Good to see everybody. Thank you for coming this morning. I assume that the inflated attendance for a very cold rainy day in which we're planning on snow is because of your deep interest in me preaching on guarding your heart and not the building update. So with that being said, I'm happy to take up the next 30 minutes of your time while you wait for the information that you actually want. Before I do that, some of you will get this joke and some of you will not, but if there's a little context here, I just want to say that the Steelers lost in the playoffs and they lost their head coach. Good. Go Bears! you some context. Mikey introduced himself as a longtime visitor. Here's why that's funny. First of all, Mikey and the ReSARS, they predate me. They've been here longer than me. They've given more blood, sweat, and tears to this place than I have. And we were talking about Discover Grace, and he said, I've never gone to the class. Am I a partner? And I have some people ask me that sometimes. And I told him, I don't care how much you've given, how much you've served, what you've done, or how involved your family is. If you don't listen to me talk about grace for an hour, you are not a partner. You're a visitor. So he introduced himself as a longtime visitor. And I've always said what partner, partner is what partner does. We kind of Forrest Gump it. If you partner with us, because at Grace we say that we have partners, we don't have members. And the real simple reason is because members tend to consume and partners tend to contribute. So we want us to think of ourselves as partners in the same entity. We're not looking for rights and privileges as members. So that's why we use that terminology. And I've always said partner is what partner does. If you're actually partnering with us, you're coming to small group, you're attending, you're giving, you're serving, you're partnering with us to move grace forward towards wherever we think God wants it to go, then you're a partner. So if you're out there and like the Rezars, you've been coming to the church for longer than me, and you're wondering, am I a partner now? My response to you is, I don't know, do you think you are? And if you say yes, then I agree with you. But if you want to come to Discover Grace, that's just a way for you to familiarize yourself with the church and our background and our systems and what we do. So we'd love to have you, but we're not real uptight about how to become a partner. You do what you like is our philosophy because I do what I like, so it's only fair. This morning we do continue in our series, You'll Be Glad You Did. And the idea is that if we'll listen to the wisdom of Proverbs, who was written by who the Bible says is the wisest man to ever live, King Solomon. If we'll listen to Proverbs and implement them in our lives, we'll be glad that we did. And we've talked about friends. We've talked about being generous. And this morning, I want to talk about this simple concept of guarding our hearts. This comes out of Proverbs chapter 4, verse 23. It's a verse that I would bet that most of the room has heard, but it's this. Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. And so I wanted to take some time this morning to talk about this concept because here's what I think is probably true. Here's what I think is probably true. I think it's probably true that a vast majority of you have heard this concept before. I kind of doubt that there's anyone in the room going, that is new information that I should guard my heart, and out of it everything flows. Maybe there's some, and that's fine, but most of you probably already know this. And so the impetus for me is to go, yeah, yeah, yeah, we know it, right, sure, but let's take some time and focus on it. Because many of us probably learned this when we were children. We probably learned it when we were young, and we've always kind of carried this ethic in our head. We know about it, but maybe we haven't considered it in a while. So I thought it would be worthwhile, as I this series on Proverbs and kind of planned it out, which by the way, I'm now, I'm almost done planning out our next series, which is going to be in Romans. And we're going to move through Romans chapter by chapter. And I'm so excited to do that because I don't know if I've said this from stage or not, but I really, really love preaching through Scripture and talking about it, and I really, really don't love talking about topics like guard your heart. I like the next one better than this one, but I think that the church needs both, and I think that we need to do both, and I think that we need to rest ourselves in this topic today because it's an important one. And here's why it's so important. Whatever flows into our heart flows out of us. Whatever flows into our heart flows out of us. So as we consider this as adults, guard your heart for everything you do flows from it. And we try to just put fresh eyes on it and take 25, 30 minutes to consider it. I want us to focus on the important parts. I want us to think about it as grown-ups. And the reality to me that comes out of this verse is that the reason we guard our heart is because everything else we do flows out of that. Everything we do flows from it. The way that I was taught this principle was when I was a kid, I was taught that you're a cup. And when you get jostled, which jostled is a great word. When you get jostled, whatever has been poured into that cup will spill out. That's the idea. Every morning, I drive Lily to school at NRCA. Lily's my