Proverbs 4:20-23

My son, be attentive to my words; incline your ear to my sayings. Let them not escape from your sight; keep them within your heart. For they are life to those who find them, and healing to all theirflesh. Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.

We all want “life”—both in our natural and spiritual lives. And we could all use healing in one way or another. So how do we maximize life and healing? One way is to be continually incline our ears (that means to lean in, readers!) to our Lord’s sayings. We do that by reading and receiving His written word, and by being open to the Holy Spirit in and out of church.

But there is one problem with those sayings—they often escape, or are replaced. Our brains and hearts only have so much they can keep guard over, and the world has plenty of options to throw our way that fight to find and maintain their place. Worries, fears, distractions, all our responsibilities—they can eat up our mental and spiritual bandwidth and leave little room for His sayings to grow and thrive.

How do we keep our hearts with all diligence? One way is to not allow His words, once in our hearts, to escape. Pastor Bruce Plummer when he was at Christ Community Church often mentioned that as Christians, we sometimes “leak.” We need to be aware of that, watching for a thinning out of our closeness to the Lord, or a letting go of God’s sayings as life begins to insist on filling us up with “other sayings.”

As humans, our headspace, in all its definitions, is limited. Keeping our hearts with all diligence means making sure that we lean into what He is saying to us, and keeping His words close to our hearts. Then we need to make certain that those words stay there. It’s a spiritual game of “King of the Hill” that never stops.

“Not letting” His words escape is a battle, but we have the King on our side. He grants us His sayings, then gives us the power to “not let” them escape from our hearts, and then gives us undeserved blessings as they stay there!