January 24, 2025 • 40 mins
Thanks for listening to this episode of A Worship Warrior's Podcast. In this episode, I, Sarah, talk about what "guarding your heart" actually means and what it looks like in our daily lives.
Links for this episode:
Off the Kirb Ministry YouTube Page:
https://www.youtube.com/@offthekirb
Ways That I Guard My Heart Blog Post:
https://www.worshipwarriorlifestyle.com/post/ways-that-i-guard-my-heart
Guarding My Heart and Mind Scripture Cards:
https://www.worshipwarriorlifestyle.com/_files/ugd/c25c0a_45b56342bd4f41e1adcf626c99222cba.pdf
Guarding My Heart and Mind Journaling Prompts:
https://www.worshipwarriorlifestyle.com/_files/ugd/c25c0a_68d6cc28d7254621b2a677e302df9578.pdf
Check out my:
Website: https://www.worshipwarriorlifestyle.com/
Blog: https://www.worshipwarriorlifestyle.com/blog
FREE Digital Resources: https://www.worshipwarriorlifestyle.com/general-7
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hey guys, welcome back to our worship warriors podcast.
(00:08):
Hey guys welcome back to our worship warriors podcast.
If you're new here, my name is Sarah.
If you're not new here, then thanks for coming back.
That is a big deal to me.
Um, yeah, so by the title of this, you probably already know that we're going to be talking
about guarding your heart.
If you are someone who's listened to the podcast before, we have talked about this before,
but I just kind of threw it together.
(00:30):
Well no, no, that's a lie.
I had notes and everything and I thought it was what God wanted me to speak about, but
then he changed it at the last minute on me and it didn't all come out right.
So we're redoing it and it's in more detail and it's super great.
At least the notes are.
So hopefully it comes out super great on here, but I 100% can tell you that the Holy Spirit
(00:51):
is here and with me and he has been speaking through me this whole process of putting this
episode together.
So I know that, um, if I'm just listening to him this whole time, then I know that somebody
out there is going to get something from this and that's all that matters.
So yeah, we're going to speak.
He going to be talking about guarding your heart today.
It's it's a big deal and it's something that I didn't really, I wasn't really taught much
(01:16):
about growing up and I don't know that that was anyone's fault.
It was just something that when I was taught about it, it was in a specific context and
sorry my heater just came on, but it's cold here.
So we're going to just deal with the noise in the background per usual.
(01:37):
Um, anyway, what was I saying?
Oh, so anyways, it was always talked about in a specific context and the specific context
was correct.
Like we need to be guarding our heart in that context, but it was the only context that
was spoken about with it.
But guarding your heart is literally with anything in our lives.
We need to be guarding our heart at all times in all areas and that is extremely important
(02:03):
and essential for our walk with God.
And so we're going to talk some about that today, but before we get into it, I just want
to say that I have never said, like said anything like what I'm about to say, but I'm going
to say it again.
So I really don't believe that it's, I thought it was selfish to say this, but I don't believe
it is now.
(02:25):
But I would really appreciate it if you guys are listening, unless you're driving or something,
like don't do this.
But if you're just sitting somewhere or you're moving around doing chores around the house
or whatever you're doing while you're listening to this, if you could just stop what you're
doing or maybe at the end of this episode, whenever go and whatever platform streaming
service you are listening to this on, go review this, write a review or if you don't have
(02:50):
the time to write a review or you don't want to make the time, whatever, that's fine.
But rate the show, give it whatever stars, even if you think it's a one star, that's
fine.
Just rate it preferably a five star though.
Five stars, please.
But anyway, give it a review and send it to someone.
(03:10):
Word of mouth and reviews and even comments, you know, whatever, those are the best ways
to promote things.
And so I would really appreciate it like a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot.
It would mean the absolute most to me if you guys would review this.
And also like if you do review it and you put an actual comment instead of just doing
the four or five stars or whatever you do, that would be great because then I can get
(03:34):
your feedback or you can send me feedback through my ministry email, which you can find
on my website on the contact page.
So yeah, anyway, so get that got that out of the way, but that would be amazing.
Please do that.
That'd be great.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, let's just kind of hop right into it.
(03:55):
So guarding your heart, what does it mean?
Well, it sounds like it should be obvious.
And I think what you think about it, it is obvious like, oh yeah, no duh.
But there are a lot of people, myself included for a long time where I didn't realize, I
didn't actually know what that meant until God showed me.
And so I'm going to give you a somewhat basic definition, but it's something that you really
(04:20):
need to be like tune in and listen to what I'm saying.
I'm going to say it twice so that you can really get it.
But listen to what I'm saying when I read this little definition off to you and just,
and just take a moment, pause this if you can and just think about it for a moment and
what this would look like kind of in your life.
And then we're going to go into actual like detail about it.
(04:41):
But all right.
So guarding your heart, what does it mean?
Here's a definition.
Guarding your heart means to be aware of the spiritual warfare around you and placing practical
boundaries in your day to day life that prevent you from stumbling spiritually.
It's kind of a mouthful.
So I'm going to read it one more time and just kind of, I'm going to read it slowly
(05:05):
and I want you to just really think about it.
Guarding your heart means to be aware of the spiritual warfare around you and placing practical
boundaries in your day to day life that prevent you from stumbling spiritually.
That is, that is what it is.
That is literally what guarding your heart looks like.
(05:26):
And so I'm going to break that down and I'm going to give you guys an analogy that the
Lord laid on my heart a long time ago.
So I'm going to read it so that I don't jumble it up or mess anything up.
Okay.
So guarding your heart, here's something I want you to think about.
If you are able to, wherever you're at, close your eyes and just think through this.
I want you to just really close your eyes and think about it.
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But if you can't, like if you're driving or whatever, that is totally fine.
Focus on the road too.
Okay.
So imagine, close your eyes if you can.
Ready?
There's a kingdom.
Okay.
There's this kingdom and there's a castle in the middle and surrounding this castle
are beautiful trees with various fruits, beautiful people, local flourishing businesses, homes
(06:09):
with joyful and blessed families, safe parks for kids to play in, lovely, beautiful, wonderful
trails to go on walks with your family and friends, gardens and markets full of delicious
and healthy food and so on and so forth.
The list could go on.
Take a moment if you can.
(06:29):
Pause this if you can and imagine the most beautiful and successful and blessed kingdom
that you can possibly imagine.
I'm going to give you a moment to imagine that.
The most beautiful and successful and blessed kingdom.
What that would look like to you.
(06:50):
Okay.
Now imagine that the rest of the world outside of this kingdom is jealous of how well it's
doing, how beautiful it is, how connected the families are inside of it and so on.
They're so jealous and as a result of their hatred and jealousy, the outside world begins
(07:11):
to attack.
They start shooting off cannons, arrows, guns and whatever else they have.
They try to break into the kingdom and steal, kill and destroy in hopes that they gain power
and happiness when crushing this kingdom.
In order for the kingdom to fight and win this attack, this battle, it must first have
some sort of defense mechanism, right?
(07:34):
Yes, they should fight back, shoot arrows, guns and cannons even, but they should first
defend themselves.
What do kingdoms traditionally have around them?
Walls and guards.
After the kingdom has built a big, thick and durable wall around it to shield itself, then
they put their guards at their posts to fight back.
(07:56):
But if the outside world is constantly attacking, how could this kingdom possibly win this battle?
They're just being bombarded.
How could they win this battle?
They have to be prepared.
They have to have stronger ammo and they have to be smarter or more strategic than the enemy
and be courageous.
All right, so you can stop imagining now.
(08:19):
Keep that in your mind though, so I guess keep imagining to a certain degree, but we're
going back to reality now.
This kingdom that I've described represents your heart.
Your heart is this beautiful, blessed, amazing, wonderful, fruitful kingdom.
(08:39):
That's your heart.
And the outside world that's attacking this wonderful and beautiful kingdom represents
the devil and his demons.
The wall that is up around this kingdom to protect it, to defend it, is your practical
steps to prevent yourself from falling to temptation, just like we talked about in the
(09:01):
definition of what it means to guard your heart.
The wall is your practical steps to prevent yourself from falling to temptation.
The guards represent you talking to God and reading your Bible often, preferably daily.
