Guard Your Heart Without Hardening It

We talk about how a wounded heart can hide behind “wisdom” and why Proverbs 4:23 calls us to discernment rather than emotional walls. We share a practical path toward healing so you can trust God with the wound and learn to love again without losing yourself. 
• Proverbs 4:23 and what “guard your heart” actually means 
• The difference between a watchman’s discernment and a fortress mindset 
• How fear can wear discernment’s clothes and keep love out 
• A personal story of shattered trust and the quiet vow to never be hurt again 
• Why bitterness leaks into new relationships and new opportunities 
• A journaling practice for naming the raw pain and surrendering it in prayer 
• Psalm 147:3 as God’s promise to bind up wounds with care 
• Acts 3:19 and the meaning of peace as wholeness 
• Why healing needs safe community and “iron sharpens iron” relationships 

Transcript

Welcome And Podcast Mission

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to the Beyond the Fire Podcast, hosted by yours truly, Pastor Natasha Diaz. This podcast is for the chosen woman of faith who knows she was made for more but feels challenged by the obstacles of life. On each episode, you'll receive guided godly wisdom straight from the Holy Scriptures, and you'll receive encouragement to renew your mindset. This is a place where hope is restored, faith is strengthened, and healing begins. So wherever you're listening in from, I invite you to lean in, open your heart to what God wants to speak, and let's journey together, not just through the fire, but beyond it. Hello and welcome back to another episode of Beyond the Fire. If you're new to this podcast, I want to welcome you. I'm your host, Pastor Natasha Diaz, and I'm so glad that you guys are here with me today because what we're going to talk about is something that touches every single one of us. Whether you've been married for 30 years or you're single and you're just wondering if love is, you know, even safe to hope for again, or you're just somewhere in between where you're nursing a wound and you haven't told anybody about it.

Why The Heart Matters

SPEAKER_00 1:26

What we're talking about today is issues and matters of the heart. What we're talking about is the heart. And we're talking about learning, actually, really learning how to love again when you're just in a place where you feel like you've been so hurt and so jilt, so jilted, is what I wanted to say. I think that's the proper word to use. And you just, you know, we all need to learn to love again without losing ourselves in the process. That's basically the gist of today's episode.

Guarding Versus Building Walls

SPEAKER_00 2:03

And where we're gonna start today is in Proverbs 4 and 23. And it's like with this scripture, this is one of those common, like everyday scriptures, I think I want to say that you know, we've all probably heard a lot. I mean, if you've been in the church for any length of time, you've definitely heard this verse quoted a hundred times. The verse is, like I said, it's Proverbs 4 and 23, and it says, Above all else, guard your heart for everything you do flows from it. Some translations say, keep your heart, some say watch over it. And my personal favorite translation for this scripture is a message version. And the message version puts it this way it says, Keep vigilant, watch over your heart. That's where life starts. To me, that makes it pretty clear, and that makes like the most sense. But let's pause for a second. Here's what uh what I really want us to sit with for a moment because I feel like we've really misunderstood this verse. We've understood this, misunderstood this verse. I'm sorry, misunderstood this verse more than any other verse in Proverbs because I think that we hear guard your heart and we picture immediately like walls, a fortress, a moat, maybe you know, some barbed wire for good measure. And we think that guard guarding means never letting anyone close enough to hurt us again. And listen, I totally understand why. If you've been burnt, your nervous system doesn't really care about nuance, it just wants to survive, it wants to build a high wall and a wall that's so tall that nothing gets in. But here's the problem with that a wall just doesn't keep pain out, it also keeps love out too. And Solomon, the man that wrote this proverb, wasn't telling his son to build a fortress. The Hebrew word, the Hebrew word that's used for God is the same word that's used for watchmen, the watchman on the city of the wall. And a watchman doesn't seal a gate forever. What a watchman does is he does just that. He watches and he discerned, he discerns, and he lets what belongs, you know, to come in past that gate, and he keeps anything that threatens out. And that's a completely different posture than a heart that's hardened and shut. There's a real tension here, and I don't want us to rush past this because I think this is where many of us live. It's like on one side, you've got wise caution, you've got discernment, you've got healthy boundaries, you know, the Holy Spirit is giving you a check in your spirit that either says, not yet, or not this. That's guarding and that's biblical and that's wisdom. But then on the other side of that, there's something that looks very similar on the surface, but it's actually rooted in something that's completely different, and that's resentful self-protection. That's where the heart says something like, I'll never let anyone close get close enough to me again to do that. And it calls it wisdom, but what it really is, it's just fear wearing wisdom's clothes. It's like, you know, bitterness will disguise itself as discernment every single time. And it'll tell you that, you know, you're just being smart. But what it really is, is that you're just protecting yourself. Being smart doesn't require to, or it makes it makes you what I want to say is it makes you feel like you're protecting yourself. But being smart doesn't require you to write people off before they've even done anything wrong. Smart doesn't require you to keep score, smart doesn't require you to stay numb so that you never have to feel exposed again. That's not guarding your heart, guys. What that's doing is that's