daughter, not just some girl that I drive to school. I drive Lily to school at NRCA. And when you pull in, you have to go all the way around, and there's all these speed bumps. And it's really annoying, but I guess I understand. If I were running an institution where teenagers daily drove, I would have myriad speed bumps as well. So I get it, but I don't love it. And you go over the speed bumps, and the ones that are head-on, just direct, are pretty manageable. But there's some that are on an angle, and those are maniacal because they rock your car in a bunch of different ways. And every morning before we leave, I make a water bottle for Lily, and I fill my cup with ice and water. I have this all the time. So I fill it with ice and water, and it's close to the brim. And we go over the speed bumps, and I now have to, as we go over the speed bumps, I pick up my cup and I hold it like this to allow my arm to adjust for the bumping so that nothing jostles out of the cup, right? But what's going to come out of that cup, if I forget, and sometimes I do, is just water. It's harmless. It just gets on my center console there, and it's fine. It's not that big of a deal. And it helps me think about the way that we get jostled in life when we hit speed bumps, when we get bad news, sometimes when we get good news, when someone frustrates us, when our partner lets us down, when our children annoy us, or even worse, they disappoint us, when we don't get the deal, when we lose the client, when our team loses in overtime, what comes out of the cup when we are jostled? What spills out onto the people around us when something happens to us? Here's what I think. Sometimes, and I'll be honest with you, it's not very often, and you can ask the other people that work with me at Grace. You can ask Gibby. They've worked with me a while. Kyle, our family pastor, has worked with me for about a decade. Aaron's worked with me since I got here. I don't think I've ever snapped at you guys. I don't think I have. I snapped at Gibby one time. He deserved it, though. He had it coming. I don't think I have. Someone's clearing their throat over there as if I've snapped at them. I don't think I did. But we snap at people, right? And it's usually our family. It's usually our kids. The other day, the other day we were getting ready for school and Lily is 10 now and we told her at 7.27, go get your things and put on your shoes. And at 7.37, she was untying her shoes to put them on. And I snapped. And I looked at her at the kitchen counter and I said, put on your shoes. Put them on. And she started doing other stuff. I said, stop that. Put on your shoes. And she, of course, because she's a little me, mouthed back at me. And I said, put on your shoes. Stop what you're doing. Put on your shoes. Put them on. Go. Go. Put on your shoes. Go. And I snapped at her until she was really upset. And she goes and she puts on her shoes. I shouldn't have to ask you three times in ten minutes to put on your shoes, and I think every parent can relate to that. But here's the thing. Me snapping at that and borderline losing my temper says a lot more about me than it does about Lily. Lily's 10. I'm 33. I'm surprised that was as funny as it was. Lily's 10. I'm a grown adult. Whatever was in my cup spilled out on her. That wasn't her fault. And that wasn't the way to handle that. And what I think is, and why I tell that story about myself, is first of all, you're all in glass houses right now. So throw stones if you want to. But second, thank you, Kay. Second, for all of us, when we get jostled and we lose our temper with someone and we lose our patience with someone, I believe it says a lot more about us than it does about them. And what it says about us is it forces us, if we really want to think about it, to look at what have we been filling our cup with. Because I just got rocked. I just got annoyed. What spilled out? And when it's vitriol, when it's anger, when it's frustration, when it's put on your shoes, that tells us a lot more about what we've been consuming than about what's happening in that moment right there. And I'll be honest. I don't know how much space there is for us as followers of Jesus to snap at other people. There's one time in the Gospels when Jesus snaps and it was to turn over the temple table. So there's a place for godly anger and frustration. But I'd be willing to bet that that place is a lot more rare than what our experience is. So with that in mind, when we talk about guard your heart for out of it, everything flows. That's what I'm talking about. When your cup is jostled, what will come out? When you're frustrated, when you're aggravated, when you're in a difficult situation, what comes out of your heart? Is it kindness? Is it frustration? Is it tenderness? Is it anger? Is it empathy? Or is it condescension? What comes out? I think that's important. And so I wanted to talk this morning about three ways really quickly that we can guard our hearts so that when things happen in our life, the right things come out, that we exude the love of God. From his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. So when things happen in our life, can we be the kind of people that when our cup is jostled, we pour out grace, we pour out love, we pour out patience, we pour out empathy, we pour out honor, we pour out praise. Can we be those kinds of people? I think that we can. So if we're going to do that, we need to guard our hearts. So there's three ways I want to look at, and there's plenty more than this, but there's three ways I want to look