The condition of your heart determines the condition of your life. The quality of your life will never be different from the quality of your heart. Your heart regulates your life. Whatever you allow to occupy your heart, will direct your life. Access to your heart amounts to access to your life. The Bible likens the heart of man to soil into which seed is sown. The condition of the soil will determine whether the seed will thrive or not. No matter how great the quality of a seed is, if the quality of the soil into which it is sown is poor, the seed will be unfruitful.
The parable of the sower in the Bible underscores this fact. The nature and the quality of the seed sown in the various conditions of the heart (as represented by the wayside, the stony, the thorny and the fertile soil types) were the same, yet only one soil type was fruitful. As in the case of the three other soil types, Satan’s constant attempt is to entice your heart away from God, so as to render His word unproductive in your life. This is to enable him establish his destructive rule over your life (Deut 30:15-20).
Your heart is where the reality of your life is conceived. Hence, you must first receive in your heart a spiritual truth which you hope to receive in your experience as a material or physical reality. God’s word begins its work in your heart, before it affects other areas of your life. Your heart is the soil in which the seed of the word of God germinates, takes root and eventually bears fruit. This is why the Bible says, “My son, give attention to my words; Incline your ear to my sayings. Do not let them depart from your eyes; Keep them in the midst of your heart” (Prov 4:20-21).
You are whatever your heart is: “As in water face reflects face, So a man’s heart reveals the man.” (Prov 27:19). This is why God pays so much attention to this part of you. He corrected Samuel’s wrong impression about Eliab’s eligibility for kingship in these words: “But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature, because I have refused him. For the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”” (1Sam 16:7). Appearances may fool men, but not God who sees the heart. The difference between David and his eldest brother Eliab was the nature of their hearts.
To underscore the importance of the heart, God says, “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” (Prov 4:23). Your heart is the wellspring of your life. Shalom.