Discernment Or Fear In Disguise

SPEAKER_00 6:10

burying it. So here's a question that I want to plant right at the top of this episode. Are you guarding your heart or have you maybe just maybe have you quietly maybe just been like with not even realizing it, not on purpose, hardening your heart. And that's a moment that I like to have us, you know, just pause and reflect on because a hardened heart is a hardened heart is just not really, it's not a healthy heart. And it's like in Proverbs 4.23, it says that everything flows from the heart. So that's your words, your relationships, your capacity to trust, and your capacity to receive love. So if the source is clogged with old pain that never got surrendered, everything downstream is going to be affected from that point. And that's why this really matters so much. This isn't just like an emotional health topic. This is more so like a spiritual formation issue. This is discipleship. And I

My Vow To Never Trust Again

SPEAKER_00 7:15

really want us to be honest. And I want to be honest with you for a minute because it's like everything I'm telling you right now, this doesn't come from a classroom or some kind of course. Everything I'm speaking to you right now is something that I learned from the wreckage of my own heart. It's something that I've actually been through myself. And it's like I have my own story of dealing with this type of season in my life where my own personal trust was shattered. And it's like I'm not gonna walk you guys through every single detail today because that's not, you know, what needs to be done. And honestly, something like that is like really, it's not really my full story to tell. And I also don't want to be in a place where I'm throwing people under the bus. But I just want to basically get a point across to you with brief pieces of my story. And I'll tell you this. I basically I trusted someone, or I actually trusted a couple of someones with my heart. And there's one particular situation that I'm thinking of where I was broken in a way that pretty much shook my whole foundation. It shook me to the core. And the aftermath of that was basically making a decision. I made a decision in my mind or in my spirit, not something that I really said out loud or even fully consciously, but I kind of made a vow to myself in my spirit, and I said, I'm never doing this again because I was just literally just hurt so bad. And I said, I'm never handing my heart over that fully to anyone again. And friends, I have to tell you, at that time, that decision really felt like strength. It felt like I was finally protecting myself, and I told myself that I was guarding my heart, like Proverbs said to do. But what was actually happening underneath was very different. I was actually building walls and calling them wisdom. I was keeping people at arm's length and calling it discernment. I got really good at, you know, like being pleasant and being helpful, but not being present, but never really being fully present is what I want to say. Never being fully open. And there's a difference between being in the room and being in the room with your heart, and being in the room and leaving your heart locked in the car. I remember several moments where a specific person in my life who had never given me a given me a single reason not to trust them or said anything wrong or anything was just like completely innocent. And I just felt like it was a situation where I just felt like a flash of anger and suspicion just kind of rise up in me that had nothing to do with them. And pretty much what that was, it was old pain wearing a new face. After a few moments like that, the Lord really started to deal with me. He started to get my attention on this matter. And it's like basically, bitterness doesn't always stay contained to the one person who hurt you. Bitterness has this thing that it does where it kind of just leaks, it bleeds into every new relationship, every new opportunity to love and to be love. And it's like God wants to be the one who guards your heart instead. That's the distinction that really changed everything for me personally. I feel like what was going on is that I had basically been guarding a wound. I've been keeping it protected. I've been pretty much when I thought that I was keeping it protected, what I was really doing was keeping it fed, keeping it justified, and calling that guarding my heart. But what the Lord wanted, he really wanted to invite me to something different. He wanted to be the watchman, he wanted to be the one to stand at the gate of my heart and let me finally rest. And you know what? That's not something that really happened for me overnight. I wish I could tell you guys that I just prayed this one prayer and woke up the next morning and I was my heart was completely softened and set free, but that wasn't the case at all. It was a process. And honestly, to this day, it's still a process. But something actually really did shift in that moment, and it was like the hardness. What happened was the hardness started to crack. And underneath that hardness, there's still a wound. There's still a wound that neck that never actually had been tended to, that I had protected, and I never basically, I never let it heal. And that's where you know, where God showed me something really different, something that was so simple and something that became like one of the most life-giving practices I've ever walked through. And here's what I want to give you from this story. Because I feel like if I'm just teaching without application, it's just information. And I don't want to just inform you. I want you guys to walk away from this healed. I want you guys to walk away, you know, really grasping something practically that you can apply in your

