Above All Else, Guard Your Heart 1: Vision For The Heart Journey

Wendy Mann
Apr 13
6 min read

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I want to spend the next two episodes looking at the heart journey. I want to give us fresh vision for why it’s important for us to look below the surface of our lives and invite Jesus to work in our hearts. We’ll also look at different ways we can pursue greater freedom and healing in our hearts — how we can intentionally do the heart journey.(When I talk about our hearts, I’m talking about our mind, will, and emotions — the core of who we are.)

Doing the heart journey is something I feel very passionate about and something I like to highlight whenever I do ministry. I’ve seen first-hand, in my own life and in the lives of many others, the fruit of increased freedom and healing. I’ve also seen the damage that can be done when our hearts stay bound up and become hard over time. Doing the heart journey really isn’t easy, but it’s so important if we want to stay healthy in our relationship with God, ourselves, and others over the long haul.

I want to take some time to give us fresh vision for the heart journey and to look at some of what the Bible has to say about it.

Above all else

Proverbs 4:23 — Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.(Guard = watch over)

This is such a significant instruction: above everything else, watch over your heart. Why does God ask us to do this? Because everything that’s going on in us is what flows out of us. Everything we do, say, our responses, reactions, the way we love our spouse or friends, forgive others, bring God’s Kingdom — all that we do flows from what’s going on inside us, in our heart.

Truth: God wants us to be increasingly whole, free, and healthy on the inside. He wants to heal our hearts — to comfort us and convict us, to reveal where our thinking is wrong and show us what’s true, to teach us how to lament and put His finger on deep pain or trauma we might be carrying, and to help us step into greater joy. Saying yes to this heart journey isn’t always easy, and it takes time — there isn’t always instant breakthrough — but it does lead to rich fruit:

1) Fruit in our relationship with God — We’ll get to know God more fully and connect with Him in deeper ways. As we invite Him to comfort us when we bring Him our pain, or confess our sin to Him as He gently reveals shame we’re carrying, we will get to know His heart more and tangibly experience His nature in new ways. We’ll enjoy increased intimacy with Him.

2) Fruit in our relationship with ourselves — We’ll learn to understand ourselves more and get to know who we really are at our core. We’ll understand the deep wounds that impact the way we live our lives and how we got them. We’ll also get to know who God intended us to be, without the limitations, unhealed wounds, and lies. As a result, we’ll be able to increasingly accept ourselves and step into the unique calling God has for our lives.

3) Fruit in our relationship with others — We’ll be able to love others more wholeheartedly and have greater grace and compassion for those around us. Our love for them will flow from a different place — a place of greater healing and freedom, a place of having experienced God’s grace, compassion, and healing in our own lives.

Two passages in Luke

Right at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, which is so much about the heart and people’s internal journey, Jesus shares two familiar analogies. You might want to take some time — before you hear my reflections — to read the passages yourself and see what the Holy Spirit highlights to you.

Read Luke 6:43–45 — The tree and its fruit

A tree is identified by its fruit. The fruit a tree produces shows the substance of the tree — what’s going on inside it, the core of the tree. A tree produces fruit out of the overflow of what it is on the inside.
Then Jesus goes on to talk about the fruit we produce that flows from our hearts: A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart.
An evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart.

The fruit we produce is an overflow of what’s going on inside us — specifically an overflow of our hearts.

Jesus finishes by saying that what you say flows from what is in your heart. In other translations: “Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.”

One of the ways we can identify what is really going on in our hearts is to pay attention to what comes out of our mouths — the things we say, or sometimes think but don’t say. Notice these things, choose to be vulnerable with trusted friends about them, and ask Jesus where these reactions/thoughts come from.

Read Luke 6:46–49 — Building on a solid foundation

Living lives of obedience to Jesus is key if we want to build our lives on a solid foundation and be able to stand firm when challenges come.
Floodwaters will come. We are going to face challenges in life. Doing the heart journey will mean that we — and what we build with Jesus — will be healthy and stand firm over the long haul.
The section that particularly stood out to me: “Digs deep and lays the foundation on solid rock.” It’s interesting that in both of these stories the emphasis is on what happens underground — a tree is produced by a seed that’s planted, and foundations are dug underground. Both are hidden.

Building a house: Digging foundations is not the fun part. It’s hidden and hard work. The fun part is seeing walls go up, windows go in, electrics wired, plastering finished, and then being able to decorate. Digging foundations is not fun or glamorous, but it’s crucial if the house is going to stay standing.

Heart journey: Not often fun — it can be really hard work. It’s the deep stuff that often happens in the secret place or in hiddenness that only God and a few trusted people really see and know about:

Working through forgiveness
Confessing and repenting
Expressing disappointment / lamenting
Facing and expressing pain and trauma
Serving without recognition
Celebrating others’ success or breakthrough
Giving away money
Wrestling with fear or anxiety

It’s so easy to focus on the exciting bits about following Jesus and avoid really looking at our hearts — things like adventures we get to go on, opportunities to step into calling and gifting, people seeing potential in us and drawing it out, seeing miracles, the prophetic, seeing God move, and leading people to Jesus.

If we want to follow Jesus wholeheartedly over the long haul and really be who He’s called us to be — if we want to keep standing firm when storms hit and build something beautiful for Him — we have to be willing to look beneath the surface of our lives and invite God to bring healing and freedom to us.

This journey can be really hard and painful. Some of us are carrying very deep wounds from our pasts.

There's a building by the river I walk along that was knocked down in about a day. Digging out the old foundations, however, took a lot longer. For many of us, the process of the heart journey and laying healthy, deep foundations first requires us to invite God to dig out some of our old, faulty foundations that we’ve lived with for years but that aren’t built on solid, healthy rock. It takes time and can feel disorientating.

This feels like some of what God’s been doing in me over the past year and a half of counselling. It’s been incredibly hard at times, and it’s felt like Jesus has gone very deep in my heart. He’s encouraged me at different points by reminding me that the most precious things come out of the deepest places — oil, water, precious stones. The journey I’ve been on has been so worth it.

How is your heart journey going?

Are you prioritising moments just to be with God and invite Him to search you and know you?

Saying yes to the heart journey is always important, but it feels even more significant as we hear about more and more influential Christians who have abused those they’re meant to be serving and laying their lives down for. It’s so sad and so damaging.

We must build our lives on healthy foundations. Prioritising the heart journey is one of the main ways we can do that. In the next episode, we’ll get more practical and look at how we can intentionally pursue greater healing and freedom in our hearts. We’ll look at what the heart journey looks like in practice.

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Wendy Mann Equip | www.wendymannequip.com

'Equipping disciples of Jesus to live wholeheartedly and prioritise God's presence'.