Emojis have changed communication. With a single keystroke, we can boil down complex emotions or moods to one digital image. All too often we repeat this oversimplification in life outside our phones as well. Analyzing and articulating my emotions? Hard work! Letting my moods dictate my day? Easy! But the truth is, life according to “eMOODjis” comes at a cost. Your life will turn into a rollercoaster ride, making you a hostage to fleeting feelings. That’s no way to live. And luckily, we don’t have to. God has given you the ability to control your “eMOODjis” before they take control of you. It’s work, but it’s worth it!

It’s crazy what we’ll spend our time and money to guard. Our cell phones, our cars, our lawn. We put so much time and effort into making sure these things are protected and safe. But when it comes to our heart—our emotions, moods, and feelings—we seem to constantly drop the ball. Why do we spend so much time guarding non-essential things in our lives, yet we seem to repeatedly miss the mark when it comes to defending and guarding our heart?

Well, hey, I'm going to try to keep my voice in this register, because I found that whenever I do it, it doesn't creak and crack. You should have been in first service. I'm in the midst of losing my voice. So bear with me for service. They had Pastor Elmo up here in first service. Thank God, I'm kidding. Go on Facebook, watch first service back and try not to laugh through the whole thing. But hey, I am so excited that you guys are here today and you're worshiping with us here.

Happy Father's Day to all of our dads, let's give them a round of applause days like today, obviously, are you know, kind of bittersweet, especially if you have someone that you've lost if you have a dad who's passed away. That's, that's the case for me. My dad is gone to heaven, missing my dad today, but also just thankful for my dad thinking about the things that made him so special and such a joy to be around. In a lot of ways my dad was like a stereotypical dad like the kind of stuff that you think whenever you think a dad he fit the bill. So like, really into action movies like love the Mission Impossible series. He's all about that. Loved sports, big sports fanatic, really liked cars. He was super into dad jokes, like loved dad jokes, honestly to a fault he liked just some of the ones that were just ridiculous. One of the ones I have to share with you guys, probably his favorite joke he had ever heard. And I have to tell you it because it's probably the hardest I've ever seen him laugh whenever he was trying to tell this joke. I can still remember hearing it the first time. I was in the breakfast room in my parents house with my dad, my mom. I can't remember there's someone else there. I can't remember who it was. But someone had forwarded him this joke on email. He couldn't even finish the punch line. I'm not kidding. Like he couldn't even face it. For some reason. It just hit him. So funny. So here's the joke. I'll tell it to you guys. So an elderly couple is getting ready for bed one night, the husband is already into his night clothes. He's in bed. He's under the cover. He's got a book and he's reading it. The wife is over there getting undressed, getting ready to get into her night gown. And as she does, she stands in front of the full length mirror. Again, they're an elderly couple, she looks at herself in the mirror and says, Well, I look awful. I just look awful everything is you know, just not where it used to be. And things don't have the same tightness that they used to have. And my hair. It's just completely changing colors on me. And my goodness, I just, I'm not at all where I would want to be I look terrible. Husband says nothing. Obviously she's like, a little bit perturbed by this like, hey, a compliment wouldn't be too bad right about now, right? So she says some of that stuff again. She's like I said, I'm feeling pretty bad about myself. I'm looking in the mirror and I see myself and I just, I just see all my fault and I see bad stuff all over the place. The husband still says nothing. He just keeps reading. So she decides to be more direct. So she says AHEM. I could use a compliment over here, says that to her husband. Her husband puts down the book, pulls his glasses up looks at her and says well, your eyesight is dang near perfect. My dad couldn't even finish the punch line. He was just in tears just handing the paper over like you have to read it.

