Guarding Our Gates

Our homes are important. They should be sanctuaries and havens from the rest of the world. It doesn’t matter what size they are or what kind of decor they have, it is the atmosphere which identifies it as a sanctuary or a sanatorium. Both are places that protect from the outside world, the difference being is that life dwells in the sanctuary while death inhabits the sanatorium.

What are the steps that we can take to ensure that the atmosphere of our homes brings life to those who enter? It is the presence of God that brings life, Ezekiel 47:9, and we know that God inhabits the praise of His people, Psalm 22:3, but what inhibits His inhabiting?

In Psalm 101, God tells us that He will come to us when we ‘give heed to the blameless way’. What is the blameless way? He tells us that it is walking within our homes in the integrity of our hearts, (verse 2).

So what does that mean in a practical sense? (Or, how do we know we are?) The next several verses give us some clues to know that we are walking in integrity.

(Verse 3) “I will set no worthless thing before my eyes.” That should be a given, but sometimes we get all caught up in day to day survival and we forget that our eyes are one of the door ways to our hearts. Job understood how important it was to guard what we see that he even made a covenant with his eyes not to look at what he knew he shouldn’t look at. Job 31:1.

It in not only the blatantly wicked things we must keep out, it is also the useless and time stealing sources of impute. For example, have you ever leafed through a magazine, (maybe in a doctor’s office) just to ‘kill time’? When we do that, we open ourselves to pictures and words that may not be profitable while disobeying God’s command to redeem the time because the days are evil. Am I suggesting that all magazines are evil? No, but anytime we do something specifically to ‘pass’ or ‘kill’ time, we are in disobedience to God’s word.

Another doorway to our heart is our ears. Verse 5 of Psalm 101 states: Who ever secretly slanders his neighbor, him I will silence. This is an interesting verse. Written, I believe specifically to give instruction to the church. Unlike the world, which openly badmouths and gossips about one another, Christians tend to do it ‘secretly’. We frame our gossip in prayer requests veiled in the utmost concern. How do I know that? Never mind.

It’s hard sometimes to stop someone when they are sharing, but if we say, “Wait. I will pray for so & so, but I don’t need the details because I can’t change them. God is the One who can change them and He already knows the details.” Job 12:11 says “Does not the ear test words?” We need to test the value of any words wanting to make they’re way through the door of our ears.

Jesus said that the things that defile us are within our hearts. Matthew 15:18. How does that stuff get in there? Not by what we eat, but by what we see and hear.

So, let’s say that we have some of that ‘junk’ in there? Then what? Cry out to the Lord with David in Psalm 51:10, “Create in me a clean heart, O God.” Then claim His promise in Jeremiah 32:38, which says that He will give us singleness of heart and action so that we will fear Him for our own good. It is the fear of God that will enable us to guard our gates.

We do not have the luxury of being passive. It is imperative that we ‘give heed to the blameless way' and guard what comes through our gates so that the presence of God will come to our house while we are walking in the integrity of our heart.
Senia Owensby
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