Love, Crushes, and “Guarding our Hearts”

I’ve “fallen for” many (wrong) guys in my short life. By God’s grace, I didn’t get into a relationship with every guy I ever fell for. Unfortunately, most of the time I didn’t receive that rejection for what it was – God protecting me from people I didn’t need to be with and relationships that would have caused more harm than good. I threw pity parties about not being wanted by person X or Y who I was convinced I had to be with. I saw many of these “crushes” as measures of my value, and when they didn’t like me back I felt undesirable, boring, plain…the list goes on.

Likewise, I’ve had a few bad friendships along the way that ended in betrayal and rejection.

For better and for worse, many well-meaning women who’ve mentored me along the way have encouraged me to guard my heart, which many times I interpreted: Don’t love too readily, too much, or too soon.

It’s only when I read an article that encouraged readers to “love, but guard your heart,” that I realized this has been a prevailing message, and a misconception that we have been feeding each other. This is a misinterpretation of the Bible at best, and the very opposite of the gospel at worst.

When I look at Jesus, and what He has done and continues to do for us, I cannot interpret “guard your heart” as any of these common misinterpretations…

1.  Don’t love too much.

Our God tells us that there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friend (John 15: 13), that we should be devoted to one another in love (Romans 12:10), and that we should love our neighbor (read: everyone) as ourselves (Mark 12: 31). God did not withhold anything from us, not even His own son (Romans 8: 32).

Verses aside, the whole story of the Bible repeatedly presents the image of our God loving us with what I can only describe as reckless abandon. Jesus did not put a limit to how much He would love us. As followers and imitators of Jesus, why would we cap our love for those around us?

2.  Don’t love just anyone; people have to earn your love.

God does not love us because we deserve it. If we take a long honest look at our hearts, and more importantly the Word, we find that God owes us nothing. Yet He loves us. A LOT. Jesus loved us while we were sinners (Romans 5:8), and God continued to love and lead the Israelites, David, and the early Christians despite some things that would be deal-breakers for most of us; unfaithfulness, adultery, mistrust, betrayal/public rejection…

Again, if we are seeking to be “doers of the Word, and not hearers only” then our desire should be to love people well even when they don’t deserve our love, and even if they are sinful (*like us*). Albeit unnatural, our mandate to be holy as He is holy includes unconditional love for those around us. So let’s press on toward this end, in the hope that “they may know us by our love” whether it’s deserved or undeserved.

3.  Keep a barrier up and only trust a handful

Nobody’s ever told me to build a wall around my heart yet much of the counsel we receive as young women today amounts to that. What’s worse is that our own experiences and inclinations support this notion of being defensive in many if not all our relationships. Building off the last two points, I don’t think we can love effectively and wholeheartedly if we will not engage those around us on a heart level. If you have had a committed relationship with anyone (parent, friend, significant other…) you know that loving people gets messy. Sometimes it just hurts.

Although every relationship must have some level of trust, we must also remember that it is better to put our trust in God than in man (Psalm 118: 8). This doesn’t mean we trust no-one. It means although we have a healthy trust for our loved ones, God is the only one we fully depend on in all things. So whereas the world will tell us to trust no-one or a few people and depend on ourselves, the gospel tells us to fully trust in God because He is trustworthy by nature. Therefore we can love those around us to the fullest, and not worry about defensiveness because God’s got our backs.

So what does it mean when the Word tells us to “guard our hearts”?

Well, context might help a little:

“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it” ~ Prov 4:23

I propose that this verse has nothing to do with whether we love people or how we love them, and everything to do with what we take in and what we allow to influence us. The reason I experienced emotional dips after being “rejected” isn’t that I loved those people too much; it’s that I put my worth in how they felt about me. I let their behavior towards me influence how I felt about myself. I valued their thoughts of me so much that I let them override everything God says I am in His Word. In other words, my problem was idolatry.

