23rd February - 1st March 2026
Guard Your Heart:
Think of something in your life that you know needs guarded and protected, something that you always need to know where it is. Maybe it's something like your passport, or your car keys. We keep an eye on the things in life that are important to us, don't we? Something important in my life right now is my diary. I'm currently a student, and if I had misplaced my diary I would be lost. I wouldn't know when my next assignment is due, or when I'm speaking next in Church. I wouldn't know what the next step is, what direction to go.
Why is it that we protect these things? It's because they matter, they have value to us in our life, and we’d be a bit lost without them, unsure of what the next step is. In Proverbs 4:23, God says that there is something far more important than all of those things. And that is your heart …
“Keep your heart with all vigilance,
for from it flow the springs of life.”
Our heart is our inner being that drives us towards action. Our hearts controls things like:
- What we love
- What we think about
- What choices we make
- And, most importantly, what we worship
Our hearts are so easily influenced and shaped and can be often pulled toward the wrong things. What we love, what we take into our hearts, is what controls us most.
The heart leads and life follows …
So how are we meant to guard our hearts? There's a saying we often hear from different voices in the world. And sometimes it may seem like good advice: “Follow your heart.”
But I want to bring your attention to Jeremiah 17:9:
“The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked;
Who can know it?”
God made humanity a promise and it's recorded in Ezekiel 36:26-27. God promised to give us new hearts, and this is how He did it:
He gave His Son for us, and He lived a perfect life that we couldn’t, innocent from every sin that we are guilty of, to be the ultimate sacrifice for us, the ones who have broken and corrupted hearts, to give us the opportunity to receive a new heart from Him. And He made it all possible by defeating death itself, that's the beauty of the gospel.
Written by James Montgomery
MONDAY
Genesis 3:10
“And he said, ‘I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.’”
Our hearts were first corrupted by sin in the garden. Introducing fear and shame into the human experience. We see here in Genesis how the knowledge of nakedness, post-sin, drove Adam to act in fear, hiding himself from the Lord.
We have inherited this same fear and shame through our common ancestors, Adam and Eve. But thank God, we have the second Adam, our Lord Jesus, our King and Saviour, who freely gives us the forgiveness we so desperately need.
Good and gracious Heavenly Father, we acknowledge our hearts before You at the beginning of this week. We understand that we are a needy people, we find ourselves often stuck in fear and shame, but we praise You and give You glory for Your gospel. We thank You, God, for how You looked upon our sinful state that we inherited from Adam, and sent Your only Son to humble Himself and join us in our humanity, to pay the price we owed and give us the way to be reconciled to You and adopted into Your Kingdom. And it’s in His name we pray, Amen.
TUESDAY
Jeremiah 17:9
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”
When the world tells us to follow our heart, we must remember Jeremiah’s words. Our hearts shouldn’t be followed because ultimately they can’t be followed. Surely, if we want to follow something, we should be sure that it is something trustworthy, consistent, and understandable?
However, we know someone who is trustworthy, unchanging and knowable. Jesus Christ declares He is the truth. God says, “I the LORD do not change,” in Malachi 3:6. And God has made Himself known to us through both His creation, His Word, and ultimately the Lord’s incarnation as He took on flesh.
So, Glorious Father, we give thanks to You, the one who intimately knows us and who made Yourself known to us. We thank You for Your Word, how we can see the heavens declaring Your glory, and how Your Son who, though being in the form of God did not count equality with God as something to be grasped, emptied Himself, by taking on the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. Praise and Honour be to our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
WEDNESDAY
Ezekiel 36:26
“And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.”
Even though we were born into sin, inheriting the curse of the fall from Adam, God did not give up and end the story there.
God started His redemption plan in Genesis 3. He made a promise that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent who deceived. We see who that promised one is in the New Testament: Christ Jesus.
He was the one who had a perfect heart, lived a perfect life of innocence from the very sins we are guilty of, and died the guilty one’s death. He atoned for our sin, took the wrath of God upon Himself, paid the debt we owed and God’s justice was satisfied. We now have the opportunity to receive the forgiveness of God freely, to receive this new heart and new Spirit which Ezekiel wrote about all those years ago.
Heavenly Father, You are a just God, and also a gracious God. You loved us with such a love that You gave us a new heart. You see that what You had made us to be was broken, broken because of ourselves, yet in Your mercy you acted definitively. As we consider our hearts this week, let our eyes be turned to look outward from ourselves, to be readjusted to focus on the one who got us out of the mess we were in, Jesus our Saviour. Amen.
