A Guarded Heart Leader

Transcript: Pastor Priji: How important it is for young leaders to guard their own hearts? Pastor Subi: Proverbs 4:23 says guard your heart above all else for it determines the course of your life. We have to be a people that will do it with all sincerity and honesty. The social media has the amazing ability to project people the way they are not, so it is so easy for us always to have a perfect picture, and it looks unachievable to a whole lot of generation out there. Jesus was most severe when it came to Pharisees and Sadducees, but He was comfortable even with prostitute and the people who had all kinds of problems. The difference between Pharisees and prostitute was that the prostitutes were honest and the Pharisees were not. Mimicking being religious is so easy for us today whereas we fail to deal with anger, temper tantrums, etc., and these are the areas the Holy Spirit came to touch. Pastor Priji: What are the measures that we can take in our day-to-day activities to guard our hearts? Pastor Subi: I have intentionally tried to stay as honest as I can with everything that I do. If I do something, I would like to ask myself why I am doing it. If I am doing it because I want to project a certain image to feel bigger, better, successful, then I am doing wrong with it and that has been the benchmark that I have set for myself. I do not want to project myself glossier than I am and I am okay letting the people at least with my core people that I am mentoring know my flaws and my vulnerability. Having said that, there is no room for us to say it is okay to sin. It is not okay to sin and our standards have to be standards of Christ. Pastor Priji: What are some of the disastrous effects in life when we are not guarding our hearts? Pastor Subi: The Bible says in I Peter 5:5 “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” This scripture is one of the foundations of my walk with God. If I am walking towards God, God will put His hands out towards me and stop me from getting close to Him if I am proud. If there is pride in my life, God will resist me. The same arm of God that resisted the man who has pride, is the arm that will go behind our back and push us from the back to go forward. If we do falter and fall into any sin, we need to go back and check whether we were proud at any point of time that took away the presence of God from our life and God will reveal the areas in our life where we have been proud and that is where guarding the heart is so important. When we talk about guarding our heart, we must be a people who judge ourselves. If we learn to judge ourselves, God will not have to judge us. If we judge ourselves based on our day-to-day activities, we will see so much grace and favor and hand of God over our lives. Pastor Priji: What is the sign of heart that has become hardened overtime? Pastor Subi: A heart that is sensitive to God will never look at the shortcomings or the flaws of another person. A man who is walking with God will not be concerned with the affairs of other people. When we see someone else’s problem, we always have a point of criticism, till that problem comes and hits us. It is the man who has gone through or has been exposed to his shortcomings, is the man who can be more aware of the struggles of another person and so we must learn to appreciate everybody and the degree of revelation that they have of God. When we start going away from God, the first thing we do is that we start looking for the shortcomings in others to justify our own shortcomings. Apostle Paul says in I Corinthians 15:9, I am the least of the apostles, I am not fit to be called an apostle, and a couple of years later, he wrote to Ephesians saying amongst all the saints I am the least. Towards the very end of his life in Timothy 1:15, he says, this is a trustworthy saying, worthy of full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst. Apostle Paul progressed comparing himself from Apostles to all Christians and to all the sinners. We see a heart that is guarded that was walking closer and closer to God that keeps self-judging and self-evaluating, because his standards are no longer people but his standard is Christ Jesus Himself. Pastor Priji: What spiritual disciplines can we inculcate into our lives so that we continue to keep our hearts guarded? Pastor Subi: I have put conscious effort throughout this entire season of COVID to get more equipped in studying the word of God and my position is going be that wherever you are today in your walk with Christ, there is always room to grow and therefore you must pick up your Bible and intentionally study and mediate. Read not with an intention to have more knowledge but with an intention to know the heart of God. We must understand why we believe and in what we believe. I would strongly encourage to wake up early in the morning to seek the face of God. Spent time listening to the sermons of the man of God and women of God, and let them shape you. You can follow Pastor Subi on Instagram and subscribe his video channel on YouTube.