When we communicate that people love too much, we create a society of people who love defensively long after the source of their pain is gone; people who refuse to love vulnerably and engage each other in meaningful relationships. L

I hope we’ll take a few notes from Jesus and change how we handle love, crushes, and “guarding our hearts”

With Love,

Wadzie

The Shunammite Woman

The Shunammite woman strikes me because of her hospitality, her response in a time of trouble, her faith, and her reverence of both the Lord, and the "man of God", Elisha. No commentary I make could do her character justice, so I'll let her story speak for itself...

2 Kings 4: 8-37

8 One day Elisha went to Shunem. And a well-to-do woman was there, who urged him to stay for a meal. So whenever he came by, he stopped there to eat. 9 She said to her husband, “I know that this man who often comes our way is a holy man of God. 10 Let’s make a small room on the roof and put in it a bed and a table, a chair and a lamp for him. Then he can stay there whenever he comes to us.”

11 One day when Elisha came, he went up to his room and lay down there. 12 He said to his servant Gehazi, “Call the Shunammite.” So he called her, and she stood before him. 13 Elisha said to him, “Tell her, ‘You have gone to all this trouble for us. Now what can be done for you? Can we speak on your behalf to the king or the commander of the army?’”

She replied, “I have a home among my own people.”

14 “What can be done for her?” Elisha asked.

Gehazi said, “She has no son, and her husband is old.”

15 Then Elisha said, “Call her.” So he called her, and she stood in the doorway.16 “About this time next year,” Elisha said, “you will hold a son in your arms.”

“No, my lord!” she objected. “Please, man of God, don’t mislead your servant!”

17 But the woman became pregnant, and the next year about that same time she gave birth to a son, just as Elisha had told her.

18 The child grew, and one day he went out to his father, who was with the reapers. 19 He said to his father, “My head! My head!” His father told a servant, “Carry him to his mother.” 20 After the servant had lifted him up and carried him to his mother, the boy sat on her lap until noon, and then he died. 21 She went up and laid him on the bed of the man of God, then shut the door and went out.

22 She called her husband and said, “Please send me one of the servants and a donkey so I can go to the man of God quickly and return.”

23 “Why go to him today?” he asked. “It’s not the New Moon or the Sabbath.”

“That’s all right,” she said.

24 She saddled the donkey and said to her servant, “Lead on; don’t slow down for me unless I tell you.” 25 So she set out and came to the man of God at Mount Carmel. 

When he saw her in the distance, the man of God said to his servant Gehazi, “Look! There’s the Shunammite! 26 Run to meet her and ask her, ‘Are you all right? Is your husband all right? Is your child all right?’”

“Everything is all right,” she said.

27 When she reached the man of God at the mountain, she took hold of his feet. Gehazi came over to push her away, but the man of God said, “Leave her alone! She is in bitter distress, but the Lord has hidden it from me and has not told me why.”

28 “Did I ask you for a son, my lord?” she said. “Didn’t I tell you, ‘Don’t raise my hopes’?”

29 Elisha said to Gehazi, “Tuck your cloak into your belt, take my staff in your hand and run. Don’t greet anyone you meet, and if anyone greets you, do not answer. Lay my staff on the boy’s face.”

30 But the child’s mother said, “As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave you.” So he got up and followed her.

31 Gehazi went on ahead and laid the staff on the boy’s face, but there was no sound or response. So Gehazi went back to meet Elisha and told him, “The boy has not awakened.”

32 When Elisha reached the house, there was the boy lying dead on his couch.33 He went in, shut the door on the two of them and prayed to the Lord. 34 Then he got on the bed and lay on the boy, mouth to mouth, eyes to eyes, hands to hands. As he stretched himself out on him, the boy’s body grew warm. 35 Elisha turned away and walked back and forth in the room and then got on the bed and stretched out on him once more. The boy sneezed seven times and opened his eyes.36 Elisha summoned Gehazi and said, “Call the Shunammite.” And he did. When she came, he said, “Take your son.”

37 She came in, fell at his feet and bowed to the ground. Then she took her son and went out.