What has your heart? How do you protect your heart? Many of us say we've given our hearts to Jesus, but have we really? Have we allowed the things that touch his heart to impact our hearts?

He calls caring for widows and orphans "true religion" because it involves aligning our hearts' affections with his. This is the essence of religious activity.

Three times in the book of Hebrews we're told, "If you hear his voice do not harden your hearts." (Heb. 3 & 4)

The implication is that we draw our hearts near to God by listening to his voice.  You tend to give your heart to the person you listen to on a regular basis. Our hearts are impressionable; they begin to look like the hearts of the ones we hang around.

Yet Hebrews warns us against hardening our hearts. We harden our hearts as we protect them too much. We constantly make decisions about how much we're going to guard our heart, but guard it too much and it can end up being hardened.

The key question is: Will we allow the enemy of our hearts to distract us and woo us away from those things that God is calling us to?

Jesus describes for us how that happens: "The evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in [your] heart." And he tells us the things that make hearing his voice and his words more difficult: pleasures, worries and wealth. Who can't relate to feeling pulled away from the things on God's heart by these things?

In the battle for your heart, I hope you've decided to fight hard. You've got a lot at stake.