And the ammo that the guards are using to fight back represents our repentance and living
(09:23):
out the scriptures we're reading.
Got that?
Isn't that amazing, y'all?
First of all, let's just give God a little silent, maybe a little snap.
Here's your snap, your ASMR snap, a little round of applause.
That is a beautiful little analogy.
So what does this look like in our lives?
(09:46):
Do we have our heart, our kingdom?
Well, first of all, the beauty in the kingdom, in order to have our hearts look like that
picture that I gave you, that wonderful and beautiful, it sounds perfect, honestly, that
beautiful and wonderful, blessed, fruitful kingdom, in order for our hearts to look like
that, full of goodness and nothing but goodness, we must first fill up our hearts with wonderful
(10:13):
and beautiful things.
You can't just suddenly have beautiful things in your heart if you haven't been living a
life that has things being poured into your heart that are beautiful.
If you've been living a sinful lifestyle, you're not going to have good things going
into your heart and your mind.
You're going to have bad and corrupt things going into your heart and mind, right?
(10:34):
You might have bits and pieces of good moral things, sure.
I'm not saying you're never going to have anything that's good, that comes from God,
you know, going into your heart and your mind ever if you're not saved.
I'm just saying that you're not going to have only those things going into your heart because
you're not living a life for God and with God.
It's not possible for you to have only good things going into your mind and heart.
(10:59):
So you have to fill it up first.
You have to fill your heart up with these things.
There's a passage in Matthew 12, 33 through 34, and it says, a tree is identified by its
fruits.
If a tree is good, its fruit will be good.
If a tree is bad, its fruit will be bad.
You brood of snakes, this is Jesus talking to the Pharisees when he was here on earth.
(11:21):
You brood of snakes, how could evil men like you speak what is good and right?
For whatever is in your heart determines what you say.
Now there's a book that I, so I'm a part of this group, like a book study, like a Bible
study group for just six weeks that my friend invited me to.
We just had our first session a few days ago this past Saturday.
(11:43):
So we're going through an actual, not like a book of the Bible, but like a book, book.
It's got like a workbook in it and stuff too, but there is a little statement, like a sentence
in there that the author puts and it says, it puts that verse in there actually.
It says, nowadays we would say something like this to reiterate what this verse is saying.
She put this quote, it says, what is down in the well comes up in the bucket.
(12:06):
I was like, I read that.
I was like, dang, that is so good.
What is down in the well comes up in the bucket.
The well represents your heart in this quote.
So what is down in your heart comes up out of your mouth and out of you into your actions
too.
What is down in the well comes up in the bucket.
It was so good.
So that's basically reiterating what I was saying.
(12:28):
If we are putting good sound, morally right things into our minds, which then go into
our hearts, then that's what's going to come out.
There's another analogy that a lot of people have seen online and it's this analogy and
maybe like your pastor has done this before.
I know my pastor, the church that I went to before the one we go to now did this.
(12:48):
I'm sorry, I keep hitting the mic.
I'm sorry if it's loud if you have earbuds, but anyway, and it's the dirty water, clean
water analogy where you have a clear glass and you have some dirty water in there and
you start putting like a lot of people in the videos that I've seen, they put it under
the faucet.
The faucet with clean water, of course in the faucet and the clean water starts getting
(13:12):
poured out of the faucet into the dirty water in the glass.
So it just keeps going though.
So the cup is filling up.
It's still dark and dirty, but then it fills up and the clean water that's running into
it just keeps going into the cup.
As the clean water keeps going into the cup, the dirty water is slowly being pushed out
and over the sides of the cup.
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So it's coming out of the cup.
So eventually after all of that dirty water comes out of that cup, what's left?
The clean water that's been constantly running into it.
And so it's the same exact thing for our hearts and our minds.
So like I was saying earlier, it's not possible if we haven't been following God up to this
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point for our hearts and minds to be clean and wonderful and perfect and pure, right?
And up to this point, since we have been living a sinful lifestyle, there's no possible way
for us to be perfect, completely and wholly perfect.
But let's just say, for example, this is not likely, but let's just say, for example, hypothetically
(14:14):
speaking, from this day on, let's just say that because I am a Christian and I like a
true Christian where I am saved by grace, I have the Holy Spirit inside of me and I'm
growing closer to God.
I'm actually pursuing Christ, pursuing the Father.
Okay, great.
From this day forward, every thought I have, every word I speak, every action I do is righteous
(14:40):
because I have the Holy Spirit inside of me.
And let's just say that I fully and completely for the rest of my life, every second of my
life from this point on here on earth, I allow the Holy Spirit to move through me and speak
through me and also my thoughts are completely Holy Spirit centered, Christ centered, God
centered thoughts.
So everything out of me is perfect, right?
(15:02):
That's great.
But that doesn't mean that my body is perfect.
That doesn't mean that I am perfect in general because all of the past 24 years of my life
are not perfect at all.
So I'm just saying there's no way we are going to be able to be perfect, right?
So if you go back to our original analogy of what it looks like to guard your heart,
(15:23):
you look at this kingdom and everything I described was great, right?
Great.
Beautiful people, local flourishing, so successful businesses, homes with joyful and blessed
families, safe parks, beautiful trees with various fruits growing from them, all of these
good things, gardens and markets full of delicious food.
(15:46):
Everything I said was great, right?
But what I didn't mention was something that I want to mention now.
If you look closely at some of these, maybe like the sidewalks at the parks, you might
see cracks in them.
Why?
Because before there were all these beautiful things.
It was a broken, be rundown castle.
(16:10):
It was broken homes, broken families.
It was parks that weren't safe that you didn't want to send your kids to because you didn't
know what was going to happen to them.
It was trees that were dead.
And what I'm getting at here is your heart before it becomes beautiful and has righteousness
(16:30):
exuding out of it.
And all of these things can like good things coming from God can completely fill up your
heart.
You were lost because you didn't have God.
We all were.
We were all at that point before we have God.
We're lost.
We haven't found freedom yet.
We haven't found peace yet.
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And because we're living a life with the world and of the world, we are following Satan's
path, not God's.
And we're following Satan's path.
What comes?
What comes?
Destruction, depression, anxiety, stupidity and foolishness.
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I mean all negative things.
And even if you think you have a quote unquote good life because you have all these things,
you have your head on straight, you know, you're responsible, you show up to your job
every day, you take care of your family, those are all great things.
But if you're not doing them for God, then no eternal benefit will come from them.
And when you die, you're still going to go to hell.
And all the people around you are still going to go to hell because you didn't live a life
(17:36):
for God, which then planted seeds into those people's lives, which then led them to God.
So you're all still going to hell.
This is the reality for any of us who don't follow God.
But so all of this, like our heart is just full of destruction and negative and things
that are just going to die.
Like it's all going to die.
There's no eternal benefit coming from this, no eternal goodness coming from our lives.
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So in our heart, that's what that's what our heart reflects.
The content of our heart reflects that life, right?
It reflects who we follow.
It reflects our selfishness.
But then when we begin to follow God, when we begin to have a relationship with him,
he starts taking these broken pieces of our heart.
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He starts mending them, that rundown old castle that's in the middle of your, your kingdom
in your heart, your world in your heart.
He takes that, he knocks it down and he takes the pieces that he knocked down from that
castle and he starts mending it.
It's not going to look perfect because it came from an old rundown.
It came from old rundown pieces that came from an old rundown castle, right?
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But it's going to be better and it's going to be durable and strong because God is putting
it back together.
It's not you putting it back together, a simple human being.
It's God, the creator of all.
He's taking those pieces that is broken pieces in your heart and he's rebuilding that castle
for you.
He's taking your roads and redoing them.
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He's repaving the roads.
He is taking those homes, those broken homes, those toxic homes and he's mending those people's
hearts to where they become healthier versions, healthier people who glorify him.
He's taking those dead trees and he's putting holy water on them and those trees are now
alive.
(19:27):
He's bringing them back to life and fruit, beautiful fruit is coming from them.
He's taking these gardens that are basically just full of weeds and he's pulling all of
the weeds out of the gardens and he's planting these fresh seeds into them and he's watering
them and he's tending them and yummy veggies and fruits and healthy foods are coming from
them.
He's taking all these things and he's taking the brokenness of them and he's making them
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good.
