Take Up the Cross

Thorns and snares are in the way of the froward: he that doth keep his soul shall be far from them.
~ Proverbs 22:5

Hear thou, my son, and be wise, and guide thine heart in the way.
~ Proverbs 23:19

Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.
~ Proverbs 4:7

My son, let not them depart from thine eyes: keep sound wisdom and discretion:
~ Proverbs 3:21

A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things.
~ Matthew 12:35

For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies:
~ Matthew 15:19

A Special Warning to Hypocrites and Formal Professors, by John Flavel. The following contains an excerpt from his work, “Keeping the Heart”.

Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.”
— Proverbs 4:23

O Christians! I fear your zeal and strength have run in the wrong channel; I fear most of us may take up the Church’s complaint, Cant. 1:6. “They have made me the keeper of the vineyards, but mine own vineyard have I not kept.” Two things have eaten up the time and strength of the professors of this generation, and sadly diverted them from heart-work: (1.) Fruitless controversies started by Satan, I doubt not, to this very purpose, to take us off from practical godliness, to make us puzzle our heads when we should be searching our hearts. O how little have we minded that of the apostle, Heb. 13:9. “It is a good thing that the heart be established with grace, and not with meats;” i.e. with disputes and controversies about meats, “which have not profited them that have been occupied therein.”

O how much better is it to see men live exactly, than to hear them dispute subtlely! These unfruitful questions, how have they rent the churches, wasted time and spirits, and called Christians off from their main business, from looking to their own vineyard? What think ye, sirs? Had it not been better if the questions agitated among the people of God of late days had been such as these? How shall a man discern the special, from the common operations of the Spirit? How may a soul observe its first declinings from God? How may a backsliding Christian recover his first love? How may the heart be preserved from unseasonable thoughts in duty? How may a bosom- sin be discovered, and mortified, &c. would not this have tended more to the credit of religion and comfort of your souls? O it is time to repent and be ashamed of this folly! When I read what Suarez, a Papist, said, who wrote many tomes of disputations, that he prized the time he set apart for the searching and examining of his heart, in reference to God, above all the time that ever he spent in other studies: I am ashamed to find the professors of this age yet insensible of their folly. Shall the conscience of a Suarez feel a relenting pang for strength and time so ill employed, and shall not yours? This is it your ministers long since warned you of; your spiritual nurses were afraid of the rickets, when they saw our heads only to grow, and our hearts to whither. O when will God beat our swords into plow- shares! I mean, our disputes and contentions into practical godliness. (2.) Another cause of neglecting our hearts hath been earthly incumbrances; the heads and hearts of many have been filled with such a croud and noise of worldly business, that they have sadly and sensibly declined and withered in their zeal, love, and delight in God; in their heavenly, serious, and profitable way of conversing with men.

O how hath this wilderness entangled us! our discourses and conferences, nay, our very prayers and duties have a tang of it: we have had so much work without doors, that we have been able to do but little within. It was the sad complaint of an holy one*, ‘O (saith he) it is sad to think how many precious opportunities I have lost; how many sweet motions and admonitions of the Spirit I have passed over unfruitfully, and made the Lord to speak in vain: in the secret illapses of his Spirit, the Lord hath called upon me, but my worldly thoughts did still lodge within me, and there was no place within my heart for such calls of God.” Surely there is a way of enjoying God, even in our worldly employments; God would never have put us upon them to our loss; “Enoch walked with God, and begat sons and daughters,” Gen. 5:19. He walked with God, but did not retire and separate himself from the things of this life: and the angels that are employed by Christ in the things of this world, (for the spirit of the living creatures is in the wheels) they are finite creatures, and cannot be in a twofold ubi at one time; yet they lose nothing of the beatifical vision all the time of their administration: for Mat. 18:10. “Their angels (even whilst they are employed for them) behold the face of their Father which is in heaven.” We need not lose our visions by our employments, if the fault were not our own. Alas! that ever Christians, who stand at the door of eternity, and have more work upon their hands than this poor moment of interposing time is sufficient for, should yet be filling both their heads and hearts with trifles.

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