Instagram Jesus Week 2: Devotional Day 3

DAY 3 – Wednesday Daily devotional

Read

Proverbs 4:23

Ask

How does guarding your heart protect joy?

Reflect

My children don’t love it when I set limits and boundaries for them. Turning off the iPad when screen time is done, stopping playing when it’s time for bed, monitoring how they speak to one another…. “Kind and gentle, kind and gentle, kind and gentle” is what I feel like I spend all day saying! I’m not popular when I enforce these rules! And how often do we feel the same way as adults about the idea of setting wise limits and boundaries for ourselves? Using screen time limits on Facebook, selectively choosing what Netflix shows we watch, thinking carefully about the influence our friends have on us… these are all hard things to do, and counter-cultural ways of living.

I wonder how many of us have already broken New Year’s resolutions about things like this. We know there’s wisdom in setting limits, but keeping to them takes a lot of discipline. Sometimes we wonder why we even bother!

Today’s passage teaches us the importance of guarding our thoughts and heart. Why? Because from it flows the source of life. In the book of Proverbs, the heart is “the center of one’s inner life and orientation to God” (ESV Study Bible). There is a choice to make. Either out flows evil thoughts and actions (cf. Mark 7:21-23) or springs of life (Proverbs 4:23).

Choosing what we fill our hearts and minds with is one way to guard our hearts such that out can flow life in all its fullness. A life filled with joy. What’s one practical way that you can guard your heart, and thus protect your joy, this week?