He's taking all of the bad and he's making it good to glorify him, to serve him and to
love us through it.
Y'all, that's what he does to you.
That's what he does to your life.
He takes all the bad and he fixes it.
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He heals it.
He makes good come from the bad because he is God.
No one else can do that.
Satan can't do that.
Your friends can't do that.
Your spouse can't do that.
You can't do that.
Your pastor can't do that.
Only God can do that.
And if we are putting good, morally right and sound things into our minds, which then
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go into our hearts, then that's what's going to come out.
I know I said that earlier, but I just want to really reiterate that.
Let that clean water push out the dirty water.
What does this look like?
This looks like, like what are these good things that go into our mind and our heart
that should be coming out?
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Kindness.
We should be allowing things that are kind into our mind and hearts.
Selflessness.
We should be seeing people who are doing selfless acts and allowing that instead of hanging
around people who are constantly just toxic and bringing us down and pushing us to do
selfish things in the name of ourselves.
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Instead, we should be hanging around people who are encouraging us to be selfless in the
name of Jesus.
If you like comedy, clean comedy instead of dirty comedy.
You know, podcasts.
If you listen to podcasts, obviously if you're listening to this, you listen to podcasts.
Podcasts with uplifting content, whether it be something serious like this one that I'm
(21:40):
doing or maybe it's something that's a bit more silly and lighthearted.
But listen to podcasts with uplifting content instead of content that drags us down or puts
thoughts into our minds that maybe weren't there before that are negative.
You know, pictures like on Instagram that instead of leading us to compare our lives,
our bodies, our possessions and our families to them, instead they encourage us to go with
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the flow and live in the present with our families and appreciate the possessions and
bodies God has already given us.
Music that is clean and wholesome instead of dirty or provokes anger or unhealthy amounts
of sadness and so on.
These are just practical things like being around people and listening to content, reading
(22:22):
content that pushes us closer to God.
It's things that are clean and wholesome.
Again, whether they're serious or lighthearted, it doesn't matter as long as they are encouraging
us to go toward positivity instead of negativity and not positivity of the world because really
that inwardly drags us down.
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But you know what I mean.
Things that encourage us to go closer to God uplift us.
You know, just practical things like that.
There are a few things that I do also to guard my heart is this.
It's boundaries with my phone.
There was a video that my husband and I watched part of the other day and I, let's see what
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is his name.
Oh, Cred.
I don't know how I forgot him.
Like his name.
I think his YouTube and stuff is like Curb Ministries.
I'm typing it in.
Off the Curb Ministries.
We were watching one the other day though and one of the things that he was talking
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about was how your eyes are the gateway to your heart.
And I believe you could also say your ears, you know, what you listen to also because
there's a lot of stuff that we listen to now but so he's talking about your eyes though.
And so something that I set boundaries with is my phone.
The things I listen to and the things I see.
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I'm not saying I'm perfect at this.
I'm not saying this like I'm preaching at you.
I'm preaching to myself as well.
I'm reminding myself of these things.
Obviously hopefully you know that.
The things I listen to and I watch though, I set boundaries with.
So like I currently, I've been going through this season for a while but especially recently
(24:14):
I've been really going through a lot with social media, sorry, with my phone and all
sorts of stuff.
I hate technology.
I love technology for some reasons but like I hate phones.
Like smartphones I don't personally like them.
I have one.
I have an iPhone.
The Lord has really been showing me a lot of things and for a while now I have not had
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any social media in like, I don't even know how long, like six months, seven months.
I don't even know.
It hasn't been a year but like I haven't had it on my phone in a long time.
Unless I'm looking on like Facebook Marketplace or something like that then I redownload it.
But I haven't had it on there.
No Snapchat, no Instagram, nothing.
I didn't even have Pinterest for a while.
I don't know if I have it on there right now.
(24:59):
Um, because one, I just constantly wanted to pick up my phone.
Two, when I was on social media I was just scrolling and scrolling and I know a lot of
people do this.
I just was doom scrolling.
And this is not good for us.
I don't care who you are.
It is not good for you.
Even if you do only do it and you have self-discipline, only do it for an hour.
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That hour is gone guys.
You're just scrolling.
Okay?
And I was, I was struggling so much with that so I got rid of it.
God told me, Sarah, get rid of social media.
You have to.
I got rid of it.
And I eventually just stopped even posting ministry stuff on there because God told me
I did not need to be doing that.
Maybe one day He'll bring me back to that with this ministry.
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But right now I don't do it.
I do think that there's a place for ministries on social media.
100%.
I agree with that.
I'm just saying, for me personally right now I don't.
So that's one thing I didn't do for a long time.
The next thing with my phone though was I currently, like if you looked at my phone
right now, I'd be like, okay Sarah, where the heck are all of the exciting things?
Like you have hardly any apps on here.
(26:02):
They're all practical apps or you know, learning apps or whatever, or Bible apps, you know,
stuff like that.
But I saw a girl, she's not a Christian, but I saw her on YouTube not that long ago and
she did this where she struggled with researching everything.
If she had a thought on her mind, she picked up her phone and Googled it and started doing
research.
I, when she said that I was like, oh my gosh, I relate to you so much right now.
(26:25):
I am a researcher.
I research everything.
You could tell me some random fact about a cucumber and I'm going to go look it up and
do my own research and read studies about it if they have them.
You know what I mean?
Like I look up everything.
So this was a problem for me.
I have kids, I have a kid and then I have, I'm a caregiver of another one full time.
They don't need to be seeing me on my phone all the time.
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Even if I am just researching cucumbers, like what's the harm in that?
In the actual act of it, probably nothing.
But if I'm doing that whenever like I'm supposed to be, you know, if God wants me to be hanging
out with them or doing something with them or I have other responsibilities, I don't
need to be doing that.
Okay.
They don't need to be seeing me on my phone all day, no matter what I'm doing.
And so I, that was the other, that was the last thing I did was I completely deleted
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all apps that would be a stumbling block for me.
And also not just that, but it was hindering me from growing closer to God in some areas.
And I didn't realize that at first, but since I'm no longer doing anything on my phone,
really, other than like a few small things here and there, and like I take pictures,
there's a couple of apps that I do use pretty regularly.
(27:34):
I'm a part of an online Christian community and I have the app for that.
And so like I do some things on my phone, but as far as like entertainment purposes,
I don't do anything on there unless it's YouTube and it's only certain times like when I download
YouTube on my phone, it's not on my phone at all times.
And when I stopped doing all of those things, when I put those out, I was setting boundaries,
(27:55):
practical boundaries to help me not fall to temptation.
And when I did that, it cleared my mind of those things because I was then spending more
time with God and less time on the things on my phone.
And when I started spending more time with God and doing things that he wanted me to
do outside of my quiet time with him also, it started filling my heart and my mind with
(28:19):
good morally sound righteous things.
And as I was filling my mind and heart more and more and more of those things, what was
it doing?
It was pushing the dirty water out of my mind and heart.
It was pushing all of those bad things.
It was pushing all of the temptation or the sorry, the, the sin that I was struggling
with out of my heart and mind.
Now do I still get tempted?
(28:40):
Of course I do still get tempted.
Do I fail?
Okay.
Sometimes I do fail.
I know myself and because I know that it's easy for me to fail, I just completely got
rid of all those things.
So I'm guarding myself from that potential failure.
So there's one big example.
And then I'm just going to skim through a couple others that I kind of jotted down here
(29:00):
in my notes.
I spend time with God in the morning and then at night, I don't every night, but like at
night.
So this is like setting aside uninterrupted time with God.
This is not just like while I'm doing chores around the house, I talk to God.
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That's very important as well.
This is also not me playing worship music as I'm playing with the boys.
And then maybe I break out into worship.
Like the Holy Spirit is really filling me up and overflowing and I'm like really worshiping
God.
Like those times are great, but this is this, what I'm talking about is my, what people
call quiet time where I'm setting aside uninterrupted quiet time, spending good quality time with
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God in the morning.
So anyway, back to my point.
I spend time with God in the morning, every morning pretty much.
And then not every night, but a lot of nights I go to bed and I just read my Bible.
This is not a time where I'm like sitting up, taking notes, doing all this stuff.
This is just me laying down in bed, reading my Bible.
And then, excuse me.
(30:04):
Sorry, my mind went blank.
