Last week, we started our Summer series called Proverbs—The Way of Wisdom. When Solomon takes over as king of Israel from his father, King David, God asks him, what is one thing you would ask of me? Solomon asks God for wisdom to govern. Because God is pleased with Solomon’s request, He makes Solomon the wisest man to ever live. Later in his life, Solomon, a dad, writes down some of the wisdom he received from God for his children. Today, we know those writings as the Book of Proverbs.
My thoughts from Proverbs today are applicable to everyone, whether you are still in high school or college, single or married, a mom or a dad, but I was especially thinking of dads as I was studying for this message.
Right out of the chute, King Solomon says that Wisdom comes to those who listen. But what voices and what messages are you listening to? This is important because the messages you choose to listen to determine your life’s course.
This is how Solomon puts it in Prov 4:
Prov 4:20-23 (CSB)—My son, pay attention to my words; listen closely to my sayings. Don’t lose sight of them; keep them within your heart. For they are life to those who find them, and health to one’s whole body. Guard your heart above all else, for it is the source of life.
The wisest man to ever live tells us to Guard our Hearts above all else.
In the 1600s, William Harvey revolutionized medical knowledge when he discovered that blood is pumped by the heart and circulates through the body. Every sixty seconds, your blood travels through 70,000 miles of veins, arteries, and capillaries. To do this, your heart beats approximately 100,000 times every single day, an average of two and a half billion times throughout your life.
Solomon says to guard your heart because it is the source of life—not only physiologically but spiritually. Men, so many of us have today are not guarding our hearts.
Men, we need to guard our hearts. We need to pay attention and be aware of the messages we are listening to.
In Proverbs 4, Solomon pleads with his son to pay attention to the wisdom he is sharing and keep that wisdom in his heart. He tells his son that if he does this, it will bring life and health to his whole body. In other words, if you listen to my message, he says, it will impact every area of your life.
The Bible mentions the heart over 1,000 times. Even though it is mentioned so many times, it is still a nebulous idea. It is difficult to define exactly what the heart is, but one thing is very clear: it is the source of why we do the things we do. It is what motivates us and causes us to act the way we act.
Men, you cannot get away from this fact. No matter how much pride you take in your logic. No matter how much you think you don’t let your emotions control your decisions, you can not escape the fact that your heart determines how you live and act.
Your heart determines how you think; it influences your thoughts and even your emotions. As your heart goes, so goes your life.
What messages are you listening to? Solomon says that what you keep in your heart determines your path. After he warns us to guard our hearts he says this:
Prov 4:24-27 (CSB)—Don’t let your mouth speak dishonestly, and don’t let your lips talk deviously. Let your eyes look forward; fix your gaze straight ahead. Carefully consider the path for your feet, and all your ways will be established. Don’t turn to the right or to the left; keep your feet away from evil.
Jesus says a similar thing in Matt 15:
Matt 15:19-20 (CSB)—For from the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, sexual immoralities, thefts, false testimonies, slander. These are the things that defile a person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile a person.
Solomon says that what you allow to take root in your heart will establish all of your ways.
What messages and what voices have you allowed to take root in your heart, and how have those messages determined the path for your feet and established your ways?
____________________________________
One of the reasons the gospel message resonates with so many people is that it fills a void that exists in our hearts. The gospel message is that when we repent of our sins and, in faith, believe that Jesus is God’s Son, that he lived a sinless life, was murdered on a cross, but three days later rose from the dead in victory over sin, when we believe that message, God forgives all of our sins, past, present, and future, and He adopts us as His sons and daughters.
God begins to speak His love over us and affirms His acceptance of us as His beloved children. We all need and even crave this message of love and acceptance because we are all broken people.
Pastor and author Jon Tyson describes us as people who “often are walking around with shrapnel in our souls from things spoken over us years ago.”
Maybe you recognize some of these messages because they have been spoken over you:
- You’re fat.
- You’re lazy.
- You’re a loser.
- I wish you were more like your brother.
- I am so disappointed in who you have become.
- You always.
- You never.
- Why can’t you just….
- I never really loved you anyway.
- You’re fired.
- I’m leaving you…
Many of us carry deep wounds from these kinds of things spoken over us years ago. We may not realize the deep impact these things have on our lives. The messages spoken over us may be untrue lies perpetrated by the enemy, but if we are not careful, they can take root in our hearts and have a compounding effect on our lives.
We crave the gospel’s message of love and affirmation because it is the antithesis of the message of the world and our culture. The message of Heaven is the opposite of the messages many of us have allowed to take root in our hearts. The first message of Heaven we need to take root in our hearts is this:
1. We are God’s beloved.
The message of God’s Word, in its entirety, is the story of His love for His human family and the lengths He has gone to demonstrate that love.
1 Jn 4:9-10 (CSB)—God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his one and only Son into the world so that we might live through him. Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice, for our sins.
The messages that we choose to listen to have a tremendous impact on how we live. So much of our busyness, striving, and lack of margin can be an unconscious attempt to cancel out these messages spoken over us in the past.
When our hearts are filled with messages of criticism, rejection, condemnation, and shame, we begin to live lives characterized by defensiveness and self-protection. Nowhere is this more evident than in our relationships with our wives, our children, family, friends, and co-workers. Our interactions with people become seasoned with this need to prove we are worthy of love and acceptance, that we are good enough.
In other words, when you allow lies from the enemy about who you are to take root in your heart, it will first show up in your marriage, then your parenting, and then all of your other relationships.
