Keep Your Heart with All Diligence

The first direction spoke of “attending”; the second spoke of the “inclined ear”; the third spoke of the “focused eyes.” The fourth direction on God’s medicine bottle concerns the heart, the inward centre of the human personality, for it says “keep them in the midst of your heart.” Proverbs emphasises the decisive influence of the heart in human experience.

“Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life.” (Prov. 4:23)

In other words, what is in our hearts controls the whole course of our lives and all that we experience. If we receive God’s words with careful attention – if we admit them regularly through both the ear and the eye so that they occupy and control our hearts – then we find them to be exactly what God has promised: both life to our souls and health to our flesh.

During World War II, while working with the medical services in North Africa, I became sick with a condition of the skin and nerves for which medical science, in that climate and those conditions, could provide no cure. I spent more than one year in the hospital, receiving every kind of treatment available. For more than four months at a stretch I was confined to bed. Eventually, I was discharged from the hospital at my own request, uncured.

I decided to seek no further medical treatment but to put the promises of God in Proverbs 4:20-22 to the test in my own case. Three times a day I went apart by myself, shut myself in with God and His Word, prayed and asked God to make His Word to me what He had promised it should be – medicine to all my flesh.

The climate, the diet and all other external circumstances were as unfavourable as they could be. Indeed, many healthy men all around me were falling sick. Nevertheless, through God’s Word alone, without recourse to any other means of any kind, I received within a short time a complete and permanent cure.

Let me add that I am in no sense criticising or belittling medical science. I am grateful for all the good that medical science accomplishes. Indeed, I myself was working with the medical services. But the power of medical science is limited; the power of God’s Word is unlimited.

Many Christians of different denominational backgrounds have testimonies similar to mine. I received a letter from a Presbyterian lady who was asked to give a word of testimony in a service in which there were a number of sick people to be prayed for. While this lady was testifying and actually quoting the words of Proverbs 4:20-22, another lady in the seat next to hers, who had been suffering excruciating pain from a crushed disc in her neck, was instantly healed – without any prayer being offered – simply through listening with faith to God’s Word.

Later, I devoted a week on my radio Bible teaching programme to this theme of God’s medicine bottle. A lady listener suffering from chronic eczema decided to take the medicine according to the “directions.” Three months later she wrote to tell me that for the first time in twenty-five years her skin was completely free from eczema. The words of Psalm 107:20 are still being fulfilled today.

“He sent His word and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions.”

For those who need healing and deliverance: Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who trusts in Him! (Ps. 34:8).

Taste this medicine of God’s Word for yourself! See how it works! It is not like so many earthly medicines, bitter and unpalatable. Nor does it work, like so many modern drugs, bringing relief to one organ of the body but causing a reaction which impairs some other organ. No, God’s Word is altogether good, altogether beneficial. When received according to His direction, it brings life and health to our whole being.