Guarding My Heart

The symbol we associate most with February is the heart. When we see a heart we think of love, valentines, or even a blood-pumping organ. This month, though, I have lost my heart to Pinterest. This is shameful to admit, but true. I love to relax on the couch at night with a cup of Earl Grey tea pinning beautiful pictures of cottage gardens, spa bathrooms, and shabby chic master bedrooms. It’s like looking through hundreds of dreamy magazines all at once. I can get lost in this world – for hours. I tell myself that it’s harmless, merely relaxing. I want to believe that, but I know that the real issue is my heart.

You see, Pinterest stirs up a desire in me for stuff: better and more beautiful stuff. It makes me dissatisfied with what I have. I do this comparison thing in my mind. It makes me long for the perfection that I find in the pictures. It ties my heart to these things, hoping that if I could just achieve the beauty of the picture, my life would be safe, peaceful, comfortable. Safety, peace, comfort … My heart is longing for those things, really.

Tim Keller, in his book Counterfeit Gods, calls our hearts idol factories. An idol is anything that absorbs my heart and imagination more than God. It’s anything I seek to give me something that only God can give me. We take a good thing (a beautiful home, a longed for vacation, accomplished children, even our husbands) and tie our hope to it. For me, this was my nightly Pinterest indulgence. For you it may be Facebook, perfect children, a beautiful body; all good things that we can so easily use to fill up the holes in our hearts.

The word heart in the Bible has a much deeper meaning than how we usually use the word. The Hebrew word for heart is lebab. Lebab refers to the inner person, the will, our feelings, even the intellect. It encompasses what we think about, dream about, our desires, and our motivations. God has a lot to say about our hearts!

Deuteronomy 6:5:  Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

Proverbs 4:23:  Guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.

Ezekiel 11:19:  I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.

God is zealous for my heart. He has promised to give me a soft heart that longs to know Him. So, for the next 40 days, I’m giving up Pinterest. I’m not doing it as some “trying to be good thing.” I’m doing it because I believe that God will fill that hole in my heart with something better, something more beautiful.

How about you? Would you like to join me in this?

Jackie Dunne