THURSDAY
Philippians 2:5-8
“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by t\king on the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”
This is what our Saviour has done for us. There's nothing more to add to this, Jesus died on the cross as an obedient servant, fully humbled and willing to take our place, to take our rightly deserved punishment to satisfy justice and to redeem us from our fallen, sinful state.
Heavenly Father of our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus, we love You because You first loved us. When we come before the cross we are all equal. We come before the cross weak and broken, yet the one who was made weak, and whose body was broken for us, gives us the freshness of new life, and life eternal. All we have to offer You is our lives, so we submit ourselves afresh before You today. We acknowledge the weight, what we are capable of acknowledging with our finite minds, of what You have done for us. Let our hearts burn with passion for Your glory and Your honour as we sit at the foot of the cross, placed into Your strong hand, safe and secure where no one can ever pluck us from. Amen.
FRIDAY
Galatians 5:22-25
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.”
This is what a heart that is guarded and being renewed produces. This is also what guarding the heart looks like. If we are living by the Spirit, we must also keep in step with the Spirit. This involves crucifying the flesh, which seems almost impossible, how can we so deny our desires and passions that it can be described as a crucifixion?
Crucifying the flesh involves decisively acknowledging the wrongdoing of our ways and making a choice to follow the way, the truth and the life, Jesus Himself. But still this seems incredibly difficult – why? Well, it's because it is incredibly difficult. We are going against the inherent desire of our body and mind, but we know that we have the great Advocate, the Holy Spirit from whom comes our strength, that is how we are no longer captives and slaves to sin, but by the Spirit's help we become transformed by the renewing of our minds.
Father in heaven, we acknowledge that Your ways are righteous and good, and that our own ways fall short of Your glory. We acknowledge You as the ultimate authority and desire to walk in step with Your Holy Spirit. Give us the strength and endurance to keep in step with You, and to crucify our flesh, not to earn Your love, as You already love us, but we do this in response to Your great outpouring of the grace and mercy You so demonstrated in our salvation through Christ Jesus, in whose name we pray, Amen.
SATURDAY
Romans 15:5-7
“May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.”
Harmonious living, within a community, is a gift of God. The purpose of our lives is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. When we welcome each other into church, into our homes, when we share meals with each other, when we mourn with one another, rejoice with one another, we are in accord with Jesus, walking in step with the Spirit. Just as Jesus gave Himself up for us, so we too must give ourselves up to each other.
Now, that doesn't mean letting people walk over us, rather, it’s seeing people the way God sees them: image bearers, so loved by God that He was willing to lay down His only Son’s life so that they may have the chance of eternity with Him.
So, as we come to pray today, let’s think of those in our lives who we find difficulty with, and how we can cast a new light on our view of them, just as God views them. But also, how God views us. It’s not just other people we can have a hard time with, often we forget to consider ourselves with the degree of value that God has placed on us.
Father, You are a good and loving God. We confess that oftentimes we do not have the same mind in Christ, we often forget the value You have placed on us human beings. But we ask for Your revelation to us fresh today, that You show us the good, show us the love, show us the image of You who we bear, both as we look at the people around us, and also as we consider ourselves. We love You, God, we pray these things in Jesus’ name, Amen.
SUNDAY
Jude 1:24-25
“Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.”
These few verses are so powerful. He is able to keep us, able to guard our hearts and present us blameless before God, and get this, with great joy. God does not have great joy for anything we can do or achieve, but the sole reason that Jesus Christ presents us before His glory.
As we considered guarding our hearts this week, and what that looks like in light of the glorious gospel, let us go on rejoicing in this great salvation. Let us worship and praise God together today as we await His return. That's right, He’s coming back! Isn’t that what we’re all about? Isn’t that what we’re patiently waiting for?
Our Father in Heaven, what a blessed hope You have given us – the Lord Jesus said that He will return! So, we wait on You expectantly, watchful and trusting in You who started this work in us and have promised to bring it to completion. Keep our hearts, Lord, hold us fast in this time, return to this world soon in power so that Your will is done and that we may greatly rejoice in the fullness of Your Kingdom come, restoring all things. We greatly praise Your name, Lord Jesus, we pray, Amen.