Journal The Pain Then Surrender

SPEAKER_00 12:32

own lives. So, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna give you guys like a little assignment, and this is kind of like what I walk through myself, and this really like journaling, it helps me a lot, and I think that it can be a huge help for you too. So I think the best thing for you to do if you're dealing with this type of situation is to just like get yourself a journal. It doesn't have to be, you know, anything fancy, you know, with your name engraved on it. However, if that's what floats your boat and that's what works, go for it. What matters is not really the journal. What matters is what you put in that journal. Now, what I want you to do in that journal is I want you to write out the pain, not the polished version, not the version that you would, you know, speak about in a small group or in a Sunday morning meeting. I want you to just really sit down and write out the raw version. Write out what actually happened, write out pretty much the details, how it made you feel, what you're actually still carrying from that situation, whether it's anger, whatever it is, if it's confusion, write it out. And write out, even if you're dealing with a situation where you're feeling like, you know, God, why didn't you stop this from happening? If that's honestly where you're at, you know what? A God is a big God and He can handle it. I believe that, you know, He would rather have your honest mess than a polished performance in front of him. But here's the key part, and this is what makes a journal different from just venting into a diary. What I want you to do after you write this out is to write all this down. And I want you to literally hand it over and offer it up to God. You're literally going to take that page or pages, whatever it is, however long it is, and you're going to pray and you're going to pray over what you wrote, and you're going to tell the Lord, God, that this is yours now. I'm not carrying this anymore. I'm not giving into this anymore. I'm not letting it take control over my life anymore. I'm not letting it control my emotions anymore, giving you this pain, and I'm asking you for what only you can give me in exchange. And it's like, what does he give us in

God Heals The Brokenhearted

SPEAKER_00 14:59

exchange? This is where my other favorite scripture comes in, especially in dealing with this type of situation. And this is a scripture that I actually keep it written on my mirror. I keep it in a place where I can just reflect on it. But it is Psalms 147 3, 147 verse 3, excuse me. And it's just such a precious scripture. It says he re heals the brokenhearted and he binds up their wounds. Now, when you hear binds up, that's medical language. That's something that is like someone that's kneeling down next to you, cleaning your wound, wrapping it up with care so that it can actually heal instead of being exposed to more infection. That's not a God that's, you know, distant, that's throwing a general blessing your way. That's a God that's really tending to your wound and really caring for you. And when you pour out your point your pain onto that page and you hand it over to him in prayer, he meets you right there in exactly what with what said in Acts 3 and 19 with times of refreshing. That's not just relief. A refreshing is pretty much a renewal, a washing. And what's left after that is isn't just the exchange, it's the absence of pain, and it's pain that's removed, not removed, but it's pain that's healed with a presence of peace. It's wholehearted peace. And that's what that peace, that's what the word peace actually means. It means wholeness and completeness. Completeness. So really, it's like that's not the kind of thing that it's like performing. It's not like, you know, the kind of situation where you're performing in front of God or God is performing for you. It's really letting down your guide, letting down your fear, and letting God come in and do only what He can do. It's basically a peace that becomes a soothing bomb over what used to be an open weeping wound. And I want you to just sit and just picture that for a moment. Picture it as an open wound because anyone who knows knows that when you have an open wound, it's in wound, it's in a place of danger. It's a place where it can get infected, it's in a place where you know it's inflamed, it's a per it's a place that where there's pain all around it and it can get worse. That's what unhealed pain will do to your life. That's exactly what the Lord wants to come in, and He wants to bind up that wound, He wants to heal it. But what you need to do is you need to surrender it to Him first. You need to basically say, Here, Lord, I give this to you to protect, to take over, to cleanse out, to put your soothing balm on, to cover it, to protect it. And it's like a wound that's taken care of, like that, is a wound that can slowly begin to heal. Now, when that wound heals, it will definitely have a scar on it, but that's fine because a scar is a testimony, and the scar is an indication of healing, and the scar isn't a wound anymore. A scar means that basically that healing is on its way, and that's what journaling is doing. It's giving you surrender, it's giving, it's allowing you to allow the Lord to come in and to heal up that wound. Now, when I wrote in my journal, I wrote pages that I never intended to read, pages that were full apart to my story that I never even wanted to admit to myself. And it's like every time I ended up having handing it over to God, I ended up asking him to take this thing out. And it's like that's something that took place slowly, not instantly, but surely he did it. He did just that. He took this thing away. And it's like if he did it for me, he'll did it, he'll do it for you. So what I'm starting to see from that in this stage of life that I'm in is like what used to trigger me doesn't trigger me in the same way anymore. What used to make me, I guess you could say, like flinch or started to feel like something was happening to me, like that happened to me long, long ago, it doesn't have that type of effect on me anymore. So if you're listening to this right now and you know that you're carrying an open wound, you know that you have something that you know you've managed, you've medicated, something that you've been distracted from, but you never actually surrendered. I want to invite you this week to get a journal, to write it out and to do just as I said, pray over it, give it to God and know that He alone knows how to bind up and heal.

