Introduction to the Heart – What Is the Heart in the Bible? Guarding Your Heart and Its Treasure

You may not know how much, and someday when we have absolutely nothing else to do, I intend to talk about it because it’s really not the most positive thing on earth to get involved in. Brothers and sisters, here’s the thing I would like to tell you: the Lord took the soul, the self of the soul, and put him on the cross.

I want to tell you the most wonderful news in the world. The most wonderful news in the world is that you do not have to criticize other people. You don’t have to be critical. You don’t have to be divisive. You don’t have to… do you understand what I mean? All of these things, you don’t have to do them. The next time you come up, and you’re tempted to say something about a brother in the Lord, just let the Lord’s Spirit speak to you. He’ll say to you, “You don’t have to say that. You can, but you don’t have to.” I don’t have to. I don’t have to do that. Have you ever felt you’ve had to? If you didn’t, there’s something inside of you that just wasn’t going to get satisfied. You know, if it gets pushed out of me, I’m just going to have sort of an unsatisfied feeling. You know what I’m speaking of, do you not?

Then let the Lord speak to you and say, “No, you don’t have to say that.” I’ll tell you, brothers, you’ll go away for two or three minutes, and you’ll be very, very blue. I wanted to say that. If I thought it would have helped that other brother or sister, I had said it to them. But as you go away, about ten minutes later, you’re going to find out something. If you have a keen spirit, you will notice a strengthening in your spirit. You will notice yourself getting stronger in your spirit. Have you ever had that experience? There it is, just sitting there tempting you, just looking at you, saying, go ahead and say it. If you can’t say it just out loud and bold, you can twitch with the eye, frown, you can nod the head, you can, you know, but it’s better to go ahead and say, “I can’t stand that guy,” than to say, “Oh, he’s nice.” You know, yeah, he really, yeah, I’d say that. That’s right, he’s a nice brother. You’d rather say I can’t stand him. But to just let it completely go about ten minutes later, you’re going to sense a real growth in your spirit. Isn’t it glorious? You don’t have to criticize another brother. You don’t have to be divisive. You don’t have to be critical. The Lord has dealt with it. That’s glorious. That’s liberating. It’s just marvelous. I don’t have to be bitter. I don’t have to. That’s marvelous. Praise the Lord.

Even if you’re right, even if you’re so… oh, you’re always right. You’re always correct. It doesn’t have to be said. We can go and live without it ever being uttered. Pretty soon, if you’ll deny the soul enough—deny the soul enough—you’ll begin to see the Lord really taking a finished work in you. You will notice a succumbing…a final end of this work in you. We have to begin denying. We’ll turn one day to the positive when we get to the Spirit. There’s the denial of the soul. There’s turning to the Spirit. We haven’t even gotten there.

Then we stop. I don’t talk to brothers here who are ambitious like my brother here. Sometimes we begin with something negative by saying the soul’s enlarged. That’s negative. That we have to deny the soul. That’s really negative. But you hang around long enough; we must never stop there. We must come to Christ.

So whatever I say about the heart for the next two or three days, remember: we come to the end, and the end is Christ. So we came to Hebrews 4, and that’s where just a whole lot of things got started. Hebrews 4 tells us that there is the dividing of the soul from the spirit, and this is something we must touch on more, but praise the Lord, there was a group of people on this earth who did not divide their soul from their spirit. I’m sorry, the Lord looked in them and saw. He divided their soul from their spirit, and he saw that the intent was in their soul not to go on with the Lord. He saw it, and they didn’t get to go in.

Then the writer of Hebrews, whom I feel very strongly was Barnabas—nobody knows who wrote it, but I feel like it was Barnabas—whoever wrote it, he said there have come a group of people who walked up to the edge of the wilderness to go in. And the voice of the Lord is speaking one more time, isn’t it? If you don’t harden your heart, you get to go in. All you have to do is believe the voice within you. There is a speaking within you. Don’t harden your heart to it and go in. Isn’t that neat? Who is that group of people? That’s us. Who is the one speaking? Jesus Christ, by the Holy Spirit, is speaking to you, and he’s saying, “Go on in.”

Well, what is the land? And even more, it’s going into our spirits. You can get in your spirit, and you can stay there. I want to encourage you. Despite all the negative things I might say about the soul, I want you to know you’ve got a heart for the Lord.  And then we can go in.

That’s where we’ve come to now, and at this point we have to talk about the heart. I’ve wanted to do this, I guess, ever since I’ve arrived here. As far as I recall, we have never touched on the heart. Never. We’ve mentioned it a few times but never dealt with it…never dealt with the heart of man. There are brothers and sisters who really need this. You know how many will need it? All of us need it.

What do you consider the heart? Okay, that’s about all I’m going to get to tonight. I just want to tell you this. You’ve got a heart for the Lord. You’ve got a heart for the Lord. I’m just not going to say anything a whole lot negative, because I assume you’re going in. I just assume you’re going to go in. You deal with the first. You deal with the second. You understand the third. You go in, brothers.

Let me say the heart’s not the body. It’s sure not the body. What is it? The soul? It’s hard to say. Is it the spirit? It’s hard to say. I read all the verses that I know that anybody’s ever quoted on the heart, and I’m just not ready to stand up here tonight and tell you that the soul and the heart are the same thing, or the spirit and the heart are the same thing. I can only tell you this. I’m going to give you a very simple definition of what the heart is…and don’t forget it. The heart is the entrance and the exit of your whole being. That’s what it is. It is the entrance of your being, and it is the exit of your being. All that will ever come into you will have to come into you through your heart, and all that ever comes out of you will come out through your heart. And, brothers and sisters, your heart eventually is going to tattle on you. It is going to tattle on you.

What did we read in Proverbs 4:23? It was that the heart… well, I’d like to read it again, because that’s really how we’re going to get tonight. 4:23 –  Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flows the springs of life. Brothers and sisters, watch over your heart with all diligence. So, for the next few days, I do not know exactly how long, we are going to talk about the heart. If we get a chance, we’re going to talk about the Spirit. Watch the heart with all diligence, because it lets everything in, and eventually what’s in you will come out. The heart must be watched. It is the entrance and exit of your whole being.