Oh, when I do this though, when I'm spending time with God in the morning and I'm spending
time with Him at night, or I'm reading His word, you know what that does?
That literally means that I am not as likely to fall to temptation or at least if I do,
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then I'll be more likely to feel heavy conviction and repent of that sin that I committed.
And you know why?
Because I am first thing in the morning thinking of God, going to bed thinking of God.
So I'm like sandwiching my day with God.
So I'm filling my mind with God.
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It's the first thing I think about and He's the last thing I think about.
So when I do that, I'm guarding my heart from going to sleep thinking about unwholesome
things, unwholesome things.
And I'm also guarding my heart and mind from thinking and doing things first thing in the
morning that I don't need to be doing.
Because what I need to be doing is prioritizing God first thing.
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And I'm not saying that like my husband, for instance, he gets up at five in the morning
for work.
He also has to, well, he gets there on 530.
So like we don't live far from his work.
So he is one that doesn't get up like he would have to get up like four in the morning to
get good quality time with God in the morning before work.
He absolutely doesn't want to do that.
And I don't think that he should have to like some people do that.
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And that's fine.
Great for you.
But it's something he has to because here's the thing.
This is something that God's been teaching me.
It's about consistency.
It's not about getting up at three or four in the morning.
It's about just showing up every day and just spending quality time with God often because
he is our life or he should be our whole entire life.
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And so when he is our lives, we do spend quality time with him every day.
And it's not because we feel like we have to it's because we want to.
So my husband does not do that four in the morning.
He does not have that uninterrupted time in the morning.
He talks to God throughout the day while he's at work.
Sometimes he listens to the Bible or whatever on his phone while he's at work if he can
or whatever he does those things.
But his uninterrupted time is after work in the afternoon, sometimes evenings.
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And so that's fine.
He doesn't have the luxury that I do to be able to get up, spend time with God for a
while and then go to bed, do it again.
So I'm not saying you have to do that.
But what I am saying is that when we spend quality time with God daily, y'all, you will
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not believe if you don't do this already, you need to because you will not believe what
it does for you for your mind and your heart.
And when you do that, it really is like putting up a shield against the devil because you're
going to be thinking of God.
And when you think of God, you're not thinking of the devil.
Your eyes are looking at God, not at the devil.
So when the devil tries to get in your way, like move out of the way, devil.
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I want to keep looking at God.
And that's what that does.
When you're reading your Bible, when you're talking to God, when you're repenting, it
literally is pushing the devil out of the way every time he tries to step in between
you and God.
Another thing I don't do in order to guard my heart is I no longer watch certain things
that might provoke inappropriate thoughts.
So I actually will be very transparent with you.
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When I was younger, I struggled with an addiction to pornography.
And so now to this day, even though I have grown completely away from that, I still like
I just don't even let it be an option in my home or in my heart.
And then another thing is this is a big one.
Actually I make sure that I'm only confiding in strong Christian friends or wiser Christians
(33:44):
to for certain topics of my life.
Like if it's about my marriage or certain sin cycles that I have struggled with or whatever
it is, like there's certain things like heavy things.
I only confide in strong Christian friends or Christians that are wiser than I am.
Because hearing worldly, this is something that I personally struggle with still to this
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day at times.
So hearing worldly people's advice about certain topics allows worldly ideologies to seep into
my mind instead of godly ones.
And I, just like many people, struggle because it's easy, too easy for us because we're simple
minded.
It is too easy for us to jumble up certain ideologies that sound good, but really when
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you look at them, the heart of those ideologies is actually for Satan and not God.
And because they're subtle.
Satan is subtle sometimes.
You do not realize because it looks good, but it's not always good.
And so in order for me to not have those ideologies seep into my mind, I only want godly ones.
I confide in strong Christian friends or wiser Christians about certain topics in my life.
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Another thing with my phone though, I forgot to tell you guys, is I no longer have my phone
next to my bed when I plug in at night.
When my alarm goes off, I have to physically get up and go to the bathroom to turn it off.
And then I'm already in the bathroom to just shut the door, turn the light on and brush
my teeth and get ready.
It does help me big time with not grabbing my phone and starting looking to look at it
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first thing in the morning.
And so that is another thing that I continuously do so that I'm not looking at my phone first
thing in the morning.
All I have to do to look at my phone is turn off my alarm and then just leave it on the
charger.
I don't even look at it.
And then I go into the living room and spend time with God first thing.
But anyway, so those are just things that maybe some of you can relate to.
And maybe you can just use it as inspiration to maybe set up your own boundaries for your
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own life and your own struggles.
It's needed y'all.
It's needed, especially in a world where there's constantly people and things being bomb that
we're being bombarded with ideologies that we're being bombarded with.
We have to block those out.
And like, yes, we need to be walking in the world, but we do not need to be walking of
the world.
So in order to be walking of God's kingdom instead of this world, we need to be filling
(36:03):
our minds and hearts with God's kingdom.
That way, as we're walking the streets of this world, we can be bringing the kingdom
to the streets.
But you can't be bringing the kingdom to the streets if you're filling your mind and heart
or allowing your mind and heart to be pierced with worldly ideologies and worldly...
I said that wrong.
(36:27):
So worldly ideologies or just being provoked with worldly things like that.
And so you have to guard your heart.
And it's so worth it because just think about it, at the end of the day, where are you going?
You're going to hell, right?
When you die.
And so like we are, if you are a Christian, you are a foreigner here.
You like who the heck cares about how much money you have?
(36:48):
Who the heck cares how many followers you have?
Who the heck cares about spending two hours, six hours on TikTok or on Instagram or Snapchat
whenever you could be doing things that are actually meaningful that have eternal impact
on people's lives.
Because those things are what matters.
(37:08):
I'm not saying you can never watch a show again.
You can never go on Instagram again.
I'm just saying you better build those boundaries.
Set those boundaries.
It's important for you to set boundaries.
I mean, Jesus never sinned because he also never allowed those temptations to really
pierce his heart.
He had a shield up around his heart.
(37:29):
He had that wall up around his kingdom, his heart kingdom at all times.
And no one ever got through that wall.
No one ever did.
He fought the enemy back with his arrows, with his, with his scripture, with his words,
with his self-discipline, with his strength, with his courage.
He fought back and he never felt a temptation.
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And that's what he did.
He guarded his heart at all times and he constantly was at the father's feet.
He was constantly humbling himself at the father's feet.
That is essential to guarding your heart.
And you have to do that.
Like you have to.
Let's, let me say three statements for you.
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One, talk to God and ask him for help with this.
Y'all, you can't do this on your own.
Who did Jesus have?
Jesus was God, yes, but Jesus also talked to the Trinity, the other two in the Trinity,
right?
He talked to the father constantly.
He humbled himself at the father's feet constantly.
So talk to God, ask him for help with this.
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You, you literally, you as a human being can not do this without God.
You are not God.
You can't defeat the devil because you're not his equal.
But when you have God, you are above the devil, but only because of God.
You can't do anything without God when it comes to the devil.
You can't defeat the devil without God.
So talk to him and say, God, I'm struggling and this is hard and I need your help.
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And if you fail, this is number two, when you fail or if you fail, repent.
Repent doesn't mean sorry.
And then you do it again two days later.
Repent means sorry.
And you turn your body and you walk away.
Y'all, you have to walk away.
Will you ever fail with that thing again?
Maybe, but you better get back up and you better repent and you better keep walking
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away.
And it takes self-discipline.
And that's the third thing.
You need God's strength and self-discipline for this.
In order to guard your heart, you have to have his strength and self-discipline, especially
repentance.
You can do that through Christ who gives you strength.
You can repent from a sin after doing it one time and never do it again because you have
the spirit inside of you and you call upon the strength that comes from Christ to say
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no to that sin forevermore.
So talk to God, ask him for help with this.
When you fail, repent and you need God's strength and self-discipline for this.
Alright y'all, well that's all I got for you.
I do have on my website, there's a blog post that I posted a while ago about guarding your
heart.
(40:04):
And it talks about things that I personally have struggled with and how I guard my heart.
And one of them is my phone.
But there's a couple other things on there that I didn't talk about today.
So yeah, it's on there and you can totally go read that.
I don't think it's very long if I remember right.