Safe Community For Heart Healing

SPEAKER_00 20:06

But I also don't want you to leave, you know, just thinking that this is a solo journey because it's not meant to be. The Bible says in Proverbs, another favorite scripture of mine in Proverbs 27, 17, it says that iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens the other, another. I love this verse because it's so practical and it's so humble at the same time. Iron doesn't sharpen itself by sitting in isolation, it takes friction, it takes the right kind of friction from another piece of iron pressed up against it. And it's like healing your heart and guarding it wisely instead of hearting in it. That's what we want to be looking, that's what we want to look at and what we're trying to do in this situation. Not what we're trying to do, but what we're allowing to do. We're allowing the Lord to heal our heart, to guard it wisely instead of hearting it, is the way I really should have said that. And what we're allowing ourselves to do is learning safely how to love again. This is not a journey where, you know, you were gonna you were meant to walk it out completely alone. I know that as women, sometimes we can, you know, be fiercely independent. And I know, especially when you're in a place of hurting, a community can be something that's hard to, you know, get back into because we're always concerned about, you know, things happening again, you know, being gossiped about, having our business out there. But this is also a part of, you know, guarding your heart, just finding safe people, you know, in a community, finding a community of people, someone that you can talk with, someone that you can pray with. There's gotta be one or two, you know, people, if in the church or community or somewhere. And if you can't find anyone, then here's another thing to add to your prayer list. You can just simply you can pray about it. Ask the Lord to send you someone. That's a prayer that I've had to, and I've found one or good, you know, two good people that I can pray to, and I can trust, you know, females with my heart in that area. You know, you want to find someone who's a little bit further down the road of healing than what you are, someone who can remind you that what's on the other side of surrender. So here's what I want you to do before we close out today.

Prayer And Final Blessing

SPEAKER_00 22:34

I want you to pray. And I really want you to ask God to send the right people and the right resources into your life for the season of healing that you're in according to his will, his time in his exact way as he sees fit. And then I want to invite you to pray in your own words over your life. I want you to ask God to just open up, you know, different areas where you may be harboring things, different areas where you have open wounds that are not really, you're not really surrendering or allowing them to heal in different ways where you need to even just, you know, release and allow the Lord to come in. So I'm going to end the episode up right there. And then I just want to close us out in prayer really quickly, and then I will release you guys to be on your way. So, Father God, I just thank you, Lord, for the opportunity to serve you on this platform and to serve your daughters that have tuned in today, Lord God. I pray, Lord God, that as they listen to this podcast today, that their hearts would be softened, Lord God, that things that have caused them to have hurt and pain, things that they have carried for years and years would start to be released, Lord God. I pray, Lord God, that they would begin to trust you in a new way, Lord God, and see you in a new way. I pray, Lord God, that you would send them resources, Lord God, guidance, Lord God, whatever it is that they need, Lord God, that would help them move to the new stage of their life, the next stage of their lives, Lord God, so that they can move and walk into the true calling, Lord God, that you have for them. I pray, Father God, that you would send destiny helpers, Lord God, people to just help them, Lord God, and lead them along the way, Lord God. And I just ask all of this, Lord, in the mighty name of your son Jesus. So, all right, my friends, I am going to wrap up this episode there. For now, I thank you so much for lending me your ears today. And until the next time, remember we are walking beyond the fire, and we're not in this fire alone. I love you guys so much. Have a blessed day or night whenever you're listening to this. Until the next time, ciao for now.