Glorious Way Church

Keeping Your Heart | Pastor John Greiner

• Pastor John Greiner

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This message centers on Proverbs 4:23, emphasizing the importance of guarding the heart as the source of spiritual life, faith, and direction. The teaching highlights three key areas to protect—walking in love, holding firmly to the faith, and staying sensitive to the Holy Spirit. Listeners are encouraged to take responsibility for their spiritual condition and live Spirit-led, anchored in God’s Word, and victorious despite life’s challenges.

SPEAKER_00:

Let's get into the word, shall we, tonight? And uh let's, as we always do in our custom, let's just lift our Bibles up and wave them around, make Jesus glad and the devil mad. And let's say this together. Say, Heavenly Father, I'm so glad for Wednesday night. I'm hungry for the Word of God. And Father, you said, those who hunger and thirst shall be filled. And so, Lord, I thank you that I'm filled with revelation tonight that will anchor my faith against all the things that are going on in the world, all the circumstances that attack me. Lord, I'm victorious because of the word and the spirit. In Jesus' name. Amen. Praise God. All right. Let's turn in our Bibles to Proverbs chapter 4. And let's look at verse 23. Very familiar verse. Solomon is uh issuing forth his wisdom, and he says, Keep thy heart with all diligence. My margin says, above all keeping. Keep your heart above all diligence, or with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life. The Amplified says, out of it flows the springs of life. One uh one uh the Moffat says, guard above all things, guard your inner self, for so you live and prosper. Guard your inner self, for so you live and prosper. Another version says, with all watchfulness, keep thy heart, because life issueth out from it. So the message tonight is entitled, Keeping Your Heart, or we could say guarding your heart. And so the scripture implies that this is primary, it's the highest priority. And really, I mean, that's why we meet, read our Bible. Uh, you know, the the Word of God is food for our heart or our spirit. The heart is the spirit of man. You know, the heart of, you know, the heart of a tree is the is the core, you know. I remember one time I got to uh have uh several loads. There was a bunch of redwood trees. I forgot what state they came from, but they had gotten into a redwood forest and and they had produced just tons of two by four red heart lumber. And heart means that it was out of the center of a redwood tree, and that is totally insect uh resistant. There's no insect can eat it, it'll last forever. It just it's like it's like permanently, nature permanently uh makes it impervious to termites. And uh I remember I got to build three or four houses, and and what where did I use those tuba fours? I uh on the on the on the base plate on the very bottom where the where the wall sits on top of the slab. There's that's where the two tuba fours, you know, stacked on top of one another. The base plate was solid, clear heart, they called it clear heart redwood. It was so beautiful that I hated to hide it in a wall. I mean, you could have you could have built furniture with it. You could have, I mean, any anything could have been done out of that out of that wood. It was so beautiful. It didn't have a knot in it, didn't have a blemish in it. It was perfectly straight. And so our heart is the center of our being. See, I'm not talking about the blood pump. And uh, you know, I I know I say this a lot, but a lot of folks fall short in life because of uh the basics prayer and not praying, not having a proper prayer life, Bible reading, not having a proper word life. Uh and then, of course, if you put those two together, it means you're gonna fall short on obeying because some of the times God is not able to get your attention through those two ways, you know, Bible reading and prayer. That's how he communicates to us what he wants us to do. And so we walk in a measure of disobedience. And I'm not saying you do it on purpose, but you do it, you know, you do it because you've ignored the most important thing. And that's why I get back to this guarding your heart or keeping your heart. I mean, it's something that's so valuable, and that out of it issues forth, it flows the springs of life. Just I love that that term there in the amplified. Um so uh the Moffat says, though, so that that's how you live and prosper. Is the heart is proceeding out of the heart. And so uh all our fellowship with God, all our healing, our prosperity, our guidance occurs in our spirit. You know, healing doesn't begin in your body. Healing begins in your heart. It's a thing of the healing is a thing of the heart. I I don't emphasize that enough. Many times we're just searching, searching, searching, searching for our body. Let it heal. Look, it starts in your heart, starts right here in your spirit. If it doesn't start there, you're not going to get it. Uh it's where it starts, right here in the heart. So uh healing, prosperity, guidance occurs in our spirit. And so the spirit then must be strong. We must be spirit dominant. Everybody say that out loud. Spirit dominant. Yeah. And that's two ways. Holy Spirit dominant, but also your spirit. Your spirit should be dominant. Your spirit should be in charge of your body and your mind. Uh, you know, I was meditating on these verses, on this verse and what it means, and and you know, and then sometimes we'll observe other people in our lives and they'll we'll say, Man, you sure clean up good. We'll say that, you know, when I'm joking with my wife saying, honey, you