Puritan Heart Surgery

Saints, I've been reading a book entitled [i]"Keeping the Heart"[/i] by the Puritan John Flavel, a powerful discourse based on Proverbs 4:23 - [i]"Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life".[/i] I thought I would share some hand-picked gems for this thread. Friends, we need to get into the habit of asking ourselves daily, even moment by moment: "Is my heart right with God?" and then listening to what the Spirit of Holiness would tell us. For those who are inclined to diligently tend to the garden of the heart, I pray some of these excerpts strengthen, encourage, teach and warm us to engage this work even more thoroughly by the guidance of the indwelling earnest of the Holy Spirit.

These are from the introduction:

"The heart of man is his worst part before it is regenerated, and the best afterward; it is the seat of principles, and the fountain of actions. The eye of God is on it, and the eye of the Christian ought to be also principally fixed upon it."

"The greatest difficulty in conversion, is to win the heart to God; and the greatest difficulty after conversion, is to keep the heart with God. Here lies the very force and stress of religion; here is that which makes the way to life a narrow way, and the gate of heaven a strait gate."

"What the heart is to the body, that the soul is to the man; and what health is to the heart, that holiness is to the soul. The state of the whole body depends upon the soundness and vigor of the heart, and the everlasting state of the whole man upon the good or ill condition of the soul."

"The expression, [i]"Keep thy heart,"[/i] seems to put it upon us as our work, yet it does not imply a sufficiency in us to do it. We are as able to stop the sun in its course, or to make the rivers run backward, as by our own skill and power to rule and order our hearts. We may as well be our own saviors as our own keepers; and yet Solomon speaks properly enough when he says, [i]"Keep thy heart,"[/i] because the duty is ours, though the power is of God; what power we have depends upon the exciting and assisting strength of Christ.

"The heart is the source of all vital operations; it is the spring and original of both good and evil, as the spring in a watch that sets all the wheels in motion. The heart is the treasury, the hand and tongue but the shops; what is in these, comes from that; the hand and tongue always begin where the heart ends. The heart contrives, and the members execute: [i]“a good man, out of the good treasure of his, heart, bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man, out of the evil treasure of his heart, bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh.”[/i] So then, if the heart err in its work, these must miscarry in theirs; for heart errors are like the errors of the first concoction, which cannot be rectified afterward; or like the misplacing and inverting of the stamps and letters in the press, which must cause so many errata in all the copies that are printed."

"What [can be said] of waters, is [also] properly applicable to hearts; it is hard to keep them within any bounds, God has set limits to them, yet how frequently do they transgress not only the bounds of grace and religion, but even of reason and common honesty? This is that which affords the Christian matter of labor and watchfulness, to his dying day. It is not the cleaning of the hand that makes the Christian, for many a hypocrite can show as fair a hand as he; but the purifying, watching, and right ordering of the heart; this is the thing that provokes so many sad complaints, and costs so many deep groans and tears."

"To keep the heart necessarily supposes a previous work of regeneration, which has set the heart right, by giving it a new spiritual inclination, for as long as the heart is not set right by grace as to its habitual frame, no means can keep it right with God. Self is the poise of the unrenewed heart, which biasses and moves it in all its designs and actions; and as long as it is so, it is impossible that any external means should keep it with God."

"Grace has, in a great measure, rectified the soul, and given it an habitual heavenly temper; yet sin often actually discomposes it again; so that even a gracious heart is like a musical instrument, which though it be exactly tuned, a small matter brings it out of tune again; yea, hang it aside but a little, and it will need setting again before another lesson can be played upon it. If gracious hearts are in a desirable frame in one duty, yet how dull, dead, and disordered when they come to another! Therefore every duty needs a particular preparation of the heart. To keep the heart then, is carefully to preserve it from sin, which disorders it; and maintain that spiritual frame which fits it for a life of communion with God."

Thanks for posting, Brother.

The Puritans provide rich spiritual insight. I just finished up The Mortification of Sin by John Owen this morning, and the last chapter was worth the book if you get a chance to read it.

This post about keeping the heart reminds me about 2nd Corinthians 3:18:

But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

As we, by God's grace, keep our hearts fixed upon the Lord by means of His Scripture, Prayer, Preaching, The Lord's Supper, and Godly fellowship I believe the Scripture teaches that we will be growing in grace and knowledge of the Lord as we do these things.

