We will be looking at three more helps for applying the keeping of the heart from Flavel. This is a part of the conclusion of his book, and is thus part of a final exhortation. (See devotional 42 if you would like a review of the last six points). Here is Flavel on point seven:
7. By diligence in keeping our hearts we should prevent the occasions of fatal scandals and stumbling blocks to the world. Woe to the world because of offences!
Keep your heart faithfully, and you will be prepared for any situation or service to which you may be called. This, and this only can properly fit you for usefulness in any station; but with this you can endure prosperity or adversity; you can deny yourself, and turn your hand to any work. Thus Paul turned every circumstance to good account, and made himself so eminently useful. When he preached to others, he provided against being cast away himself: he kept his heart; and every thing in which he excelled seems to have had a close connection with his diligence in keeping his heart.
Believers can be, at times, tricked into sin. We have all likely heard of “get rich quick” schemes that, despite appearing to be biblical on the outside to those who lack discernment, prey on the poor and needy. These are wolves who seek only gain for themselves, regardless of the shipwrecks they may leave in their wake. Such people use our own greed and covetousness against us, luring us in by our own sin. Learning to keep the heart according to Scripture can help to prevent this sort of deception from happening to us.
In contrast to falling for scandals and stumbling blocks, keeping the heart prepares a person for any life situation that may come to him. And not only does keeping the heart prepare us for anything that may come our way, but it also makes us productive for the Lord regardless of circumstances. Because of this, even when the world seems chaotic, those keeping their heart will always have ways of edifying other believers and witnessing to others of His majesty. It provides stability and stimulus for good works and growing in godliness.
8. If the people of God would diligently keep their hearts, their communion with each other would be unspeakably more inviting and profitable. Then “how goodly would be thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel!” It is the fellowship which the people of God have with the Father and with the Son that kindles the desires of others to have communion with them. I tell you, that if saints would be persuaded to spend more time and take more pains about their hearts, there would soon be such a divine excellence in their conversation that others would account it no small privilege to be with or near them. It is the pride, passion and earthliness of our hearts, that has spoiled Christian fellowship. Why is it that when Christians meet they are often jarring and contending, but because their passions are unmortified? Whence come their uncharitable censures of their brethren, but from their ignorance of themselves? Why are they so rigid and unfeeling toward those who have fallen, but because they do not feel their own weakness and liability to temptation? Why is their discourse so light and unprofitable when they meet, but because their hearts are earthly and vain? But now, if Christians would study their hearts more and keep them better, the beauty and glory of communion would be restored. They would divide no more, contend no more, censure rashly no more. They will feel right one toward another, when each is daily humbled under a sense of the evil of his own heart.
This is like the teaching we looked at from 1 John: (1) God savingly loves us (gives us a new heart), (2) we then are enabled to love God in return, (3) and the result is that we then—in loving God through inward obedience to His commandments—come to love our brothers and sisters in Christ. As John taught, believing in Christ (obeying His instruction as He obeyed the Father) and having union with Him, enabled by the Holy Spirit to grow in godliness, is the only way God has provided for the three points above. So it is, then, that truly loving God by keeping the heart to Him is the way through which we have been enabled to love others. We have no other way to love others but through keeping our hearts. This covenantal relationship we have with God in the New Covenant thus makes loving God and loving neighbor a uniquely Christian enterprise. Only Christians have been enabled to do this. Hence, when we look to “love” God or others in ways contrary to inward obedience to God’s commandments, we are, in fact, not loving them. Seeking any other way to love God or neighbor is futile, denying the way that God has Himself lovingly enabled us to follow. This is how truly loving others is a mark of loving God and vice versa. Just as no unbeliever can save himself, so no unbeliever can bear these marks. And there we have the uniquely holy demarcation of keeping the heart, whereby we are set apart as God’s covenant people. So, do not try to love others as the world loves, but love others as God loves them; a love that is perfectly holy, just, God-centered, and uniquely good, bereft of idolatry, and the polar opposite of sin: a love that seeks to drive others to Christ and to reflect His image. This is how we can have holy fellowship with other believers, and keeping the heart is as glue for the true body of Christ (it is repulsive to false brethren), contagiously moving others to serve God in a like way. If you desire to edify and help the church, then keep the heart! Just as loving one’s brother and sister in Christ mark the saved, so therefore keeping the heart mark the same. As the condition of your heart-keeping, so will be the condition of your love of brother.
9. Lastly:—Keep your heart, and then the comforts of the Spirit and the influence of all ordinances will be more fixed and lasting than they now are. “And do the consolations of God seem small to you?” Ah, you have reason to be ashamed that the ordinances of God, as to their quickening and comforting effects, should make so light and transient an impression on your heart.
Having gone through Flavel’s book, we have come to see how keeping the heart is at the core of Christian faith and practice. It is at the core of the promises of the New Covenant, enabled in Christ and by the Holy Spirit. It is the standard to which we are to strive—even unto blood—that we may grow into Christlikeness: sanctification, which is the will of God (1 Thess. 4:3; Rom. 6:22). No greater duty is presented to the Christian than this.
Next time we will conclude our devotional series on Keeping the Heart.