Guard your heart

Proverbs 4:20ff – My son attend to my words; incline your ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from your eyes; keep them in the midst of your heart. For they are life to those who find them, and health to all their flesh. Keep your heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life
People know how to keep their stuff safe. Clothes go in the cupboard, money goes in the bank or in the wallet, the house is locked etc but when it comes to keeping our minds and hearts we are poor gate keepers. For what gets in through the eye gate or ear gate gets into the mind and eventually into the heart. If someone gives heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils as Eve did in giving heed to the serpent and brought about the downfall of mankind, there is definitely going to be undesirable consequences or end results. That is why this portion begins with an instruction to give heed to proper godly instruction and counsel. Words are tools used to achieve the end of building or breaking, seeds sown to grow a fruitful tree or to choke the good things sown.
In times past God spoke through the prophets and in these last days in his son Jesus. Are you giving heed to what God has said? or are you being lazy and in-disciplined with your mind and heart? Forgetting God, forgetting his instructions which are for life will prove fatal. Read the Bible, listen to godly wise counsel and keep your heart from being divided and disloyal to the truth. God desires truth in the inward parts. The word is spirit and life. Let us eat from the tree of life and live. Jesus is the bread of life that came down from heaven if a man eat, will live and not die. That is his claim.
The heart is obviously an important part of our being. That is why we are advised to keep it, to guard what goes in and what comes out. Jesus said, What comes out of our hearts defile us, not by eating with un-washen hands or not by what goes in (the food we eat). The heart spoken of here is not the physical heart but the core of our person. If our heart is healthy we can believe God’s word and act upon it, if it is not and there is a clog then there is a problem for the flow of life