Also, as we nourish ourselves in these means of grace, I remember Psalm 36:8...

They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house; and thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures.

Perhaps the old saying "You are what you eat" has more truth to it than we think! May we always nourish our hearts with the means God has appointed for our spiritual growth.

The Puritans provide rich spiritual insight. I just finished up The Mortification of Sin by John Owen this morning, and the last chapter was worth the book if you get a chance to read it.

I also second this. [i]The Mortification of Sin[/i] is a great work, and Puritan Paperbacks puts out a concise 130 page abridgement of this book. I think it is worth mentioning that before a believer begins digesting puritanic literature, it is very prudent that he or she have a healthy, biblical understanding of their positions in Christ. I only say this to ward off any inclinations of defeat or condemnation from the enemy that might arise as they measure themselves against the way the Puritans write and teach. A person getting behind the controls of an F-14 fighter jet should first know how to fly a Cessna - and they should know how eject and employ a parachute under distress. A good "Cessna" to practice in, for example, would be a thorough absorbtion of the principles laid down in books like Watchhman Nee's [i]"The Normal Christian Life"[/i] and an understanding of [i]not I but Christ[/i] in all we do - especially regarding the principles of mortification of flesh and heart sins.

(edit) I don't know why I attached that disclaimer for this post; I believe the Lord would have someone read it.

I agree. In the Puritan Paperback Christian Love by Hugh Binning, the author points out that the godly and humble man will compare himself with the best of men, while the proud man will compare himself with the worst.

You are right, reading the Puritans can be overwhelming (they are for me!) unless one is thoroughly grounded in the Gospel.

Milton Vincent produced a work specifically for re-orienting oneself in the truth of the Gospel daily. It is called A Gospel Primer for Christians. The book can be purchased for $10.95. Focus Publishing publishes the print version here: Gospel Primer

Another work concerning the Gospel is All of Grace by C.H. Spurgeon.

"Man, by the apostacy, is become a most disordered and rebellious creature, opposing his Maker, as the First Cause, by self-dependence; as the Chief Good, by self-love; as the highest Lord, by self-will; and as the Last End, by self-seeking. Thus he is quite disordered, and all his actions are irregular. But by regeneration the disordered soul is set right; this great change being, as the Scripture expresses it, the renovation of the soul after the image of God, in which self-dependence is removed by faith; self-love, by the love of God; self-will, by subjection and obedience to the will of God; and self-seeking by self-denial. The darkened understanding is illuminated, the refractory will sweetly subdued, the rebellious appetite gradually conquered. Thus the soul which sin had universally depraved, is by grace restored. This being presupposed, it will not be difficult to apprehend what it is to keep the heart, which is nothing but the constant care and diligence of such a renewed man to preserve his soul in that holy frame to which grace has raised it."

"Satan suggests that there is pleasure to be enjoyed (in sin), and with a smiling aspect and an enticing voice, he asks you: [i]'What? Are you so dull and phlegmatic as to not feel the powerful charms of this pleasure? Can you withold yourself from such delights?'[/i]

"Reader, you may be rescued. It is urged that the commission of sin affords us pleasure. Supposing this is true, will the accusing and condemning rebukes of conscience and the flames of hell be pleasant too? Is there pleasure in the scourges of conscience? If so, why did Peter weep so bitterly? Why did David cry out of broken bones? Pushing aside the pleasures of sin for a moment, have you not read what David said of the effects of it? [i]'Thine arrows stick fast in me, and thy hand presseth me sore; there is no soundness in my flesh because of thine anger, neither is there any rest in my bones because of sin...'[/i]

"If you yield to temptation, you must feel such inward distress on account of it, or the miseries of hell. But why should the pretended pleasures of sin allure you, when you know that unspeakably more real pleasure will arise from the sin's mortification? Will you prefer the gratification of some unhallowed passion, with the deadly poison it will leave behind, to that of the [i]sacred pleasure[/i] which arises from fearing and obeying God, complying with the dictates of conscience, and maintaining inward peace?"

- John Flavel, from the book "Keeping the Heart"