But yeah, every every stereotype of a dad pretty much my dad fit into it especially mowing. Any mowers in here? Okay, I see the hands now, online? If you're a big mower, like to mow that's me. If I had $1 for every time I heard my dad say better mow, better get ahead of the grass. It's gonna rain. We're like it's not supposed to rain for like seven days. What's he talking guys? I don't want that rain to get ahead of me. I don't want the grass to get ahead of me. So he would mow constantly like even we would laugh because there's times when you'd be coming in late at night and he would be out there with the headlights on the mower mowing like oh my gosh, dad, he just loved loved mowing. And he's passed that onto me. Like I love to mow now too. Like I never had that gene, suddenly I get a house and I'm like, I'm all about mowing the lawn, keeping it nice.

In fact, I want to illustrate a little bit about how much I care about my lawn so if I can have my lovely volunteers, can we give them a round of applause as they come up to the stage. I want to show you exactly the lengths that I go to to keep my lawn nice and manicured and looking good. Thank you very much. Got all the good stuff up here. Even the push mower even the push mower. So, as this is all up here, I want you guys, we're just gonna walk through this a little bit. All right, well, there we go. Perfect. Thank you guys. So over here, we got the hose, right we've got this hose. Use this for like kind of spot treatments around the lawn, any place where like, because we actually the people who own the house before us had an irrigation system put in like we didn't do it but they were lawn fanatics like I think I like the lawn, they were like nuts about their lawn. So we don't use it a ton. We just every now and then we'll use it. But any places that can't reach, we've got the hose right, like the little spot treatments around. Got the weed whacker. So you want to make sure that everything looks nice and crisp and the lines are just right, like you want to you want it to look good, right? Here's some. Yeah, here we go. Ultimate grass repair for sun and shade, lawn begins to grow in just one week. Perfect, right, perfect. So if you have any little spots around the lawn that are kind of patchy and the grass isn't really growing in perfect, there you go. Right, you can just fix it up just like that. Over here we have some grass seed, and it has fertilizer in it. So your grass will look nice and lush, you know that really dark green color that you're looking for just a really lush looking lawn. Some of you are like, is this a church? Am I in the lawn section of Home Depot, right? And this is what you actually use to spread the seed. So you pull this back and it spreads it out. So it gets it exactly where it should go. Right. So there's that there's like a little knockoff spectracide like a knockoff roundup for weeds to be able to like spot-treat, any weeds that you would find around the place.

And then of course the lawn mower because you want to keep a cut lawn is nice and healthy. And it makes the grass blades stay healthy. And I'm sure some of you right about now, are thinking to yourself, this is a little overboard. Like you're going to all this trouble, like I've got my timer. I've been talking for going on five minutes about my lawn. It's kind of weird, right? You guys are like half expecting me to pull out my wallet and right next to a picture of my family is a picture of my yard. Like it's kinda weird. And you might be thinking to yourself, man, this feels really overboard. And that's exactly what I want you to think. That's exactly what I want you to think I want you to see all of this. All this stuff that I use to manage and protect my yard and think wow, that's a lot because it is a lot. And a lot of you actually have a lot of these items at your house you have a weed whacker, you have a lawn mower.

And what I want to call our attention to today, as we dive into this sermon is the extreme ends that we will go to, to guard something that in the end doesn't matter. Are you following me? We will go to extreme ends to guard and protect what doesn't matter. In the end, I will spend time I will spend money I will spend resources, blood sweat and tears out there to make that lawn look great. And in the end. It's just grass. It's just grass. Maybe the lawn isn't your thing. Maybe you're you're more of like a car person, right? You got a car. And so you love taking care of that and you make sure that thing is protected. You've got the premium insurance plan for that thing. Whenever you go to a parking lot you make sure you park as far away from other cars and one doesn't accidentally ding you with a shopping cart or with their car door right? You don't just go to the carwash once or twice, you've got like a monthly subscription to the carwash right like you value your car and so you are taking good care to guard it and to protect it. Or maybe you're a cell phone person and your cell phone, man you got a case for your case. You're making sure nothing happens to this thing. There's a screen protector on and there's all this different stuff here. You're making sure that it is protected and that it is good to go.

