Guard your heart. This command comes from Proverbs 4:23, and I often heard it as the golden rule of conservative Christian dating.
Growing up I thought that if I kept myself from getting emotionally attached to someone of the opposite sex, I would somehow save myself from the heartbreak of a failed romance and have more of myself to give to a future spouse.
However, going into my first relationship, this just caused problems. I acted like someone who had been treated horribly by an ex, even though I had never had a boyfriend. No matter how kind and considerate my boyfriend was, in my mind I was always on the tipping point of heartbreak.
When you date someone the goal is intimacy and understanding, but if you make boundaries to avoid vulnerability, these boundaries could become walls and stifle all chances of authentic trust. The idea that I had to protect myself was sabotaging the whole relationship process.
The Command in Context
Before we can apply this text, we must understand what the biblical author is saying.
The command to guard your heart comes from Proverbs 4:23. Solomon is urging his son to seek wisdom, and he says, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”
Pay attention to the phrase "for everything you do flows from it," immediately following the command. This phrase answers the question: Why should I guard my heart? Because everything I do flows from it.
The rest of Proverbs 4 says, "Let your eyes look straight ahead; fix your gaze directly before you. Give careful thought to the paths for your feet and be steadfast in all your ways. Do not turn to the right or the left keep your foot from evil” (vv. 25-27).
Solomon doesn't tell us to guard our hearts from one another; instead, he urges us to guard our hearts toward God and toward wisdom.
When we say flatly, “Guard your heart,” we leave God entirely out of the equation. The command becomes works-based and creates a battle between you and heartbreak, with other people tangled in between and God looking on helplessly.
But if we say, “Guard your heart with wisdom that comes from God,” we are putting our trust in God to bring about a result. Instead of taking control to protect ourselves with rules and boundaries, we are allowing God to protect us even in our most vulnerable state.
Vulnerability in Action
Vulnerability among believers is what helps us grow in intimacy with each other and with God. Letting go of our lives through vulnerability is necessary to producing intimacy and healing.
Sometimes our stories have painful chapters we want to keep to ourselves. Thankfully, we serve a God of healing, and He uses other people as His instruments in restoring lives.
When you remove your walls, you allow God to work through someone else in ministering to you and preaching Christ to your wounds. We cannot heal ourselves. Only God can work out redemption in our lives.
In every type of relationship, we should seek to die to our selfishness and offer ourselves up to one another. Strong trust only comes from steps of vulnerability that will test and strengthen.
Relationship in Action
Dating is fundamentally a series of excruciatingly awkward steps of vulnerability and trust. Sometimes these steps may feel like leaps into a void, and sharing one of our precious, scar-bearing secrets with another careless sinner can be petrifying. But trusting God to protect us is so necessary. Because we are not the ones with the ability to protect ourselves—He is. And he requires us to stop holding on to our own hearts so that He can take hold of them.
Perhaps vulnerability is the safest place for us.
"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” -- C.S. Lewis
