The Wellspring Of Life

The Wellspring of Life

Q: What determines the course of your life?

• a. your choices
• b. your knowledge
• c. your heart

Imagine this. You live in a village in a poor country where you must get water from a stream for cooking and drinking. The water flows down to your village, but by the time it gets there, it’s muddy and polluted. You try to strain the water or boil it to make it usable, but it’s not much use. The water is too contaminated.

Finally one day you decide to walk upstream to find out why the water is so dirty. You journey until you reach a natural well that is the source of the water. You find that the well is full of trash because people are throwing their garbage into the water.

It’s a lot of work, but you clean out the well. Then you have to decide how to keep it from becoming impure again. Will you build a fence around it? Station a guard nearby? You know if you don’t protect the well, trash will be thrown into the stream and pollute the water you and your village depend on.

The Bible says, “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life” (Proverbs 4:23, NIV). What you feed your heart determines what your life is like. If you feed it bad words, disrespectful talk, or bad pictures, those will take over your mind and your actions. Your life will become polluted. The only way to prevent that from happening is to carefully guard what you see and what you hear.

What should you fill your heart with? Philippians 4:8 says, “And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.”

For You

What are you filling your heart with? If you fill it with good things, those things will help direct you down the right path, and your life will be pollution free.

Answer: c

Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.   Proverbs 4:23

(The Whole Story: Proverbs 4)