look beautiful tonight. I'll I'll say something like that, you know, that's not too cool. But anyway. Um, or that person really keeps a clean house, you know, or oh boy, that that that couple there, they really keep a nice yard. Uh and so forth and so on. We we just, you know, we'll describe people and what they look like and how they uh uh handle their affairs. And you know, there's a difference between something that's really kept well and something that isn't. There's a gap in between something that's in order and something that's in disorder. And uh that that gap represents what's available that you could have, but you don't have because you haven't what? You haven't kept it up, you haven't guarded it. You know, I had a neighbor one time that didn't keep his yard worth a flip. You know, Gladys was real particular about the yard. She always mowed the front yard and I mowed the backyard where nobody saw it. But for the general public drive up in front of our house, she took responsibility for our yard, and she made sure the grass was cut. She made sure the and we had a we had a power edger. Now we didn't, she didn't mess with a grass stringer, a grass string thing like that. No way. She had a blade, she had an edger, had an engine, you know, just like a lawnmower, had to start that thing for, usually had to start it and get it started for. And then she would take that thing and she would edge the sidewalk and she would edge the curb. I mean, it took her longer to edge than it did to mow. And then she would mow and she would clip every little thing, and then she would take care of the shrubs, and when she finished, you know, well, it was manicured. Now it's my turn. I got to go to the backyard. She didn't care what the backyard looked like. And it was a lot bigger than the front yard, so she let me do the backyard. But anyway, uh, you know, so you've got, you know, you've got this gap between something that's manicured, something that's kept, something that's that's neat, something that's orderly, and something that's disordered, something that's that's out of kilter. You see what I'm saying? That gap. And see, the gap is just because of the lack of attention or the lack of uh keeping and guarding that. And so uh everything we lack in life, if we're lacking anything, if we're lacking our in finances, if we're lacking in health, if we're lacking in relationships, really you can trace that back to your spirit. What's going on here? What's going on in your heart? Are you watching? Are you guarding, keeping your heart? See, and once you own that, once you own that, that you're responsible for keeping your heart, then it closes the door on victimhood. See, victimhood is a dead end. You know, there's a whole bunch of people in this country that feels so entitled and they're just victims and they're jealous of everybody else's success, seemingly, and they're always, you know, griping that they don't they get the short end of the stick. And uh, and I know that there are uh injustices in this world, but you know the word of God will put you over every time. You know, you can get free from the from the bondage of this world system, and you can get over into the word of God and the Holy Ghost, and He can bless you in every area, including your finances. And so when we own that we are responsible for keeping our own heart, then it closes the door on victimhood and blaming others and helps us get down to the subject. Okay, what's going on here? Is there something I'm missing right here? It's not too hard to find. We're gonna talk about some of those things. Some specific areas that we need to watch over. You know, I was thinking about guarding and keeping. If you're in the military, it doesn't matter where you are, you've got a guard detail. You might be in the peaceful country, you mean no enemies or anything. But you know, you've got soldiers in that there in a camp. There's gonna be somebody on guard duty. I don't care where they're gonna be walking their watch, they're gonna have a rifle on their shoulder, and they're gonna be in charge uh to keep anything from happening. You know, that that college, Brown University up there in New Hampshire. I mean, nobody's watching. They don't even have cameras. And the students in that in that college, they they they pay over$100,000 tuition a year. It's it's an esteemed uh school, Ivy League school, you know, you know, in some some dirt bag, some terrorist got in there and killed a young Republican girl. And they don't want to admit it. They don't want to admit that it was a targeted uh shooting. But shot her dead. And uh it's it's taken forever to get any information, and the information so far is they don't have any cameras, they don't have any watching that nobody, it's a gun-free zone. I mean, you want to you want you want to be attacked to go to a gun-free zone because the guys with the guns will be there to attack you. No, we need to be we need to have guards. All our schools ought to have armed guards. Sorry. I'm going out on a limb now. All right, so three specific areas. We if we're gonna do that in the natural, let's do it in the supernatural. Let's watch, let's keep our heart above all keeping, above all, but you know, with all diligence. So, number one, three specific areas, you know, I want to get to you tonight. And uh, aren't you glad to be supernaturalized into the kingdom of God? Praise God. All right. So, number one, keep or guard your love walk. Guard your love walk. You know, love is really the only commandment. Love one another. As I have loved you. That's the great commandment. That's the only thing commandment, Jesus. Well, what about the Ten