I wrote it a while ago.
And then another thing that I have actually is some scripture cards that you can download
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and print out.
Or if you don't have access to a printer, that's fine.
You can just see what I have and maybe just hand write them even on note cards.
But I have a free digital download on my website also.
And yeah.
Alright well I hope you guys have a wonderful rest of your week.
Hey guys, welcome back to our worship warriors podcast.
(00:08):
Hey guys welcome back to our worship warriors podcast.
If you're new here, my name is Sarah.
If you're not new here, then thanks for coming back.
That is a big deal to me.
Um, yeah, so by the title of this, you probably already know that we're going to be talking
about guarding your heart.
If you are someone who's listened to the podcast before, we have talked about this before,
but I just kind of threw it together.
(00:30):
Well no, no, that's a lie.
I had notes and everything and I thought it was what God wanted me to speak about, but
then he changed it at the last minute on me and it didn't all come out right.
So we're redoing it and it's in more detail and it's super great.
At least the notes are.
So hopefully it comes out super great on here, but I 100% can tell you that the Holy Spirit
(00:51):
is here and with me and he has been speaking through me this whole process of putting this
episode together.
So I know that, um, if I'm just listening to him this whole time, then I know that somebody
out there is going to get something from this and that's all that matters.
So yeah, we're going to speak.
He going to be talking about guarding your heart today.
It's it's a big deal and it's something that I didn't really, I wasn't really taught much
(01:16):
about growing up and I don't know that that was anyone's fault.
It was just something that when I was taught about it, it was in a specific context and
sorry my heater just came on, but it's cold here.
So we're going to just deal with the noise in the background per usual.
(01:37):
Um, anyway, what was I saying?
Oh, so anyways, it was always talked about in a specific context and the specific context
was correct.
Like we need to be guarding our heart in that context, but it was the only context that
was spoken about with it.
But guarding your heart is literally with anything in our lives.
We need to be guarding our heart at all times in all areas and that is extremely important
(02:03):
and essential for our walk with God.
And so we're going to talk some about that today, but before we get into it, I just want
to say that I have never said, like said anything like what I'm about to say, but I'm going
to say it again.
So I really don't believe that it's, I thought it was selfish to say this, but I don't believe
it is now.
(02:25):
But I would really appreciate it if you guys are listening, unless you're driving or something,
like don't do this.
But if you're just sitting somewhere or you're moving around doing chores around the house
or whatever you're doing while you're listening to this, if you could just stop what you're
doing or maybe at the end of this episode, whenever go and whatever platform streaming
service you are listening to this on, go review this, write a review or if you don't have
(02:50):
the time to write a review or you don't want to make the time, whatever, that's fine.
But rate the show, give it whatever stars, even if you think it's a one star, that's
fine.
Just rate it preferably a five star though.
Five stars, please.
But anyway, give it a review and send it to someone.
(03:10):
Word of mouth and reviews and even comments, you know, whatever, those are the best ways
to promote things.
And so I would really appreciate it like a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot.
It would mean the absolute most to me if you guys would review this.
And also like if you do review it and you put an actual comment instead of just doing
the four or five stars or whatever you do, that would be great because then I can get
(03:34):
your feedback or you can send me feedback through my ministry email, which you can find
on my website on the contact page.
So yeah, anyway, so get that got that out of the way, but that would be amazing.
Please do that.
That'd be great.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, let's just kind of hop right into it.
(03:55):
So guarding your heart, what does it mean?
Well, it sounds like it should be obvious.
And I think what you think about it, it is obvious like, oh yeah, no duh.
But there are a lot of people, myself included for a long time where I didn't realize, I
didn't actually know what that meant until God showed me.
And so I'm going to give you a somewhat basic definition, but it's something that you really
(04:20):
need to be like tune in and listen to what I'm saying.
I'm going to say it twice so that you can really get it.
But listen to what I'm saying when I read this little definition off to you and just,
and just take a moment, pause this if you can and just think about it for a moment and
what this would look like kind of in your life.
And then we're going to go into actual like detail about it.
(04:41):
But all right.
So guarding your heart, what does it mean?
Here's a definition.
Guarding your heart means to be aware of the spiritual warfare around you and placing practical
boundaries in your day to day life that prevent you from stumbling spiritually.
It's kind of a mouthful.
So I'm going to read it one more time and just kind of, I'm going to read it slowly
(05:05):
and I want you to just really think about it.
Guarding your heart means to be aware of the spiritual warfare around you and placing practical
boundaries in your day to day life that prevent you from stumbling spiritually.
That is, that is what it is.
That is literally what guarding your heart looks like.
(05:26):
And so I'm going to break that down and I'm going to give you guys an analogy that the
Lord laid on my heart a long time ago.
So I'm going to read it so that I don't jumble it up or mess anything up.
Okay.
So guarding your heart, here's something I want you to think about.
If you are able to, wherever you're at, close your eyes and just think through this.
I want you to just really close your eyes and think about it.
(05:46):
But if you can't, like if you're driving or whatever, that is totally fine.
Focus on the road too.
Okay.
So imagine, close your eyes if you can.
Ready?
There's a kingdom.
Okay.
There's this kingdom and there's a castle in the middle and surrounding this castle
are beautiful trees with various fruits, beautiful people, local flourishing businesses, homes
(06:09):
with joyful and blessed families, safe parks for kids to play in, lovely, beautiful, wonderful
trails to go on walks with your family and friends, gardens and markets full of delicious
and healthy food and so on and so forth.
The list could go on.
Take a moment if you can.
(06:29):
Pause this if you can and imagine the most beautiful and successful and blessed kingdom
that you can possibly imagine.
I'm going to give you a moment to imagine that.
The most beautiful and successful and blessed kingdom.
What that would look like to you.
(06:50):
Okay.
Now imagine that the rest of the world outside of this kingdom is jealous of how well it's
doing, how beautiful it is, how connected the families are inside of it and so on.
They're so jealous and as a result of their hatred and jealousy, the outside world begins
(07:11):
to attack.
They start shooting off cannons, arrows, guns and whatever else they have.
They try to break into the kingdom and steal, kill and destroy in hopes that they gain power
and happiness when crushing this kingdom.
In order for the kingdom to fight and win this attack, this battle, it must first have
some sort of defense mechanism, right?
(07:34):
Yes, they should fight back, shoot arrows, guns and cannons even, but they should first
defend themselves.
What do kingdoms traditionally have around them?
Walls and guards.
After the kingdom has built a big, thick and durable wall around it to shield itself, then
they put their guards at their posts to fight back.
(07:56):
But if the outside world is constantly attacking, how could this kingdom possibly win this battle?
They're just being bombarded.
How could they win this battle?
They have to be prepared.
They have to have stronger ammo and they have to be smarter or more strategic than the enemy
and be courageous.
All right, so you can stop imagining now.
(08:19):
Keep that in your mind though, so I guess keep imagining to a certain degree, but we're
going back to reality now.
This kingdom that I've described represents your heart.
Your heart is this beautiful, blessed, amazing, wonderful, fruitful kingdom.
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That's your heart.
And the outside world that's attacking this wonderful and beautiful kingdom represents
the devil and his demons.
The wall that is up around this kingdom to protect it, to defend it, is your practical
steps to prevent yourself from falling to temptation, just like we talked about in the
(09:01):
definition of what it means to guard your heart.
The wall is your practical steps to prevent yourself from falling to temptation.
The guards represent you talking to God and reading your Bible often, preferably daily.
And the ammo that the guards are using to fight back represents our repentance and living
(09:23):
out the scriptures we're reading.
Got that?
Isn't that amazing, y'all?
First of all, let's just give God a little silent, maybe a little snap.
Here's your snap, your ASMR snap, a little round of applause.
That is a beautiful little analogy.
So what does this look like in our lives?
(09:46):
Do we have our heart, our kingdom?
Well, first of all, the beauty in the kingdom, in order to have our hearts look like that
picture that I gave you, that wonderful and beautiful, it sounds perfect, honestly, that
beautiful and wonderful, blessed, fruitful kingdom, in order for our hearts to look like
that, full of goodness and nothing but goodness, we must first fill up our hearts with wonderful
(10:13):
and beautiful things.
You can't just suddenly have beautiful things in your heart if you haven't been living a
life that has things being poured into your heart that are beautiful.
