“Guard your heart.” I used to hear this phrase often as I grew up in an environment that was overflowing with God. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am incredibly grateful and blessed to have grown up in this environment, but there were a few things here and there that I either didn’t pay much attention to or I simply was not taught. This topic was one of those.
Like many others in this world, the main area of life that was always talked about in connection to “guarding your heart” was dating relationships - sex specifically. I still agree that we most definitely should guard our hearts when it comes to sex outside of marriage, but I was never told (or at least I don’t remember ever being told) that guarding your heart was MUCH deeper than sex. Now when I think of this phrase, sex outside of marriage is not the only thing that comes to mind, but EVERYTHING else does too. I think about this topic DAILY. Why? Because guarding my heart simply means that I am putting up barriers between me and temptation - between me and the Devil with all of his demons. What a simple definition for such a difficult thing to do. In the first episode of season 2 of my podcast (A Worship Warrior’s Podcast), I talked about an analogy of what it looks like to put up a huge barrier between our hearts and Satan. If you haven’t listened to that yet, I recommend you go do that after you finish reading this post. Click here to listen. Today, I want to talk about a few things that I struggle with (AKA airing out my dirty laundry) and the ways that I practically guard my heart from falling into my own trap of sin once again.
The first sin cycle that I struggled with for a very long time was Maladaptive Daydreaming. I won’t go into all of the signs and symptoms of this, but I will tell you a few of the ones I personally have experienced: excessively daydreaming for hours throughout each day, twisting of reality and fantasy, resulting in not always knowing if something happened in real life or if it was in my daydream; a desire to daydream instead of living in the present; and trouble focusing and sleeping due to daydreaming often. This lead me to be discontent, impatient, and at times, narcissistic. Someone who is fully captivated by God and desires to grow closer to Him, giving Him your entire life to do with what he chooses is not someone who struggles with Maladaptive Daydreaming unless they are willing to repent and turn away from their sin. This takes so much discipline, prayer, awareness, and time. It is extremely hard to be rid of this sin cycle. I know this from experience. There are a few ways that I add boundaries in my day to day life (guard my heart and mind) to prevent me from falling to this temptation again. One of the ways is watching certain genres of movies and tv shows alone. Something that triggers this daydreaming is seeing specific things in different forms of entertainment. In order to not see these triggers as often, I limit my screen time. I currently don’t watch tv unless I am watching something with someone else. In order to have the self-discipline and strength needed for me to completely turn away from my flesh, I desperately need God to do the majority of the work for me! I stay in His Word. I not only just read scripture, but I familiarize myself with it (not doing so well with this the past month), study it, and pray through it. I also talk and hang out with strong, Christian friends who I know will not judge me but will encourage and pray for me. These things are the foundation of me being able to set strict structures in my life and stick to them - guarding me from the arrows of the devil.
Another sin I struggle with is one that many people do and that is addiction to scrolling. I don’t struggle with Facebook so much, but Instagram and Snapchat I do. My biggest struggle that goes along with this is watching long-form YouTube videos and not having the self-control to stop, wasting hours of my time that God so clearly tells us not to waste in Ephesians 5:15-17. I no longer allow myself to even have an easy opportunity of tapping these apps. I currently don’t have any form of social media on my phone. As far as YouTube goes, if I want to watch something, I can watch it on the tv when my son is asleep and I have no other responsibilities that I need to attend to.
The last sin I am going to mention in this post is laziness. When I was a teenager, I was incredibly lazy at times. I have struggled with this for so long, never actually putting forth the effort needed to rid this sin once and for all. After I started my first job, I realized I was only lazy around the house and with school, but when I was at work, I was an extremely hard worker. When I moved into my first apartment, I lived alone. I saw all of the little things that needed to be done around my apartment, and if I were to keep up with the housework and still do well with my job then I needed to get my butt in gear and stop being lazy with certain things. Well, I really didn’t get my butt in gear to be honest. Fast forward a few years to the present time, I am much better at not being lazy. If you came to my home and watched me do all of the things I do in a week, you would not see me as a complete bum, but what you would see is someone who knows she needs to work hard, does work hard about 80% of the time, and the remaining 20%, she is struggling to get the job done because all she wants to do is sit down and do nothing. God has revealed to me that it doesn’t matter if I do my absolute best that 80% of the time if I am choosing to be lazy the other 20% of the time. He has shown me that I am to do my best 100% of the time to glorify Him and to reap the benefits of hard labor. After all of my responsibilities are finished for the day and for the week, I can then rest - not be lazy but rest. Refer back to Genesis 2:2 “And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.” Notice it says, AFTER God finished His work, he rested. In order to guard my heart from laziness, I must first be filled with God’s strength once again. I also constantly remind myself of all of the amazing benefits that will come when I work hard and do all of my responsibilities well. Another thing I do not do anymore is read content, watch content, or listen to content that promotes mom’s “deserving” that “rest” which isn’t true biblical rest (it is often actually laziness when compared to biblical rest). I don’t deserve anything. I didn’t earn anything either. I have everything I have because of God. Therefore, I should be glorifying Him with the time I have because He has given that time to me. Now, I’m not saying that you should never sit on the couch and rest at 2 pm because the day isn’t over yet. There are times when we (whether you are a mom or not) do need to take a few moments to simply chill and rest in the middle of our day and week, but that means that we should enforce the self-discipline necessary to get up and keep going with the rest of our to-do’s when the time comes.
Guarding your heart and mind is not easy. It is incredibly hard, but in order to be able to do this, we must first and foremost keep our eyes always on God. Next, we keep our eyes on the ministry He has for us - which is growing and strengthening His kingdom. When we keep our focus on those two things alone, the other things slowly fall into place on our list of priorities.
I hope this encourages you to listen to God about how to set boundaries in your own life. The amount of joy and peace that I have received from guarding my heart in these ways is indescribable. You can always reach out to me through the contact page on my website if you have any questions, concerns, or prayer requests.
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Ms. Becky, thank you for all of your help.
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