| “Let your eyes look straight ahead, and let your eyelids look right before you.” – Proverbs 4:25 |
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| Guarding the EYE Gate to guard your heart! Proverbs 4 teaches how one may be spiritually healthy. To be spiritually healthy one needs to be proactive in ACQUIRING WISDOM that is then APPLIED to one’s life. (Prov. 4:5-9) To be spiritually healthy one must AVOID the highway of evil. Proverbs 4:14 “Do not enter the path of the wicked, And do not walk in the way of evil. 15 Avoid it, do not travel on it; Turn away from it and pass on.” As one moves to the end of chapter 4, one learns how vital the heart is to our spiritual health and is told to GUARD the HEART with all DILIGENCE. To guard the heart there are several actions to take. For instance, there are things to PUT IN the heart AND there are things to KEEP OUT of the heart. From Psalm 119:11 we learn what to PUT IN OUR HEART as it says, “Your word I have hidden in my heart, That I might not sin against You!” To be spiritually healthy you must be PUTTING GOD’s WORD in your heart. Getting personal and practical, what is the last Bible verse you memorized? Our verse to DATE, Proverb 4:25, calls for guarding our eyes to KEEP WRONG THINGS OUT OF OUR HEART. We need to know that what comes in through the eye gate can have a significant impact on our hearts. If we are going to be diligent in guarding our hearts, we must be diligent in guarding our eyes. How do you guard your eyes? David helps here as in Psalm 101:3 he wrote a conviction regarding his eyes. He wrote, “I will set nothing wicked before my eyes.” In Psalm 119:37 he prayed for God to “Turn away his eyes from looking at worthless things.” This is a prayer we should be praying! Job offers this conviction regarding his eyes in Job 31:1 stating, “I have made a covenant with my eyes; Why then should I look upon a young woman?” I remind you that temptations must be met with convictions! Let us learn from Job to have a conviction about our eyes! Jesus reveals the seriousness of guarding our eye gate by saying, “And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, rather than having two eyes, to be cast into hell fire.” (Mark 9:47) To drive home the point of just how important the eyes are notice this from Jesus: Luke 11:34 says, “The lamp of the body is the eye. Therefore, when your eye is GOOD, your whole body also is full of light. But when your eye is bad, your body also is full of darkness. The children’s song of Oh, Be Careful tells us to BE CAREFUL with our EYES is a song to sing daily and to live minute by minute. Are you WATCHING what you WATCH? To be spiritually healthy you will need to discipline your eyes as to what they see! Verse to DATE on April 25 (4/25) is Proverbs 4:25. It says, “Let your eyes look straight ahead, and let your eyelids look right before you.” Continue Strong with godly eyesight, And remember to DATE the Word |