Commandments? Well, all the Ten Commandments are wrapped up in love. Because, I mean, really, you if you love somebody, you won't cheat on them, you won't lie to them, you won't kill them, you won't, all those, all those commandments are wrapped up in love. So love is the only thing we need to obey. God is love and he has power. And so since he is a love God, and love is the definition of God, then God, you know, love is a high requirement, and it's something that we need to examine in our lives when things are not. We need to guard that love. We need to guard it. And in 1 Timothy 6 14, go back there to what Paul told Timothy. And Timothy was not a novice. And he said in verse 14 that you keep this commandment without spot. Notice he didn't say commandments. That you keep this commandment without spot, unrebukable until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, what commandment is that? Well, the great commandment, the command of love. Love one another as I have loved you. And he commanded him. He said, you know, because, you know, listen, uh, Timothy was tempted in his love walk because people demeaned him for his youth. They persecuted him because he was friends with, and um his mentor and father in the faith was uh Paul, who was in prison by this time. And so he suffered persecution for that and criticism for that. And so he's and he he he he doesn't specifically accuse him of not walking by love, but he just he just said, I charge you in the verse in verse 13, I charge you in the sight of God. And what was the charge? To keep this commandment without spot, unrebukable, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. You know, see, 1 Corinthians 13, 13 says that there's uh there remaineth faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love. The greatest of these is love. Love is the principal thing. So I'm talking about keeping your heart. So number one on the list is keeping uh watch over your love walk. That'd be the first place I'd look when there's gaps or when there's dysfunction in my life, if there's lack, financial lack, if there's trouble in the marriage. You know, I I've done my share of sitting down with married couples in church that were fighting like cats and dogs and arguing in front of their children and all of that kind of thing. And, you know, you pretty much boil it all down to each person is not walking in love. I mean, it would it would only take one of the two to start walking in love, and all that would dissolve. But when you've got both parties going at each other, then neither one of them are walking in love. If even if even if just one would just shut up, let the other one go on and on and on, and you just keep keep silent. That's hard. I can't do that. Well, you know, you could do it, you don't choose to do it. See, so that's love. Love takes no account of a suffered wrong. What about that? Well, you ought to read 1 Corinthians chapter 13 in the amplified. I'm pretty sure if you do, you could look at 1 Corinthians chapter 13 in the amplified Bible and look at it verse by verse, and you would find some gaps. You know, one version says, Love bears no ill to his neighbor. I'm sure none of you have ever borne ill to your neighbor, but I've been guilty of that. I mean, you know, sometimes people are just a little bit hard to get along with. And when they're right next to you, you know, and so forth and so on. So what you know, what about it? Well, you know, you just you need to walk in love. That's what that love is the commandment that we have. And so don't give in to conflict, don't give in to arguing and all of that, and anger and all of that. Be slow to, you know, quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath. And uh, you know, I have to watch myself because I can be the opposite of that verse. You know, I can be, you know, quick to talk. You know, preachers are quick to talk. They've got a lot to say all the time. And sometimes it's better just to shut up and listen. And uh, and then it's then you then you know you might not say the wrong thing. You know, if somebody's really being ugly, well, it's not wrong to cry against the evil that's that that person is doing. It's not, I'm not saying you just have to lay down on the sidewalk and let them run up run you over with their car. But I am saying let's let's be, let's, let's walk in love. And love prays. You do do a lot of praying before you do any saying. Amen. So uh, so when we have these gaps, when we have these uh places of dysfunction in our lives, it's good to check up number one on the love walk. Number two, place to guard. Uh again in 1 Timothy chapter 6. Again, Timothy, you know, he had he needed to write, he wrote him two letters. Because he was, you know, he had a long period of time where he needed help from his spiritual father. And his father didn't judge him, his father didn't criticize him, his father ministered to him and kept pouring into him truth. And so he he warned him there in verse 14 to keep this commandment. You know, one not commandments, commandment. What's that commandment? The love walk, love. And then in in verse 20, O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings and oppositions of science, falsely so-called, while some professing have erred concerning the faith. Grace be with thee. Amen. Notice what he said. The faith. Everybody say the faith. See now, you know, I'm not talking about you know, faith for healing, faith for uh a new car, faith for uh a spa, all of that. I'm talking about the faith. The faith is that Jesus is Lord, Jesus is the Son of God, the Word of God is true. The faith. Well, you know, that's the faith. Muslims don't have the