Here's a crazy one. If you're a big coffee person I just saw this marketed and not too long ago. If you're a big coffee person, they actually have heated mugs like a digital mug that you can plug in and charge and it can keep your coffee, the perfect temperature that you want it to be. Think about that. Like we care about coffee and our drinks so much that we'll buy this probably $150 coffee mug because we want to protect it, we want to protect that cup of coffee and make sure it's exactly how we want it to be, we will go to extreme ends to guard, what really doesn't matter in the end. A lawn, a cup of coffee, our car, cell phones.

So with that in mind thinking about how far we will go to guard things I want us to read this. This is from the book of Proverbs. This is what it says in Proverbs 4:18-23. This is what the writer Proverbs says. "The path of the righteous is like the morning sun, shining even brighter till the full light of day. But the way of the wicked is like the deep darkness, they do not know what makes them stumble. My son, pay attention to what I say, turn your ear to my words. Do not let them out of your sight. Keep them within your heart, for they are life to those who find them and health to one's whole body." And then here is our key verse for today. "Above all else," say it with me, "Above all else, guard your heart." your heart, not your lawn, not your cell phone, not your car. "Above all else, guard your heart for everything you do flows from it." But how often I mean, if we can just be real and honest. Instead of above all else guarding our heart. This is me included, how often do we instead guard everything else, and leave our heart just kind of on the wayside? Right? Like above all else, we guard everything else except our heart. We don't really think about what we're putting into our lives the kind of people we allow to speak into our lives. I mean, think about it, we will work day and night to protect our phone. We'll have the case lab screen protector, we'll have the insurance plan protecting our phone. Little do we realize our phone is killing us. Because every time we open that screen up, we compare ourselves to other people, we allow things that have input into our heart and into our lives, that jack up our feelings, that jack up our emotions, that get us feeling a certain way about ourselves and about our life.

We don't guard our heart nearly the way that we should. And we end up stumbling. Just like the writer of Proverbs said, we end up stumbling in the dark. And what happens is we wonder why our emotions are all over the place. We pay no attention to what's going on and and what's happening in our lives. And we wonder, man, why am I feeling this way? Why am I feeling so upset? We'll put things into our heart. We'll watch things. We'll, maybe we'll watch a silly serial killer documentary, one after another just binge on Netflix, and then wonder why am I so depressed this week, what's going on in my life, what's going on? Like, I can tell you what's going on, right? We put things into our heart that gets us depressed and down. And our emotions can be all over the place. And simply because we're just not paying attention to what's going on in our heart.

And we need to, we have got to start guarding our hearts, because here's the thing that will happen. And this is how important it is, is what we just read in Scripture, my life and your life, our heart, our emotions, our life will rise or fall to the level of our emotional health. It just will. Like wherever our ceiling is for our emotional health, that's how good our life will be. It won't get any higher than that. My life will rise or fall to the level of my emotional health. You see, I can say I'm guarding my heart, all I want I can I can say I'm guarding my lawn, all I want. Like I can tell you guys and I'm spreading fertilizer. And I'm planning seed in some places that are patchy and I'm weed whacking and I'm watering, I can tell you I'm doing all that. But I don't really need to tell you because you'll be able to see it. Right, you'll be able to see it. If you drive up to my house, all you have to do is take one look at my lawn. And you will know if I'm actually guarding it. If I'm actually managing it. If I'm actually protecting it, my care or my lack of care will show up in the same way in our lives. We don't need to tell people, man I'm working really hard on guarding my heart right now. But we'll be able to know because our life will rise or fall on how well we're guarding our heart. Our life will rise and fall on how well we're managing our emotions and our feelings and our moods. My care or lack of care will show.

