Since our future is stored up in our hearts and every single believer has the ability to keep his own heart full of the Word and the Spirit of God, we all have the same opportunity to be blessed in every way. God is no respecter of persons. God has said to us, just as He said to Israel:
I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: there- f o re choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live
Your future is not thrust upon you without your consent. Yo u choose it every day by giving God first place in your life or by putting the natural things of the world first place. You choose it by planting the seeds of God’s Word in your heart each day or by enter- taining the doubts and fears of the world, the flesh and the dev i l .
I said it before and I’ll say it again because I want you to remember it: Everything you receive from God begins in your heart. That’s where you are born again. That is where the Holy Spirit lives. That’s where the Word is deposited. Everything super- natural that you receive comes out of your heart!
Some people assume that because they have spent days or even years studying the Word of God and know what it says, they will enjoy a harvest of God’s blessing. But remember this: It is the choice you make today—not the choice you made yesterday or last month or last year—that will determine your tomorrow. For yesterday’s seed, if it is not watered today by your fellowship with God, will be overcome by weeds. The cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches and the lusts of other things entering in will choke the Word and make it unfruitful. (See Mark 4:19.)
Every day we must obey the instructions in Proverbs 4:20-23:
My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart. For they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh. Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.
You deposit the Word in your heart by keeping it in front of your eyes and going into your ears. God has blessed this generation with more ways to do this than any other generation has ever
enjoyed. We not only have books, but we have multiple forms of audio and video resources as well as Christian television broad- casts and the Internet. We also have the anointed Word being preached in churches and conventions all over the world.
If we don’t keep God’s Word in our eyes and ears, it’s our own fa u l t !
Even though we have all these avenues available to us, we still have to make a quality decision to be diligent. A quality decision is one from which there is no turning back. To be diligent means you don’t let anything else interfere with what you have deter- mined to do. You cannot be diligent and lazy at the same time.
Noah Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English
Language10
says diligent means “steady application to business; constant in effort or exertion to accomplish what is undertaken; industrious; not idle or negligent.” To successfully keep our hearts and walk in victory in this life, we have to be that way about the time we spend with God and His Word.
If we will diligently apply ourselves to keeping our hearts by staying in daily contact with God through the Word and through prayer, His supernatural power will continually flow out of our innermost beings. The forces of divine life—forces such as faith, love, joy, patience and the other fruit of the spirit—will constantly spring forth from our hearts to empower us and enable us to over- come in every area of life.
Years ago, the Spirit of God gave me an unforgettable illustra- tion of that truth. I was preparing to teach a healing service in the Philippines, and I was meditating on that very scripture in Prove r b s 4:23: “Keep and guard your heart with all vigilance and above all that you guard, for out of it flow the springs of life” (A M P) .
As I thought about that verse, I looked out my window and saw the fountain in front of my hotel. The water in it was shooting up into the air with great force.
As I watched it, the Lord drew my attention to the fact that as long as there was an outflow of water from that fountain, no trash could remain in it. Even if it were just barely flowing over the top, it would wash away all debris. If you turn the water up high, the force of it would be so strong that nothing could even get close to the mouth of it.
That’s the way our heart is. As long as we keep an overflow and as long as we have the forces of God coming out of it, Satan’s junk will eventually be forced out of our lives and things will be well with us. But we don’t have to settle for just a little overflow. We can turn those forces up high. We can have a gusher of God’s power, joy, love and wisdom issuing forth from within us.
If we want to, we can be so full of God and so full of the Word and time with Him, that sickness and disease can’t even get close to our bodies. We can be flowing so strongly with God’s divine life that it becomes as difficult for us to get sick as it once was for us to get healed. If we will learn to live in constant contact with God, we can experience the divine health that John G. Lake described. We can live “day by day and hour by hour in touch with God so that the life of God flows into the body, just as the life of God flows into the mind or flows into the spirit”11