faith. Hindus don't have the faith. The only people that have the faith are Christians. We have the faith. So he said, you know, he said, keep that which is committed, the principles of the faith. So you've got to keep preaching this over and over. You've got to preach that Jesus is Lord. You've got to preach that there's every Every knee shall bow at the name of Jesus. You've got to preach over and over that Jesus loves you. You've got to preach it over and over and over. That's the faith. And he said, I want you to guard the faith. And why? Because the faith affects your faith, your individual faith for other things. I mean, everything that we get, we get by faith. We don't walk by sight, we walk by faith, not by sight. We don't walk by what seems like or feels like or looks like. We walk by faith. But when we let the basics of the faith get watered down. Well, first of all, the door to the supernatural, and that's where we have to operate all the time. If you don't ever operate in the supernatural, you're never going to get what this book promises you. But if you operate in the supernatural, then you're going to walk by faith. And the door to the supernatural swings on two hinges, believing and speaking. So what are you believing and what are you speaking? See, I mean either one of those, if it's off, if you're not believing right, then that hinge is broke and it's not swinging. And then you're not going to speak right, and so now neither door is working right. So you're in trouble. So you have to guard what you hear. You have to guard what you say. You have to be vigilant to reject the idea of the spirit of this age. It's preached every time you turn on the television. I mean, the news media preaches it on a constant stream. You know, wokeism. You know, it can eat away all this all this communism. I mean, you know, they've got a communist mayor. I wonder how many Christians voted for that freak. I mean, he is not a legal. I I hope if there's any de uh uh anybody sent back home, I hope he's one of them because he doesn't qualify. Mayor of the mayor-elect. He's he's running for mayor. I guess he he's gonna be mayor, right? He he got elected, so. Um or is he the dem he's the Democrat Republican, I mean Democrat uh candidate. I get I get confused. Is he he is the mayor elect? Yeah, he's a communist. And he he wasn't born here. He's a rich boy, never lived here. He doesn't know anything about our our country, doesn't know anything about what we think and how we act. And he's talking about free buses. Can you imagine what a free bus in New York is gonna look like? Because you've got every homeless person that's gonna get on the free bus and never get off of it. So who's who's gonna ride the bus? Nobody. Nobody's gonna ride the bus. How long will it drive? I mean, how long will it run with a with it loaded with people that are trying to get out of the cold? And and they already do that on the subway. Now they're gonna do it on the buses, you know. Pastor, you don't have any. No, I'm not talking about why don't they fix the other problem? Why don't they get people to work? You know, communism never gets anybody to work. So, uh, why, Pastor? I don't believe that way. Well, you know, I've had people in this church. I had a lady one time that was in this church 20 years. And I I I mean, I she was very a very able minister of the new covenant. Get people saved on a regular basis, professional lady. And she had children that she sent to college, and her daughter came back from the University of Houston, right here in Houston, with this woke garbage, and she convinced her mother to vote for Biden. How can you sit in this church and vote for a low-life criminal like Biden? Now, I just don't, it's beyond belief. When the greatest friend the church has ever had is Trump, and you you you added this up and you decided I'm gonna vote for Biden. See, so she gave in to the arguments that I'm talking about right here that her daughter gave her, who also grew up in this church, went to youth group. She knew better, but she got seduced. I said, That out there is a seducing spirit, and don't think that you're, you know, can't be seduced. I mean, the biggest thing is you've got a guard. It didn't start overnight. So how do we know all that? Well, she started coming up to the altar for deliverance. I said, What's wrong with you? I'm hearing noises. There's manifestations in my house. Well, that happened 20 years ago when she first started coming to this church. I cast the devil out of her. She had a devil of fear on her. I cast it out of her in the seventh-day church. I mean, she was a, and she'd been free all these years until she started listening to her daughter who had been seduced by seducing spirits and doctrines of demons, turning her back on the faith. Are y'all getting this now? I get angry. I mean, I, you know, I'm zealous and jealous over my people. Well, I, how in the world? Well, you know, she finally, I I had some people ministering to her. I hadn't, I couldn't minister to her that detail, but I had leaders in this church talk to her and they and she admitted that she'd voted for Brighton. I said, Well, she needs to leave. She can't be in among this, she can't be in here. That's that's an affront to everybody that sits in this church. I mean, and many of you have had to take tough stands. You're still taking tough stands in your family. I mean, it's I understand that. I totally get it. But you know what? We're gonna stand up for the Bible, we're gonna stand up for the faith, no matter who it separates us from or identifies us with. We can always pray our family into the right relationship, but we can't do it if we agree with them. Once you go down that road, it's over. Are y'all getting this now? The faith of Jesus Christ, the gospel. See, keep it before your eyes, keep it on your lips. Don't drink the Kool-Aid out there. Gard. Everybody say, Gard. Hallelujah. And then uh the last one is also there in uh 2 Timothy. I was in 1 Timothy. Let's go to 2 Timothy chapter 2. Verse 14. Paul writing to his son, he said, That good thing which was committed unto thee, keep by the Holy Ghost, which dwelleth in us. Keep by the Holy Ghost, which dwelleth in us. And uh that good thing in verse 6. Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee by the putting on of my hands. See? 2 Timothy 2, 6. Stir up the gift of God. Then he then you stir it up and then you keep it. Well, what is that gift of God? Well, it's the anointing. It's the in his case, it was the anointing within because he'd waned a little bit, but it's also, as I preached on Sunday, this past Sunday, the anointing upon us for ministry. I mean, we need to keep that anointing. We need to keep that gracious gift. I uh I I was came across a reel of Catherine Kuhlman, and she was in New York City for a meeting, uh, and it was old black and white film. It's a massive crowd. We think about where this country has gone since we had preachers like her going across this country manifesting the power of God the way she did. I mean, she was a Holy Ghost woman. And uh so they had ushered her uh through the kitchen. They didn't have, you know, a way to get her in the meeting. There was this vast, I don't know where that where it was that she was meeting, but it it looked like it might have been, I don't know, I don't know if Madison Square Garden had already been built. I don't think it was. I don't know where where she was at, but anyway, they had to go have to go through the kitchen to get to the arena. They didn't want to bring her through the arena and get her up on the platform. They didn't have an easy way to do that, so they brought her through the kitchen and she was walking through the kitchen. I mean, these these people working in the kitchen don't know she's there. They're there, you know, working. And she walked by them and they all fell out on the floor laying there. It looked like it looked like the bowling fins just laying all over the floor in the kitchen. The power of God. She didn't touch them, she didn't talk to them, she was just walking by, you know. Oh, I'm talking about the anointing. I'm talking about the presence of God. You know, we can walk in in that. We can walk in the presence of God. That's something that will do one of two things. It'll either draw people to you or it'll make people mad at you. I mean, sometimes, you know, the waitress is is really attracted to you and wants to bless you. I had meals, I had three meals in a row bought for me last week. It was the weirdest thing. It's never happened like that before. Never. I have never had that happen. I don't ever look for that. In fact, I'm always looking for somebody, maybe I can buy their meal, you know. But three meals in a row. One, two, three. And I thought, golly, it's a milestone. Well, I know how to receive uh two of them. I didn't even know who did it. And the first one was just right at the countertop. She'd been visited this church one time before, and she knew I was a pastor, and so she's let me, and she was the she's buying the place. She was buying a little sandwich shop. I was in there, had a sandwich, and she's let me let me cover this for you. I just want to bless you today. Well, thank you. I didn't argue. So the third one is keep the presence of God. See the anointing, stir up the anointing. Stay hot, stay hot. Stay continually and habitually filled with the Holy Ghost. Flies can't lie out on a hot stove. You know, practice his presence. You know, the God inside minded. Live by the witness of the Spirit. Quit looking for all of everybody's opinion, quit looking for all the natural wisdom and all the natural, you know, walk by the witness of the spirit. Train yourself to trust the witness of the spirit, then act on the witness. You know, what would happen? I I was watching a video of a guy who ran a red light and it was, he died. I mean, he ran a red light and had a collision, and he was, he was a, he was running from the cops, running from the cops, driving way too fast. It wasn't a highway, it's a it's a side street. I mean, you're 35, 40 mile an hour speed limit. At least he's going 100. And he ran a red light and hit somebody, and he's the one that died. I don't know how the other person he hit, how they survived. It was a massive uh collision. But what what would happen if you ran a red light? So if a Holy Ghost has got a red light, he's saying don't. He's saying hold. He's saying no. He's saying uh-uh. You know, you've got to learn how to how to know when the red light is on. You gotta know when the stop sign is there. You've got to know when, you know, when to hesitate just a little bit now. Let's wait a minute. Hold on, hold on. I mean, it's it's something that can be learned. And when you learn, when you do learn it, you'll walk in a great more level of blessing. I just think about a lot of disasters and catastrophes that people suffer are all really avoidable if we learn to obey the witness of the Spirit. Because the same Spirit that gives you the green light can give you a red light. He can give you a yellow light. And so keep the gift that was given, guarded as a precious prize. Keep your heart above all keeping. Come on, let's lift our hands tonight. Praise God. Hallelujah. Thank you, Lord. Well, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

unknown:

Amen.