Guard Your Heart

[snuka12000]

PROVERBS 4: 23, (New Living Translation), "Above all else, guard your heart, for it affects everything you do."

Our heart - our feelings of love and desire - dictates to a great extent how we live because we always find time to do what we enjoy. Solomon tells us to guard our heart above all else, making sure we concentrate on those desires that will keep us on the right path. Make sure your affections lead you in the right direction. Put boundaries on your desires: Don't go after everything you see. Look straight ahead, keep your eyes fixed on your goal, and don't get sidetracked on detours that lead to sin.

[Steven E. Webster]

PROVERBS 4: 23, (New Living Translation), "Above all else, guard your heart, for it affects everything you do."

Our heart - our feelings of love and desire - dictates to a great extent how we live because we always find time to do what we enjoy. Solomon tells us to guard our heart above all else, making sure we concentrate on those desires that will keep us on the right path. Make sure your affections lead you in the right direction. Put boundaries on your desires: Don't go after everything you see. Look straight ahead, keep your eyes fixed on your goal, and don't get sidetracked on detours that lead to sin.

Friend,
I don't necessarily dispute your interpretation. However, when the Hebrew bible speaks of the "heart," we should probably understand it as referring to the mind and intellect and not feelings or desire. Ancient folks, including the Hebrews, thought that the seat of the mind or intellect was the heart. They did not realize that the brain is the organ of consciousness and thought--they thought that all happened in the heart.

They thought that the seat of feelings and emotions was somewhere in the gut, the liver or the spleen.

So the proverb is advising us to take care about our thoughts--wise advice.

Steven Webster

[snuka12000]

Logically, our feelings, desire and emotions come from the mind. We say heart but the heart of course is the organ that circulates blood through our bodies.

It's all the same. When we say heart, we really mean our brain.