at to guard our hearts so that when things happen in life, the right things come out of us. The first one is the easiest and the most obvious one. We guard content. We guard content. I have never stood up here and told you guys what you should and shouldn't watch. You're grown-ups. If you're saved, you have the Holy Spirit. You watch whatever you want. I just know that there are some shows that I've tried to watch that made me feel, and this is a highly technical term that I learned in seminary, icky. They just made me feel icky. And I just kind of knew, this is not good for my soul. I'm not going to watch this. There are some shows that I've watched that made me feel icky, but they were really good, so I watched them anyways, and I shouldn't have, because they weren't good for my soul. So we should consider what we consume. And I'm not going to give you my standards from a 33-year-old man on what you should do and what you should consume. But what I will say is the content that you do consume matters a lot. And let's be honest about this. There has never been a more consumptive generation of people on the planet than us. Right? Think about it. In the span of human history, who has been able to consume more information than you in a given day? Because we have that stupid germ brick that lives in our pocket that we pull out at stoplights and whenever we get bored and whenever the kids talk too long and we start to scroll. And we can consume. And when the germ brick's not going, the TV's going. And when the TV's not going, we're on the computer. And maybe, maybe, if you're erudite and sophisticated, you pull out a book, something in print from like 1985. Wow. But we are the most consumptive generation that has ever existed on the planet. And most of us consume constantly. And for most of us, our life is filled with noise. And so I would just stop and ask you this morning, not to direct you in one way or another. About what you should or shouldn't do. But I would ask you to consider. What are you consuming? When you pause at the red light. And you grab your phone. What are you looking at? When you have a free moment. And you turn a podcast or a book or songs, what are you listening to? When you have a free moment in the office and you allow yourself to search the internet, what are you looking at? What are you consuming? What are you interested in? And I'm not here to suggest that anything you're consuming is directly nefarious, although some of it is. But what I'm saying is it may be perfectly innocuous content, but is that what you should be consuming? Is that helping you? Is that guarding your heart? Are we looking at the right things? And I remember it was, I don't set myself, I've told a couple stories today about how terrible I am so let me tell you about a good decision that I made. I guess it was about two and a half or three years ago now. It was still called Twitter. Now it's called X. But I just realized that I spent a lot of time just scrolling Twitter, just killing time, scrolling Twitter, seeing what the people were saying about the things. And I realized that everything I saw made me angry. It was inflammatory. Someone's outraged about this. Someone has commentary about this. And as I scrolled, half of the content was designed to just make me angry about a thing. And after doing that enough, I said, you know what? I'm not doing this anymore. And I took it off my phone. And that was two and a half years ago. And it was actually three years ago, because I remember it was February. It was a real tough day. And I haven't missed it at all. So some of the counsel or encouragement to you is just, if it's true that everything we do flows out of our hearts, and if it's true that to prevent things flowing out of our heart that we need to guard it, then it has to also be true that the content that we consume is really actually very important. And so I'm not trying to give you pastoral advice and strictures about how you should organize your life. I'm just encouraging you as adults, what you consume matters a lot. So what are you consuming? What are you watching? Because a lot of us, particularly now, and you're going to think, when I say this, my suspicion is that you're going to think that I'm criticizing whatever side of the political aisle that you're on. You're going to assume that I'm on the other one and I'm telling you that yours is bad. I'm not. But can we acknowledge that a lot of news, not all of it, there's some good stuff, is designed to inflame us, is designed to anger us. And we as Christians, if that comes out of us when our cup is jostled, should consider how engaged we are with those things as well. So we guard our content. Here's another thing we guard. And this one you probably didn't see coming. But we guard empathy. We guard empathy. Years ago, I had a good friend. She's still a good friend. And she was telling me about her son, Bergen, who was 8 to 10 at the time. And she said that Bergen had developed an interest in ornithology, which makes me really disappointed that the farmers are not here today. Jacob would love this because he's a huge bird nerd. And that's what ornithology is. It's bird watchers, for those that don't know. And even my comment there is a tell to the point that I'm intending to make. She said that Bergen loved bird watching. He was really into it, wanted to get the binoculars. He was like reading books and doing all this stuff. And I remember just saying to her, they were homeschooled. And I remember saying to her at the time, I'm so glad that Bergen