The message from our world may be criticism, rejection, condemnation, and shame, but the message of heaven is that you are God’s beloved, you are accepted, and because of the blood of Jesus, you are good enough.
_____________________________________
But there is another message that we men need to hide in our hearts. It is this:
2. We must have courage.
Around 160 AD, Polycarp, the Bishop of the church in Smyrna (a city in Asia Minor), was martyred at the age of 86. The apostle John personally discipled Polycarp. Polycarp had the inner voice of love that secured his identity in Christ. He was free from fear and filled with a knowledge of God’s presence. But he needed to hear another voice in his hour of testing—the voice of courage. History records for us…as Polycarp was being taken into the arena, a voice came to him from heaven:
“Be strong, Polycarp, and play the man!”
So many of us men shrink back into fear and self-preservation because we don’t know heaven expects something from us; a faithful witness of courageous love.
Be strong. Play the man.
We desperately need an entire generation of men to hide this message in their hearts.
Prov 3:25-26 (CSB)—Don’t fear sudden danger or the ruin of the wicked when it comes, for the LORD will be your confidence and will keep your foot from a snare.
Prov 29:25 (CSB)—The fear of mankind is a snare, but the one who trusts in the LORD is protected.
My favorite theologian says this about courage:
“Courage is being scared to death… but saddling up anyway”
—John Wayne.
Courage doesn’t mean you aren’t afraid. Courage is doing what needs to be done in the face of fear.
Be courageous and trust in God. Courage means doing the right thing, even though it may also be the hard thing, even though the outcome is uncertain.
Wikipedia says that courage is the choice and willingness to confront agony, pain, danger, uncertainty, or intimidation.
As men, God calls us to trust Him and confront agony, pain, danger, uncertainty or intimidation.
The Greek word translated “courage” means literally “boldness and confidence.”
- With boldness and confidence, persevere through hard times.
- With boldness and confidence, love your wife the way Christ loved the church.
- With boldness and confidence, pursue Jesus even though you may feel tired and overwhelmed.
- With boldness and confidence, let us lay aside every hindrance and the sin that so easily ensnares us.
Be strong, play the man. Be courageous and trust God.
Self-talk, self-affirmation, and self-esteem are not enough to overcome the voices of criticism in our lives. Our hearts need something bigger than that to change how we see ourselves.
We need to understand how God sees us and we must begin regarding ourselves the way God regards us.
Seeing ourselves the way God does frees us. Knowing that He chose us, loves us, and believes in us drowns out the critical and condemning messages our hearts have listened to.
Henri Nouwen addressed the need for courage and love to be spoken over us and integrated into our lives as men. He says this:
There is within you a lamb and a lion. Spiritual maturity is the ability to let lamb and lion lie down together. Your lion is your adult, aggressive self. It is your initiative-taking and decision-making self. But there is also your fearful, vulnerable lamb, the part of you that needs affection, support, affirmation, and nurturing.
When you heed only your lion, you will find yourself overextended and exhausted. When you take notice only of your lamb, you will easily become a victim of your need for other people’s attention.
The art of spiritual living is to fully claim both your lion and your lamb. Then you can act assertively without denying your own needs. And you can ask for affection and care without betraying your talent to offer leadership.
—Henri Nouwen
We need these two messages from heaven to be the messages we hide in our hearts. They need to drive how we love our families, how we do our work, how we lead, and how we interact with the people God has put into our lives. I say this for all of us, but especially to the men in the room today.
The voice we need to listen to is the voice calling us beloved and calling us to become courageous men.
________________________________________
Why is this important? Why is this call to wisdom, and this call for men to guard their hearts, so important? Why does Solomon make this plea throughout the book of Proverbs to get wisdom and hide it in your heart?
Because when we don’t, a crisis results. I believe we are seeing this crisis today in our families, in our communities, and in our nation.
- We have a crisis of leadership; there are so few worth following.
- We have a crisis of character; there are so few with integrity,
- We have a crisis of capacity; there are so few with ability.
- We have a crisis of discernment; there are so few with wisdom.
We live in a world where the fools think they are wise, we have deconstructed everything, and the narcissists are fighting over what’s left over.
By failing to guard our hearts, listen to wisdom, and allow the voice of love and the voice of courage to drive our actions, we have lost our strength, capacity, leadership, and, as a nation, the favor of God.
I know that sounds grim, but I believe God is doing something among men today. I believe there is a growing dissatisfaction with our culture. I believe God is stirring the hearts of men, the men in this church, to a new commitment to Godliness and faithfulness.
Whenever God is getting ready for revival and renewal, He will restore godly men.
- He will bring back the hero and warrior; those who know how to fight.
- He will bring back the prophet and the judge; those who can discern.
- He will increase men’s capacity, and leaders will emerge.
But this movement of men will only continue if we heed Solomon’s wise words and guard our hearts. We will only change our nation as God changes my heart. It starts with me, it starts in my home, and it starts with my relationship with Jesus.
Pay attention to the messages you allow to take root in your heart. Instead of listening to the messages of your past or the messages of our culture, listen to what God speaks over you and hide those things in your heart. May those be the voices that establish our ways.
My Challenge:
- What are some of the messages you have carried around in your heart?
- What has been the impact of those messages in your life?
- Is there one message, the message of love or the message of courage, that you are especially needing to listen to right now?
- Ask God to help you show you how to hide that message in your heart and watch how it changes what you do.
Chris Hankel 
Leave a comment