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With All Diligence

The heart is the heart of faith. Guard it carefully.

Keep your heart with all diligence,
For out of it spring the issues of life.

  - Proverbs 4.23

What use is it for the passions to be assailed by a servant, when they are found to be in league with the master?

  - Columbanus, Sermon II, Irish, 7th century[1]

It’s always the passions that get us in trouble.

We get angry because of this, that, or the other, and everybody pays. We brood in a melancholy funk for no particular reason, and everybody pays. By the way, “everybody pays” usually means those closest to us, which tells you how stupid it is for us to allow our passions to rule common sense.

The devil – who is the Lord’s servant – knows full well that we are vulnerable in our hearts. Which is all the more reason why we need to take Solomon’s advice very seriously. For what good will it be for the devil to try to fire-up and hijack our passions, causing us to sin, if our passions are consciously and continuously in league with the Master? He’s wasting his time on us when that’s the case.

Making sure that our hearts are lodged with the heart of Christ is full time work. From our hearts spring the issues of life, but we need to make sure that what springs from that fount of affections is appropriate to the moment and intended for love.

The Bible speaks much of our affections – those feelings, desires, hopes, and aspirations that guide us day by day. Some affections incline us toward someone or something – love, compassion, longing, interest, friendship, and so forth. Other affections make us want to turn away from someone or something – fear, distrust, anger, hatred. All affections are valid, but only as they are properly focused and invested with the right intensity.

For example, we should love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. For most of us, this will mean some continuous work getting the intensity of our love for God to the proper level. Loving God any less than this means we’re keeping in reserve some love for something else.

At the same time, we are to love our neighbors as ourselves; but if we love ourselves too much, or in inappropriate ways, we’ll likely turn that Golden Rule around to have it say, love your neighbor as your neighbor loves you, and nothing more.

Similarly, we might think that hate has no place in the human heart. But we are commanded to hate sin (Ps. 97.10), and if you don’t hate the devil, that servant of God will make you his slave before you know it.

The heart is the heart of the matter in the life of faith. It is important to understand the various affections that harbor there, and to know how to order and express them so that love for God and neighbor are the defining condition of our lives.

Keep watch over your heart with all diligence, because everything else in life flows from that fount. What you say, how you say it, how you treat other people, how faithful you are in following the Lord – all this comes from the heart, the affections, the passions. Understand the affections, and how God intends to use them. And keep watch against those affections that might become the fly in the ointment of your walk with and work for the Lord.

We are all vulnerable to the attacks of the devil at precisely the point where our affections are not carefully guarded. Guard yours at all times, by resting them at the feet of the risen and glorious Master. He’ll train your affections to love, and send the devil packing.

Psalm 4.1, 4, 5 (Picardy: Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silent)
Answer when I call, Lord Jesus, God of all my righteousness!
Bend Your holy ear, relieve us from all terror, all distress!
Lord, receive our prayer, release us; send Your grace to save and bless!

Let your anger flare, yet sin not; meditate, be still, and rest.
Turn your heart to God, give in, not trusting in your righteousness.
Praise the Savior, all from sin bought; look to Him to save and bless.

Lord, help me to watch over my heart. Do not let my passions get away from me!

Will you seek the Lord?

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T. M. Moore
Principal
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All psalms for singing from The Ailbe Psalter. Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.


[1]Walker, p. 71.

T.M. Moore

T. M. Moore is principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He and his wife, Susie, make their home in the Champlain Valley of Vermont.
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