Darkness To Light
Ep 20 - Gateways
(soft music) - Hi there, welcome to this week's message from Darkness to Light. We hope that you enjoy the message and will join us each week for an inspiring devotional. And now here's Troy Holden with this week's message. (soft music) - I'm about to read to you a very crucial passage of scripture that's in the Bible. And as I read these verses, I want you to take special note of what the Bible says about your heart, your mouth, your eyes and feet. Proverbs, chapter four, verse 23 to 27 says, "Keep your heart with all diligence, "for out of it, spring the issues of life. "Put away from you a deceitful mouth "and put perverse lips far from you. "Let your eyes look straight ahead "and your eyelids look right before you. "Ponder the path of your feet "and let all your ways be established. "Do not turn to the right or the left. "Remove your foot from evil." It's a key thing to note that this passage of scripture begins and starts by talking about the heart. Think about your physical heart. If you have a bad heart, then the rest of your body's in jeopardy. If the heart quits working, then everything else quits working. You can't have a dead heart and a healthy ear. Same is true with our spiritual heart. If the heart is good, then what flows out is good. However, if the heart is bad, what flows out of our heart will be bad? Guarding your heart can be challenging because the heart is attacked from so many different angles. This world and its pleasures are after your heart. Satan is after your heart and our own sinful flesh wants to attack and fill our hearts with sin. And when we're having a hard day or going through tough times, it can be easy for our hearts to drift away. The next area we need to be careful of is our mouths. We are to put away our perverse speech. Our mouth actually reveals what's going on in our hearts. There's evil in our hearts. If there's sin, our mouths will reflect that. The words and actions that flow from our mouths reveal where our heart is actually at. We may look spiritual from the outside, however, our words will reveal our spirituality. And now to the eyes. We're to keep our spiritual eyes directly forward. Think about your physical eyes. If you're driving and you don't keep your eyes directly forward, you're going to get in some real trouble. Some of the worst crashes are because our eyes are focused on something else, such as a phone or somebody in the back seat and our spiritual eyes can do the same thing. When we turn our eyes away from the Lord, we're prone to stumble. And the final area mentioned in this passage of scripture is all to do with your feet. When we focus on keeping our feet on the path, we move in the right direction. If you're going for a walk on a trail and you decide to get off the trail, you're much more likely to get lost. However, if you focus on keeping your feet on the trail, your path is laid out. Yet again, the same is true spiritually. If you follow the moral path God's laid for you, you will not stumble. However, as you seek your own path, it becomes so much easier to stumble. I encourage you to pray that your heart would not be drawn to sin. Pray that your mouth would not be filled with perverse words. Pray for your eyes to remain focused on God and for your feet to be led by the lamp that is the word of God. This has been your weekly message from darkness to light. Thanks again for joining us today. ♪♪♪ [BLANK_AUDIO]