What are you feeding your heart?

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What are you feeding you heart?  
A Devotional by Margot Cioccio

Philippians 1:9-10 (CEV)
9 I pray that your love will keep on growing and that you will fully 
know and understand how to make the right choices. Then you will 
still be pure and innocent when Christ returns. And until that day,

I know my own heart seems like such a wild thing - and as a result I have for years kept a very tight reign and even suppressed it much of the time.  Here in this apostolic prayer, Paul is praying that our love will keep on growing. I think that though my heart seems like an untamed creature much of the time - it is like any creature - it needs feed and what I feed it will later influence the choices I make.
In the NIV verse 9 says “ 9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight.”  Knowledge and depth of insight - would be far better things to feed my heart than bitterness, envy, anger, violence and other things that squeeze out love and push it into a corner where it can’t grow.  I need to make right choices for my heart. Proverbs 4:23 says  Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.

Perhaps we need to backwards engineer our current life once in a while. To do regular heart check ups and maintenance. Some people take better care of their cars, pets and children than they do their own heart. What is flowing or growing out of your life? Is it good or messed up? Either way now consider the regular diet of your heart has been fed in the proceeding months and years. What will you feed it from now on. It is good to begin feeding it on the word. Psalm 119:11 says “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.”  Spend a time tending it and pulling out the weeds that would choke love from growing in your heart.  Maybe its not so much that your heart has been feed such bad things - perhaps it has been simply starved and pushed into a corner because it seemed too wild to deal with. Maybe your heart is so over grown with weeds and brambles that you stand looking at it with despair and can’t even begin to see where to start. It may take time but its time to take back that ground and to reclaim it for the Lord so that love may begin to grow and thrive.

Things to Ponder:
Does my heart need a check up?

What things are growing or flowing out of my life and heart?

What have I been feeding my heart?

What are some of the weeds that need pulled up down to the very roots?

Prayer:
Dear Lord,
Help my heart and love to keep growing. Help me to make wise and insightful choices. Help me to guard my heart and feed it on things that will cause it to grow so that good things would flow from it. Help me to pull the weeds that I have allowed to grow to make room for love to grow more and more. Help me hide your word in my heart so I don’t sin against you.