If you've been living a sinful lifestyle, you're not going to have good things going
into your heart and your mind.
You're going to have bad and corrupt things going into your heart and mind, right?
(10:34):
You might have bits and pieces of good moral things, sure.
I'm not saying you're never going to have anything that's good, that comes from God,
you know, going into your heart and your mind ever if you're not saved.
I'm just saying that you're not going to have only those things going into your heart because
you're not living a life for God and with God.
It's not possible for you to have only good things going into your mind and heart.
(10:59):
So you have to fill it up first.
You have to fill your heart up with these things.
There's a passage in Matthew 12, 33 through 34, and it says, a tree is identified by its
fruits.
If a tree is good, its fruit will be good.
If a tree is bad, its fruit will be bad.
You brood of snakes, this is Jesus talking to the Pharisees when he was here on earth.
(11:21):
You brood of snakes, how could evil men like you speak what is good and right?
For whatever is in your heart determines what you say.
Now there's a book that I, so I'm a part of this group, like a book study, like a Bible
study group for just six weeks that my friend invited me to.
We just had our first session a few days ago this past Saturday.
(11:43):
So we're going through an actual, not like a book of the Bible, but like a book, book.
It's got like a workbook in it and stuff too, but there is a little statement, like a sentence
in there that the author puts and it says, it puts that verse in there actually.
It says, nowadays we would say something like this to reiterate what this verse is saying.
She put this quote, it says, what is down in the well comes up in the bucket.
(12:06):
I was like, I read that.
I was like, dang, that is so good.
What is down in the well comes up in the bucket.
The well represents your heart in this quote.
So what is down in your heart comes up out of your mouth and out of you into your actions
too.
What is down in the well comes up in the bucket.
It was so good.
So that's basically reiterating what I was saying.
(12:28):
If we are putting good sound, morally right things into our minds, which then go into
our hearts, then that's what's going to come out.
There's another analogy that a lot of people have seen online and it's this analogy and
maybe like your pastor has done this before.
I know my pastor, the church that I went to before the one we go to now did this.
(12:48):
I'm sorry, I keep hitting the mic.
I'm sorry if it's loud if you have earbuds, but anyway, and it's the dirty water, clean
water analogy where you have a clear glass and you have some dirty water in there and
you start putting like a lot of people in the videos that I've seen, they put it under
the faucet.
The faucet with clean water, of course in the faucet and the clean water starts getting
(13:12):
poured out of the faucet into the dirty water in the glass.
So it just keeps going though.
So the cup is filling up.
It's still dark and dirty, but then it fills up and the clean water that's running into
it just keeps going into the cup.
As the clean water keeps going into the cup, the dirty water is slowly being pushed out
and over the sides of the cup.
(13:32):
So it's coming out of the cup.
So eventually after all of that dirty water comes out of that cup, what's left?
The clean water that's been constantly running into it.
And so it's the same exact thing for our hearts and our minds.
So like I was saying earlier, it's not possible if we haven't been following God up to this
(13:54):
point for our hearts and minds to be clean and wonderful and perfect and pure, right?
And up to this point, since we have been living a sinful lifestyle, there's no possible way
for us to be perfect, completely and wholly perfect.
But let's just say, for example, this is not likely, but let's just say, for example, hypothetically
(14:14):
speaking, from this day on, let's just say that because I am a Christian and I like a
true Christian where I am saved by grace, I have the Holy Spirit inside of me and I'm
growing closer to God.
I'm actually pursuing Christ, pursuing the Father.
Okay, great.
From this day forward, every thought I have, every word I speak, every action I do is righteous
(14:40):
because I have the Holy Spirit inside of me.
And let's just say that I fully and completely for the rest of my life, every second of my
life from this point on here on earth, I allow the Holy Spirit to move through me and speak
through me and also my thoughts are completely Holy Spirit centered, Christ centered, God
centered thoughts.
So everything out of me is perfect, right?
(15:02):
That's great.
But that doesn't mean that my body is perfect.
That doesn't mean that I am perfect in general because all of the past 24 years of my life
are not perfect at all.
So I'm just saying there's no way we are going to be able to be perfect, right?
So if you go back to our original analogy of what it looks like to guard your heart,
(15:23):
you look at this kingdom and everything I described was great, right?
Great.
Beautiful people, local flourishing, so successful businesses, homes with joyful and blessed
families, safe parks, beautiful trees with various fruits growing from them, all of these
good things, gardens and markets full of delicious food.
(15:46):
Everything I said was great, right?
But what I didn't mention was something that I want to mention now.
If you look closely at some of these, maybe like the sidewalks at the parks, you might
see cracks in them.
Why?
Because before there were all these beautiful things.
It was a broken, be rundown castle.
(16:10):
It was broken homes, broken families.
It was parks that weren't safe that you didn't want to send your kids to because you didn't
know what was going to happen to them.
It was trees that were dead.
And what I'm getting at here is your heart before it becomes beautiful and has righteousness
(16:30):
exuding out of it.
And all of these things can like good things coming from God can completely fill up your
heart.
You were lost because you didn't have God.
We all were.
We were all at that point before we have God.
We're lost.
We haven't found freedom yet.
We haven't found peace yet.
(16:51):
And because we're living a life with the world and of the world, we are following Satan's
path, not God's.
And we're following Satan's path.
What comes?
What comes?
Destruction, depression, anxiety, stupidity and foolishness.
(17:12):
I mean all negative things.
And even if you think you have a quote unquote good life because you have all these things,
you have your head on straight, you know, you're responsible, you show up to your job
every day, you take care of your family, those are all great things.
But if you're not doing them for God, then no eternal benefit will come from them.
And when you die, you're still going to go to hell.
And all the people around you are still going to go to hell because you didn't live a life
(17:36):
for God, which then planted seeds into those people's lives, which then led them to God.
So you're all still going to hell.
This is the reality for any of us who don't follow God.
But so all of this, like our heart is just full of destruction and negative and things
that are just going to die.
Like it's all going to die.
There's no eternal benefit coming from this, no eternal goodness coming from our lives.
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So in our heart, that's what that's what our heart reflects.
The content of our heart reflects that life, right?
It reflects who we follow.
It reflects our selfishness.
But then when we begin to follow God, when we begin to have a relationship with him,
he starts taking these broken pieces of our heart.
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He starts mending them, that rundown old castle that's in the middle of your, your kingdom
in your heart, your world in your heart.
He takes that, he knocks it down and he takes the pieces that he knocked down from that
castle and he starts mending it.
It's not going to look perfect because it came from an old rundown.
It came from old rundown pieces that came from an old rundown castle, right?
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But it's going to be better and it's going to be durable and strong because God is putting
it back together.
It's not you putting it back together, a simple human being.
It's God, the creator of all.
He's taking those pieces that is broken pieces in your heart and he's rebuilding that castle
for you.
He's taking your roads and redoing them.
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He's repaving the roads.
He is taking those homes, those broken homes, those toxic homes and he's mending those people's
hearts to where they become healthier versions, healthier people who glorify him.
He's taking those dead trees and he's putting holy water on them and those trees are now
alive.
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He's bringing them back to life and fruit, beautiful fruit is coming from them.
He's taking these gardens that are basically just full of weeds and he's pulling all of
the weeds out of the gardens and he's planting these fresh seeds into them and he's watering
them and he's tending them and yummy veggies and fruits and healthy foods are coming from
them.
He's taking all these things and he's taking the brokenness of them and he's making them
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good.
He's taking all of the bad and he's making it good to glorify him, to serve him and to
love us through it.
Y'all, that's what he does to you.
That's what he does to your life.
He takes all the bad and he fixes it.
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He heals it.
He makes good come from the bad because he is God.
No one else can do that.
Satan can't do that.
Your friends can't do that.
Your spouse can't do that.
You can't do that.
Your pastor can't do that.
Only God can do that.
And if we are putting good, morally right and sound things into our minds, which then
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go into our hearts, then that's what's going to come out.
I know I said that earlier, but I just want to really reiterate that.
Let that clean water push out the dirty water.
What does this look like?
This looks like, like what are these good things that go into our mind and our heart
that should be coming out?
(20:58):
Kindness.
We should be allowing things that are kind into our mind and hearts.
