We are continuing Flavel’s conclusion of Keeping the Heart. He gives us four more benefits to this greatest of Christian duties. Last time we looked at (1) how keeping the heart helps us to understand the deepness of the Christian Faith, (2) how it helps inoculate us against error, and (3) how it is among the best evidences of our salvation in the Faith. Here is Flavel on help number 4:
4. How comfortable and how profitable would all ordinances and duties be to you, if your heart was faithfully kept. What lively communion might you have with God every time you approach him, if your heart was in a right frame! You might then say with David, “My meditation of Him shall be sweet.” It is the indisposition of the heart which renders ordinances, and secret duties so comfortless to some. They strive to raise their hearts to God, now pressing this argument upon them, then that, to quicken and affect them; yet they often get nearly through the exercise before their hearts begin to be interested in it; and sometimes they go away no better than they came. But the Christian whose heart is prepared by being constantly kept, enters immediately and heartily into his duties; he outstrips his sluggish neighbor, gets the first sight of Christ in a sermon, the first seal from Christ in a sacrament, the first communication of grace and love in secret prayer. Now if there be any thing valuable and comfortable in ordinances and private duties, look to your heart and keep it, I beseech you.
Keeping the heart opens the doors to God’s blessing in our lives. If we desire to know the heights of the Christian Faith, then keeping the heart is the way to it. Regardless of circumstances, we will learn to love and trust God. To even what can seem to be the worst of days to a nonbeliever, we can say from the heart: this is the day that the Lord has made. Let us be glad and rejoice in it (Ps. 118:24)! Our work ethic will flourish, as will our relations to others. Indeed, our relationship with God will fly to heights hardly imaginable.
5. An acquaintance with your own heart will furnish you a fountain of matter in prayer. The man who is diligent in heart-work, will be richly supplied with matter in his addresses to God. He will not be confused for want of thoughts; his tongue will not falter for want of expressions.
Prayer is how we are to make requests of God. For the Christian who keeps his heart, prayer is his lifeline and the blood of his veins. It is the fuel for everything. The one keeping his heart in prayer more readily sees his own spiritual need (and the spiritual need of others), and petitions God freely and with boldness for His gracious providence. When he sees the depravity of his heart, he realizes that he has many things to pray about. For instance, he may have an ungodly attitude towards something that happened in his life, or an evil thought about someone, or a lack of gratitude. All of these things—things that can be seemingly endless at times—point to sin and idols that need to be mortified. In keeping the heart, prayer is to sin what the chopping block is to the convict. It is a tool that God gives for the mortification of sin. Using this means of grace well, leads to much blessing, flowing freely from God to a heart after Him. We will likewise learn to see its blessing even among the worst of hardship, praising God for His goodness as He molds us into conformity to His Son. We will also become used of God as a conduit of blessing for the conversion and growth of others.
6. The most desirable thing in the world, viz. the revival of religion among a people, may be effected by means of what I am urging upon you.
O that I might see the time when professors shall not walk in a vain show; when they shall please themselves no more with a name to live, while they are spiritually dead; when they shall be no more a company of frothy, vain persons; but when holiness shall shine in their conversation, and awe the world, and command reverence from all that are around them; when they shall warm the heart of those who come near them, and cause it to be said, God is in these men of a truth. And may such a time be expected? Until heart-work becomes the business of professors, I have no hope of seeing a time so blessed! Does it not grieve you to see how religion is contemned and trampled under foot, and the professors of it ridiculed and scorned in the world? Professors, would you recover your credit? would you obtain an honorable testimony in the consciences of your very enemies? Then keep your hearts.
The revival of the Christian Faith among men is so very often from God’s sovereign use of faithful prayer. Desiring to be God’s tools for true revival—revival where God is its sole author, and not the constructions of men as with the terrible error of Finneyism—should lead to keeping the heart with greater diligence. It can be quite tempting to look merely to the outside, as if a person is converted by the props and emotional manipulations of men! Charles Finney was one such man who popularized the idea that, with the right external stimuli, one can manufacture a revival. For this reason, he was the author of countless revivals of the devil that served to deceive and not save. His influence is still felt strongly in professing churches today. Yet, we, dear Christian, ought not to fall for such wiles, recognizing that the work of the heart is grounded in God’s grace. Salvation is entirely of the Lord and not of our own manufacturing. And our growth in faithfulness is enabled by the Lord towards the keeping of the heart. External manipulations can never accomplish even the slightest of heart work. Rather, having been made a new creation by Christ, heart work more readily happens when keepers of the heart pray diligently for true revival: revival that is, from beginning to end, the product of God, and is therefore to God and for God, according to the express standard of God (the Bible). So, diligently keep your hearts and pray for God to do great things according to His good pleasure and will.
Next time we will be looking at three more helps for keeping the heart.