It makes me think of and I've told the story before a few years ago, the first time I ever preached a sermon. The next week, the week after that I was back on stage again. I had one of these mics, right. And before service, I was going around and talking to people. There was a lady in the church, awesome lady loved her great. She has no idea that this affected me as bad as it did. But I came up to her and gave her a hug and she goes, Hey, how are you doing? I'm like, Good, good. And she saw the mic on my face and said, Oh, you're in service today. But you're not preaching are you? Like, shoot? Obviously, my first sermon was a banger. Like, you're like, Oh, crap, he's up again. Let's make an excuse. Let's get out of here real quick, right? But man that like threw me for a loop. I'm like, No, I'm just, I'm just giving the announcement today. And she's like Oh okay, okay, and walked off. She had no idea how bad that affected me. But man that messed with me, like that messed with me. Not just that week, not just that month, every time I preached like the next I can't even tell you how many times that would come up in my head. Oh, you're not preaching again? How are you? I remember crafting my sermons. And rather than just reading scripture and feeling like man, where's where's God pointing me to and what's he want me want me to say? I was so concerned with like, Man, it's got to be really catchy. And man, it's got to be really good. And I want to make sure the words rhyme. And it just has to be so good. And I was doing it out of this feeling that like, man, it was terrible. It's got to be so much better. It's got to be so much better. And luckily, I had people in my life who were emotionally healthy. People who were mentors, people who helped guide me and help process stuff like that in a better way. So now, man, now here we are years down the road. I can be up here with laryngitis talking like Elmo. And I don't care like I'm here. Here I am. Deal with it. Right? Hopefully you can pay attention with all this going on. But I'm so far down the road from where I was. Where I was so self conscious and so worried about that, man, what are people going to think about it. And I'm so much farther down the road, because emotionally healthy people helped me get through that it helped me process that and showed me how to guard my heart.

What if that wouldn't have happened? Like what if I wouldn't have had people show me how to truly guard my heart in the same way with the same veracity and the same energy that I put into guarding my lawn? When if I had that happen? Well, I can tell you easily what would have happened, I easily would have developed bitterness towards that lady. This poor lady has no idea how bad that affected me, I would have been bitter. Every time I saw or felt frustrated, right? Like I have an axe to grind against her like I have something to prove against her. Right? That would have developed in my heart, there's a chance I may have just like completely walked away from what I felt like God was calling me to do like, Well, obviously, I'm not good at this. So I must have been wrong about this being what God wants me to do. If I would not have guarded my heart. I would have missed the fulfilling future that God had in mind for me the future that Jesus died for, I would have missed it.

And I want to let you know, if you don't guard your heart, man, there are so many things you could be missing. Amazing, fantastic things that God has in mind for you. And you just missed it because your emotions are all over the place. And your moods are mismanaged. Don't let that be your situation. Guard your heart. Guard your heart. Our emotions are important. That's why they need guarded. You only guard things that have value, right? You only guard things that have value, only guard things that are important. And let me tell you, your emotions are important. And because they're important, they're under attack. Like your moods and emotions, I'll grant you that sometimes, sometimes it absolutely is just life. And sometimes it absolutely is just how you're feeling that day. But not always. Maybe you are under attack. Truly every single day you can be under attack, and your emotions and your moods and your feelings can be under attack. So guard them, guard them like they're important. guard them like they're valuable.

Because here's the fact, you may be here today and you hear us talking about emotions. And you're thinking this sounds more like a counseling session. Right? Like I said a few weeks back this feels more like an episode of Dr. Phil talking about our moods and our feelings and our emotions. You can think that all you want but here's the thing, you may not place value on your emotions but your enemy does. So you can be sitting back saying like well then whatever it is doesn't really matter. Emotions are just whatever. Let me tell you your enemy, he knows where your goat is tied. He knows where your goat is tied, he knows that your emotions, your moods, and your feelings are important. So he places value on attacking them. That means if we want to have any kind of life that matters, we have got to put effort and energy and decision making power into guarding our emotions, guarding our feelings, guarding our moods. They're important.