Selflessness.
We should be seeing people who are doing selfless acts and allowing that instead of hanging
around people who are constantly just toxic and bringing us down and pushing us to do
selfish things in the name of ourselves.
(21:19):
Instead, we should be hanging around people who are encouraging us to be selfless in the
name of Jesus.
If you like comedy, clean comedy instead of dirty comedy.
You know, podcasts.
If you listen to podcasts, obviously if you're listening to this, you listen to podcasts.
Podcasts with uplifting content, whether it be something serious like this one that I'm
(21:40):
doing or maybe it's something that's a bit more silly and lighthearted.
But listen to podcasts with uplifting content instead of content that drags us down or puts
thoughts into our minds that maybe weren't there before that are negative.
You know, pictures like on Instagram that instead of leading us to compare our lives,
our bodies, our possessions and our families to them, instead they encourage us to go with
(22:01):
the flow and live in the present with our families and appreciate the possessions and
bodies God has already given us.
Music that is clean and wholesome instead of dirty or provokes anger or unhealthy amounts
of sadness and so on.
These are just practical things like being around people and listening to content, reading
(22:22):
content that pushes us closer to God.
It's things that are clean and wholesome.
Again, whether they're serious or lighthearted, it doesn't matter as long as they are encouraging
us to go toward positivity instead of negativity and not positivity of the world because really
that inwardly drags us down.
(22:43):
But you know what I mean.
Things that encourage us to go closer to God uplift us.
You know, just practical things like that.
There are a few things that I do also to guard my heart is this.
It's boundaries with my phone.
There was a video that my husband and I watched part of the other day and I, let's see what
(23:06):
is his name.
Oh, Cred.
I don't know how I forgot him.
Like his name.
I think his YouTube and stuff is like Curb Ministries.
I'm typing it in.
Off the Curb Ministries.
We were watching one the other day though and one of the things that he was talking
(23:28):
about was how your eyes are the gateway to your heart.
And I believe you could also say your ears, you know, what you listen to also because
there's a lot of stuff that we listen to now but so he's talking about your eyes though.
And so something that I set boundaries with is my phone.
The things I listen to and the things I see.
(23:51):
I'm not saying I'm perfect at this.
I'm not saying this like I'm preaching at you.
I'm preaching to myself as well.
I'm reminding myself of these things.
Obviously hopefully you know that.
The things I listen to and I watch though, I set boundaries with.
So like I currently, I've been going through this season for a while but especially recently
(24:14):
I've been really going through a lot with social media, sorry, with my phone and all
sorts of stuff.
I hate technology.
I love technology for some reasons but like I hate phones.
Like smartphones I don't personally like them.
I have one.
I have an iPhone.
The Lord has really been showing me a lot of things and for a while now I have not had
(24:37):
any social media in like, I don't even know how long, like six months, seven months.
I don't even know.
It hasn't been a year but like I haven't had it on my phone in a long time.
Unless I'm looking on like Facebook Marketplace or something like that then I redownload it.
But I haven't had it on there.
No Snapchat, no Instagram, nothing.
I didn't even have Pinterest for a while.
I don't know if I have it on there right now.
(24:59):
Um, because one, I just constantly wanted to pick up my phone.
Two, when I was on social media I was just scrolling and scrolling and I know a lot of
people do this.
I just was doom scrolling.
And this is not good for us.
I don't care who you are.
It is not good for you.
Even if you do only do it and you have self-discipline, only do it for an hour.
(25:20):
That hour is gone guys.
You're just scrolling.
Okay?
And I was, I was struggling so much with that so I got rid of it.
God told me, Sarah, get rid of social media.
You have to.
I got rid of it.
And I eventually just stopped even posting ministry stuff on there because God told me
I did not need to be doing that.
Maybe one day He'll bring me back to that with this ministry.
(25:41):
But right now I don't do it.
I do think that there's a place for ministries on social media.
100%.
I agree with that.
I'm just saying, for me personally right now I don't.
So that's one thing I didn't do for a long time.
The next thing with my phone though was I currently, like if you looked at my phone
right now, I'd be like, okay Sarah, where the heck are all of the exciting things?
Like you have hardly any apps on here.
(26:02):
They're all practical apps or you know, learning apps or whatever, or Bible apps, you know,
stuff like that.
But I saw a girl, she's not a Christian, but I saw her on YouTube not that long ago and
she did this where she struggled with researching everything.
If she had a thought on her mind, she picked up her phone and Googled it and started doing
research.
I, when she said that I was like, oh my gosh, I relate to you so much right now.
(26:25):
I am a researcher.
I research everything.
You could tell me some random fact about a cucumber and I'm going to go look it up and
do my own research and read studies about it if they have them.
You know what I mean?
Like I look up everything.
So this was a problem for me.
I have kids, I have a kid and then I have, I'm a caregiver of another one full time.
They don't need to be seeing me on my phone all the time.
(26:46):
Even if I am just researching cucumbers, like what's the harm in that?
In the actual act of it, probably nothing.
But if I'm doing that whenever like I'm supposed to be, you know, if God wants me to be hanging
out with them or doing something with them or I have other responsibilities, I don't
need to be doing that.
Okay.
They don't need to be seeing me on my phone all day, no matter what I'm doing.
And so I, that was the other, that was the last thing I did was I completely deleted
(27:13):
all apps that would be a stumbling block for me.
And also not just that, but it was hindering me from growing closer to God in some areas.
And I didn't realize that at first, but since I'm no longer doing anything on my phone,
really, other than like a few small things here and there, and like I take pictures,
there's a couple of apps that I do use pretty regularly.
(27:34):
I'm a part of an online Christian community and I have the app for that.
And so like I do some things on my phone, but as far as like entertainment purposes,
I don't do anything on there unless it's YouTube and it's only certain times like when I download
YouTube on my phone, it's not on my phone at all times.
And when I stopped doing all of those things, when I put those out, I was setting boundaries,
(27:55):
practical boundaries to help me not fall to temptation.
And when I did that, it cleared my mind of those things because I was then spending more
time with God and less time on the things on my phone.
And when I started spending more time with God and doing things that he wanted me to
do outside of my quiet time with him also, it started filling my heart and my mind with
(28:19):
good morally sound righteous things.
And as I was filling my mind and heart more and more and more of those things, what was
it doing?
It was pushing the dirty water out of my mind and heart.
It was pushing all of those bad things.
It was pushing all of the temptation or the sorry, the, the sin that I was struggling
with out of my heart and mind.
Now do I still get tempted?
(28:40):
Of course I do still get tempted.
Do I fail?
Okay.
Sometimes I do fail.
I know myself and because I know that it's easy for me to fail, I just completely got
rid of all those things.
So I'm guarding myself from that potential failure.
So there's one big example.
And then I'm just going to skim through a couple others that I kind of jotted down here
(29:00):
in my notes.
I spend time with God in the morning and then at night, I don't every night, but like at
night.
So this is like setting aside uninterrupted time with God.
This is not just like while I'm doing chores around the house, I talk to God.
(29:20):
That's very important as well.
This is also not me playing worship music as I'm playing with the boys.
And then maybe I break out into worship.
Like the Holy Spirit is really filling me up and overflowing and I'm like really worshiping
God.
Like those times are great, but this is this, what I'm talking about is my, what people
call quiet time where I'm setting aside uninterrupted quiet time, spending good quality time with
(29:41):
God in the morning.
So anyway, back to my point.
I spend time with God in the morning, every morning pretty much.
And then not every night, but a lot of nights I go to bed and I just read my Bible.
This is not a time where I'm like sitting up, taking notes, doing all this stuff.
This is just me laying down in bed, reading my Bible.
And then, excuse me.
(30:04):
Sorry, my mind went blank.
Oh, when I do this though, when I'm spending time with God in the morning and I'm spending
time with Him at night, or I'm reading His word, you know what that does?
That literally means that I am not as likely to fall to temptation or at least if I do,
(30:26):
then I'll be more likely to feel heavy conviction and repent of that sin that I committed.
And you know why?
Because I am first thing in the morning thinking of God, going to bed thinking of God.
So I'm like sandwiching my day with God.
So I'm filling my mind with God.
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It's the first thing I think about and He's the last thing I think about.
