch out thine hands towards Him” (Job 11:13). Well then, to keep the heart is to preserve it carefully from sin, which disorders it, and to maintain that spiritual and gracious frame which fits it for a life of communion with God. And this includes these six acts:
(1.) Frequent observation of the frame of the heart, looking in and examining how it stands. This is one part of the work. Carnal and formal people take no heed to this; they cannot be brought to confer with their own hearts. Some men and women have lived 40 or 50 years in the world and have scarcely had one hour’s conversation with their own hearts all that while. It is hard to bring a man and himself together on such an account, but saints know those soliloquies and self-conferences are of excellent use and advantage. The heathen could say that the soul is made wise by sitting still in quietness. Though bankrupts do not wish to look into their books of account, upright hearts will know whether they go backward or forward. “I commune with mine own heart” (Ps 77:6). The heart can never be kept until its state is examined and understood.
(2.) Deep humiliation for heart evils and disorders. Thus Hezekiah humbled himself for the pride of his heart (2 Chr 32:26). And thus the people were directed to spread forth their hands to God in prayer, in a sense of the plague of their own hearts (1 Ki 8:38). Upon this account many an upright heart has been laid low before God, saying, O what a heart have I? They have in their confessions pointed at the heart, the pained place: Lord, here is the wound; here is the plague-sore. It is with the well-kept heart as it is with the eye –
1An edited extract from Flavel’s little work, A Saint Indeed, which can be found in The Works of John Flavel, vol 5, and is based on the verse, “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life” (Prov 4:23).
which is a fit emblem of it – if a speck of dust gets into the eye, it will never stop watering till it has been wept out: so the upright heart cannot be at rest till it has wept out its troubles and poured out its complaints before the Lord.
(3.) Earnest supplications and instant prayer for heart-purifying and rectifying grace, when sin has defiled and disordered the heart; so Psalm 19:12: “Cleanse Thou me from secret faults”; and Psalm 86:11: “Unite my heart to fear Thy name”. Saints have always many such petitions pending before the throne of God’s grace; this is the thing they most plead for with God. When they are praying for outward mercies, perhaps their spirits may be more remiss, but when it comes to the state of their heart, they extend their spirits to the utmost, fill their mouths with arguments, weep and make supplication: O for a better heart! O for a heart to love God more.
They pray that they may hate sin more and walk more evenly with God: Lord, deny me not such a heart; whatever Thou deny me; give me a heart to fear Thee, to love and delight in Thee, even if I beg my bread in desolate places. It is observed of holy John Bradford that, when he was confessing sin, he would never give up confessing until he had felt some brokenness of heart for that sin. And when praying for any spiritual mercy, he would never give up these petitions, until he had got some relish of that mercy.
(4.) Imposing strong undertakings and bonds on ourselves to walk more accurately with God and avoid what may induce the heart to sin. Well-composed, advised and deliberate vows are, in some cases, of excellent use to guard the heart against some special sin; so: “I made a covenant with mine eyes” (Job 31:1). By this means, holy ones have overawed their souls and preserved themselves from defilement by some special heart-corruptions.
(5.) A constant holy jealousy over our hearts; quick-sighted self-jealousy is an excellent preservative from sin; he that will keep his heart must have the eyes of his soul awake and open to all the disorderly and tumultuous stirrings of his affections. If the affections break loose and the passions be stirred, the soul must discover and suppress them before they get to a height: O my soul, do you do well in this? My tumultuous thoughts and passions, where is your commission?
Happy is the man that thus fears always (Prov 28:14). It is by this fear of the Lord that men depart from evil, shake off complacency and preserve themselves from iniquity. He that will keep his heart must eat with the fear of God, rejoice with that fear, and pass the whole time of his sojourning here in that fear – and all little enough to keep the heart from sin.
(6.) Realising God’s presence with us and setting the Lord always before us. The people of God have found this an appropriate way to keep their hearts upright, and to awe them away from sin; when the eye of our faith is
fixed upon the eye of God’s omniscience, we dare not let out our thoughts and affections to vanity. Holy Job dared not suffer his heart to yield to an impure, vain thought; and what moved him to be so circumspect? He tells you: “Dost He not see my ways, and count all my steps?” (Job 31:4). “Walk before Me,” God said to Abraham, “and be thou perfect” (Gen 17:1). Even as parents place their children in front of them in the congregation, knowing that otherwise they will be playing; so would the heart of the best man be too, were it not for the eye of God.
In these and such like particulars, gracious souls express the care they have of their hearts. They are as careful to prevent corruptions breaking loose in times of temptation, as seamen are to bind fast the guns so that they will not break loose in a storm. They are as careful to preserve the sweetness and comfort they have got from God in any duty, as one that comes out of a hot bath, or a great sweat, is of taking cold by going forth into the chill air. To keep the heart is the work; of all works in religion it is the most difficult, constant and important work.
(1.) It is the most difficult work; heart-work is hard work indeed. To shuffle over religious duties with a loose, heedless spirit will cost no great pains, but to set yourself before the Lord and tie up your loose, vain thoughts to a constant, serious attendance on Him; this will cost you something. To attain a facility and dexterity of language in prayer, and put your meaning into apt and decent expressions, is easy; but to get your heart broken for sin whilst you are confessing it – melted with free grace while you are blessing God for it – to be really ashamed and humbled through apprehensions of God’s infinite holiness, and to keep your heart in this frame, not only in duty, but after it, will surely cost you some groans and travailing pain of soul. To repress the outward acts of sin, and compose the external part of your life in a laudable and comely manner, is no great matter; even carnal persons can do this by the force of common principles; but to kill the root of corruption within, to set up and keep up a holy government over your thoughts, to have all things straight and orderly in the heart, this is not easy.
(2.) It is a constant work. To keep the heart is a work that is never finished till life is done; this labour and our life end together. It is with a Christian in this business as it is with seamen that have sprung a leak at sea: if they do not tug constantly at the pump, the water increases on them and will quickly sink them. It is in vain for them to say the work is hard and we are weary; there is no time or condition in the life of a Christian which will allow this work to be interrupted. To keep watch over our hearts is like keeping up Moses’ hand while Israel and Amalek were fighting below (Ex 17:12). No sooner did Moses’ hands grow heavy and sink down but Amalek prevailed.
You know it cost David and Peter many a sad day and night for interrupting their watch over their hearts for only a few minutes.
(3.) It is the most important business of a Christian’s life. Without this we are but formal in religion; all our professions, gifts and duties signify nothing: “My son, give Me thine heart” (Prov 23:26). God is pleased to call that a gift which is indeed a debt; He will put this honour on the creature: to receive it from Him in the way of a gift. But if this is not given to Him, He does not regard whatever else you bring to Him. There is only as much value in what we do as there is of heart in it. Concerning the heart, God seems to say, as Joseph of Benjamin, “Ye shall not see my face, except your brother be with you”. Among the heathens, when a beast was cut up for sacrifice, the first thing the priest looked on was the heart, and if that was unsound, the sacrifice was rejected. God rejects all duties (however glorious in other respects) that are offered Him without a heart. He that performs a duty without a heart (that is, heedlessly) is no more accepted with God than he that performs it with a double heart (that is, hypocritically) (Is 66:3).
Thus I have briefly opened the nature of the duty that is implied in this phrase, “Keep thy heart”.