Guard Your Heart

Scripture Texts: Numbers 9:15-23; Numbers 10:29-36; Isaiah 48:17-19

God always has a preference toward obedience. When we are obedient to God our life simply works better. The results of disobedience are not always as clear. When we do not follow the lead and call of God the result is violence. Or as Isaiah puts it, your destruction or cutting off your family name.

This might seem like a drastic way to put it, words like destruction and cutting off, are harsh words. Yet, they are intended to be harsh to demonstrate the consequences of disobedience. Whenever the people of God are not obedient to the lead of God, violence is experienced by the people or toward others.

Disobedience at its core is not about actions as much as it is about the condition of our heart. When our heart is more set on following our own desires it becomes more difficult to see where God is leading and to follow. Also, when our heart is not set on God, anything or anyone who stands in the way of us following our own desire becomes a threat and violence is the result.

To keep violence, physical, verbal or emotional out of a marriage we must tend to our hearts. First, our heart in relationship to God. Second, our heart in relationship to our spouse. If we have allowed anything other than God to have first place in our heart we will begin to move toward disobedience. If we allow another person to have a greater place in our heart than our spouse we move toward disobedience.

In order to accomplish this requires us to train and guard our hearts. When we feel something replacing God or our spouse in our heart we must train ourselves to refocus. We also must make sure that we are not exposing ourselves to people or things that would cause us to shift the priorities of our heart. Taking time to stay connected with God, and with our spouse on a daily basis is the primary way to train and guard our hearts. May we be people who invest this time so that we do not find ourselves in the midst of violence.