So when I do that, I'm guarding my heart from going to sleep thinking about unwholesome
things, unwholesome things.
And I'm also guarding my heart and mind from thinking and doing things first thing in the
morning that I don't need to be doing.
Because what I need to be doing is prioritizing God first thing.
(31:10):
And I'm not saying that like my husband, for instance, he gets up at five in the morning
for work.
He also has to, well, he gets there on 530.
So like we don't live far from his work.
So he is one that doesn't get up like he would have to get up like four in the morning to
get good quality time with God in the morning before work.
He absolutely doesn't want to do that.
And I don't think that he should have to like some people do that.
(31:30):
And that's fine.
Great for you.
But it's something he has to because here's the thing.
This is something that God's been teaching me.
It's about consistency.
It's not about getting up at three or four in the morning.
It's about just showing up every day and just spending quality time with God often because
he is our life or he should be our whole entire life.
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And so when he is our lives, we do spend quality time with him every day.
And it's not because we feel like we have to it's because we want to.
So my husband does not do that four in the morning.
He does not have that uninterrupted time in the morning.
He talks to God throughout the day while he's at work.
Sometimes he listens to the Bible or whatever on his phone while he's at work if he can
or whatever he does those things.
But his uninterrupted time is after work in the afternoon, sometimes evenings.
(32:14):
And so that's fine.
He doesn't have the luxury that I do to be able to get up, spend time with God for a
while and then go to bed, do it again.
So I'm not saying you have to do that.
But what I am saying is that when we spend quality time with God daily, y'all, you will
(32:36):
not believe if you don't do this already, you need to because you will not believe what
it does for you for your mind and your heart.
And when you do that, it really is like putting up a shield against the devil because you're
going to be thinking of God.
And when you think of God, you're not thinking of the devil.
Your eyes are looking at God, not at the devil.
So when the devil tries to get in your way, like move out of the way, devil.
(32:58):
I want to keep looking at God.
And that's what that does.
When you're reading your Bible, when you're talking to God, when you're repenting, it
literally is pushing the devil out of the way every time he tries to step in between
you and God.
Another thing I don't do in order to guard my heart is I no longer watch certain things
that might provoke inappropriate thoughts.
So I actually will be very transparent with you.
(33:21):
When I was younger, I struggled with an addiction to pornography.
And so now to this day, even though I have grown completely away from that, I still like
I just don't even let it be an option in my home or in my heart.
And then another thing is this is a big one.
Actually I make sure that I'm only confiding in strong Christian friends or wiser Christians
(33:44):
to for certain topics of my life.
Like if it's about my marriage or certain sin cycles that I have struggled with or whatever
it is, like there's certain things like heavy things.
I only confide in strong Christian friends or Christians that are wiser than I am.
Because hearing worldly, this is something that I personally struggle with still to this
(34:07):
day at times.
So hearing worldly people's advice about certain topics allows worldly ideologies to seep into
my mind instead of godly ones.
And I, just like many people, struggle because it's easy, too easy for us because we're simple
minded.
It is too easy for us to jumble up certain ideologies that sound good, but really when
(34:27):
you look at them, the heart of those ideologies is actually for Satan and not God.
And because they're subtle.
Satan is subtle sometimes.
You do not realize because it looks good, but it's not always good.
And so in order for me to not have those ideologies seep into my mind, I only want godly ones.
I confide in strong Christian friends or wiser Christians about certain topics in my life.
(34:52):
Another thing with my phone though, I forgot to tell you guys, is I no longer have my phone
next to my bed when I plug in at night.
When my alarm goes off, I have to physically get up and go to the bathroom to turn it off.
And then I'm already in the bathroom to just shut the door, turn the light on and brush
my teeth and get ready.
It does help me big time with not grabbing my phone and starting looking to look at it
(35:12):
first thing in the morning.
And so that is another thing that I continuously do so that I'm not looking at my phone first
thing in the morning.
All I have to do to look at my phone is turn off my alarm and then just leave it on the
charger.
I don't even look at it.
And then I go into the living room and spend time with God first thing.
But anyway, so those are just things that maybe some of you can relate to.
And maybe you can just use it as inspiration to maybe set up your own boundaries for your
(35:37):
own life and your own struggles.
It's needed y'all.
It's needed, especially in a world where there's constantly people and things being bomb that
we're being bombarded with ideologies that we're being bombarded with.
We have to block those out.
And like, yes, we need to be walking in the world, but we do not need to be walking of
the world.
So in order to be walking of God's kingdom instead of this world, we need to be filling
(36:03):
our minds and hearts with God's kingdom.
That way, as we're walking the streets of this world, we can be bringing the kingdom
to the streets.
But you can't be bringing the kingdom to the streets if you're filling your mind and heart
or allowing your mind and heart to be pierced with worldly ideologies and worldly...
I said that wrong.
(36:27):
So worldly ideologies or just being provoked with worldly things like that.
And so you have to guard your heart.
And it's so worth it because just think about it, at the end of the day, where are you going?
You're going to hell, right?
When you die.
And so like we are, if you are a Christian, you are a foreigner here.
You like who the heck cares about how much money you have?
(36:48):
Who the heck cares how many followers you have?
Who the heck cares about spending two hours, six hours on TikTok or on Instagram or Snapchat
whenever you could be doing things that are actually meaningful that have eternal impact
on people's lives.
Because those things are what matters.
(37:08):
I'm not saying you can never watch a show again.
You can never go on Instagram again.
I'm just saying you better build those boundaries.
Set those boundaries.
It's important for you to set boundaries.
I mean, Jesus never sinned because he also never allowed those temptations to really
pierce his heart.
He had a shield up around his heart.
(37:29):
He had that wall up around his kingdom, his heart kingdom at all times.
And no one ever got through that wall.
No one ever did.
He fought the enemy back with his arrows, with his, with his scripture, with his words,
with his self-discipline, with his strength, with his courage.
He fought back and he never felt a temptation.
(37:52):
And that's what he did.
He guarded his heart at all times and he constantly was at the father's feet.
He was constantly humbling himself at the father's feet.
That is essential to guarding your heart.
And you have to do that.
Like you have to.
Let's, let me say three statements for you.
(38:12):
One, talk to God and ask him for help with this.
Y'all, you can't do this on your own.
Who did Jesus have?
Jesus was God, yes, but Jesus also talked to the Trinity, the other two in the Trinity,
right?
He talked to the father constantly.
He humbled himself at the father's feet constantly.
So talk to God, ask him for help with this.
(38:35):
You, you literally, you as a human being can not do this without God.
You are not God.
You can't defeat the devil because you're not his equal.
But when you have God, you are above the devil, but only because of God.
You can't do anything without God when it comes to the devil.
You can't defeat the devil without God.
So talk to him and say, God, I'm struggling and this is hard and I need your help.
(38:58):
And if you fail, this is number two, when you fail or if you fail, repent.
Repent doesn't mean sorry.
And then you do it again two days later.
Repent means sorry.
And you turn your body and you walk away.
Y'all, you have to walk away.
Will you ever fail with that thing again?
Maybe, but you better get back up and you better repent and you better keep walking
(39:20):
away.
And it takes self-discipline.
And that's the third thing.
You need God's strength and self-discipline for this.
In order to guard your heart, you have to have his strength and self-discipline, especially
repentance.
You can do that through Christ who gives you strength.
You can repent from a sin after doing it one time and never do it again because you have
the spirit inside of you and you call upon the strength that comes from Christ to say
(39:44):
no to that sin forevermore.
So talk to God, ask him for help with this.
When you fail, repent and you need God's strength and self-discipline for this.
Alright y'all, well that's all I got for you.
I do have on my website, there's a blog post that I posted a while ago about guarding your
heart.
(40:04):
And it talks about things that I personally have struggled with and how I guard my heart.
And one of them is my phone.
But there's a couple other things on there that I didn't talk about today.
So yeah, it's on there and you can totally go read that.
I don't think it's very long if I remember right.
I wrote it a while ago.
And then another thing that I have actually is some scripture cards that you can download
(40:26):
and print out.
Or if you don't have access to a printer, that's fine.
You can just see what I have and maybe just hand write them even on note cards.
But I have a free digital download on my website also.
And yeah.
Alright well I hope you guys have a wonderful rest of your week.
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