is homeschooled so that he can invest himself in that hobby. Because if he went to school, he would get made fun of until he quit watching birds. And we might giggle, but that's actually a really sad thing. I think that stinks. The world has a way, the vet is nodding her head, she likes birds too. The world has a way. The vet is nodding her head. She likes birds too. The world has a way of kind of crushing our sincerity out of us, of kind of crushing our optimism out of us. The world has a way of molding you as you grow up and telling you that what you like is not okay. What you like is not cool. What you do is not good. What your hobbies are are nerdy or they're wasteful or they're whatever they are. And the world cruelly has a way of crushing our sincerity out of us. And so as I thought about how do we guard our hearts, I thought it's worth mentioning that the world has a way of crushing our empathy out of us as well. And that as we encounter tragedy, as we encounter hardship, as we encounter trouble, and we see it in other people, because we see it so often, we can begin to become, we can allow our hearts to become calcified against the needs of the world around us. Right? We can let our heart grow hardened so that we no longer care about the people that we interact with day to day. So that we're no longer moved towards the things that should move us. And what we can do is we can allow the world and its pressures exerted on us and on our souls and on our hearts to calcify our hearts in such a way that we no longer have the capacity to care. And I would say that our capacity to care about others is one of the most important things a Christian can do. Jesus himself said, whatever you do for the least of these, you do for me. So when we stop caring, and when we are not moved, and when we, listen, this is tough, but I think it's true. When we are not people who are actively involved, actively involved, and I mean that, actively involved in helping the least of these, it may be because our hearts are calcified. And we have not adequately guarded them against the onslaught of apathy that comes from our culture. So one of the ways we guard our hearts is to keep them tender and to make sure that we maintain empathy. The last way that I want to mention this morning, there are more ways again, but the last way I want to mention this morning is that we guard our relationships. If we want to guard our hearts, we guard our relationships. It's funny, I made, I wrote up these notes this week and was already thinking about this topic because I think it's true. And then just yesterday, had lunch with somebody. And the story was, essentially, I've always looked up to my dad. He's let me down lately. And it's really messed me up spiritually. And I've talked to my therapist about it. And I might have to cut him out of my life. I don't know what to do. And because of my multiple degrees in psychology, I knew exactly what to tell him. But I was only able to tell him what you guys would tell him. You need to decide what the appropriate boundaries in your life are for him. You need to decide to what level you're going to give him access to you. You need to decide how much, in plain terms, he's able to hurt you. We need boundaries. Because this is a person that he looked up to spiritually. And that person had let him down. So now, that relationship that he had in his life that really didn't correlate with his spiritual life is all of a sudden impacting his spiritual life in such a way that it's detrimental. So if we're going to guard our hearts, we have to guard our relationships. And I'm not going to spend a lot of time here because, as I joked, I'm not a therapist. But I do know and I have seen that we can have toxic relationships in our life that cause us to spiral in such a way that we lose our sense of spirituality and we begin to lose spiritual health and our hearts are not being guarded because we're making them subject to a person that's not treating them well. And so in some ways, as grown-ups, if we want to guard our hearts, we have to guard our relationships. My larger point, and I'll finish with this, is I would just like to implore you to consider what it means as a grown-up to guard your heart. What are you consuming? Not just content, but what's your environment? How much are you protecting your own empathy? Just consider as grown-ups what's going into your heart, what's going into your soul, And when your cup is jostled, what's coming out? And what do you want to come out? And if what's coming out right now isn't what you want, then how do you fix that? If you'll think about that, I believe you'll be glad you did. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for a church that loves you. Thank you, God, for a church that can laugh. But God, I pray that this morning we would consider what we're consuming. We would consider what we're letting in. We would consider what's helping us and what's not. God, I ask these things in the name of Jesus. Amen. Hang on just a second, band. I got tripped up in my prayer because I forgot this verse that I wanted to share with you, and I'll finish with this. Because to me, it's the most impactful verse I've ever read about what we should consume. Paul finishes his letter to the Philippians after all the encouragement that he gives him with this final exhortation. And I think it's a good way to end this sermon today. Finally, brothers and sisters, this is Philippians 4.8. Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about these things. May that be our standard.