Whenever I think about my lawn, one of the things that it does is it gives your house curb appeal, right? Like me and my wife, Jessica, we watch HGTV all, you know, all those shows. And one of the things that they say is how important your lawn is to curb appeal, that a lot of people just kind of forget about it. But the fact is, you're gonna have a house that's looking kind of messed up, like you could have, you have paint that's kind of gotten worn a little bit, you can have shutters that need replaced, you can have all those things. But if your lawn is lush, and green, and healthy, it covers up a lot of that. People can drive up and it's like a nice house. And it's all from your grass. That's how important it is, very valuable, very important to have a good looking lawn. If you want to have a house that looks nice. But here's the thing, your lawn is so hard to keep looking that way. Like it is so hard. And it's because it's constantly under attack. There is, there are bugs and different kinds of mites and different things like that, that are trying to eat away and destroy a healthy lawn. There are different kinds of animals and moles that will rip up your yard and tear it to pieces. There are different kinds of weeds that will just infiltrate your lawn and just tear it apart. If you're not careful, there's heat and there's lack of rain, all of these things can just destroy your lawn, just completely take it apart, it is constantly under attack. So you guard it. So you protect it. So you do things to manage it to make sure that that doesn't happen.

And if we do that for our lawn for the love, how do we so easily ignore our heart? If we do that for our phone? How do we so easily forget to do that for our heart? If we do that for our car? How do we so easily forget to do that for our emotions and our feelings an our moods? They are critical. They are valuable. And that is exactly why the enemy goes after them. Because we can lull ourselves into this idea that we're intellectual creatures, right? We can think that like that, well, that's what separates humans from the animal kingdom. We think. We think. And they're all instinct, but we rationalize and we see risk and reward and we value things like that. No, we don't. To a degree. But man, we're emotional beings, we make so many of our decisions based off emotions, and how we feel right? Like, like we may try to send our brain on a fact finding mission, to find reasons to justify the decision we made. But the decision we made is made out of moods and out of feelings and out of emotions. We are emotional creatures. And so whenever the devil sees our emotions and our moods and our feelings completely unguarded, he's like, that's where I can hit them. That's where I can hit them. That's where I can go after because they are not even remote, like remotely setting up any defense over here. Nothing at all. And so the devil knows and your enemy knows that this is true that if he's going to screw your life up, that's the best way to do it. Get you to do something stupid, because I was in a mood.

Well, you have to understand how I was feeling that day. You know how dangerous feelings are? We can all name multiple people off the top of our heads famous people whose lives have been ruined, because of what they did when they were in a certain mood. Lives that have been ruined, reputations that have been forever tarnished, because of what they did, because of how they were feeling on a certain day. The enemy's not stupid. I mean, he's not. He's not stupid. He knows exactly where to attack you, where your defenses are down. And if you are not guarding your heart, he goes, that's exactly where I'm going to go. I'm going to get them to do something stupid when they're feeling a certain way because of how they're feeling. I'm going to make them say this thing that's going to cut that person so deep, they'll never forget it. Because of the mood they're in, I'm going to have them make this decision that will forever just destroy the way people see them and the impact that they can have. You may not place value on your emotions but your enemy does. So guard your heart. Guard your heart.

Now, here's the thing. Unfortunately, it's not as simple as this. This kind of stuff. This spectrocide roundup, if you've ever used it before, I mean, it's legit, like you spray this stuff, there's, you know, like on the road, the part where like the road meets the sidewalk, I spray that with this stuff just to get it, you know, nice and clear. It's crazy the same day I spray that stuff, it'll be bright green, within two hours, it's already like a tan color. Like it's, it's, it's that effective. And the thing that's frustrating is it would be awesome if we had something like that, for our moods and our feelings and our emotions, whenever they're getting a little unhealthy that we could just instantly just oh, this is all I need to do. And it just fixes everything. That is not how it works. And you know that because there's some of you who may still be in a mood that you got into this morning because of something that happened. Trying to get kids ready or trying to get out of the house or trying to make plans later today. And it can put you in a mood. And it's just, you're off to the races now. And it would be awesome if there was some kind of like, heart round up, that you could use or like mood round up where you could just get it in check. But that's not how it works. So how do we guard our heart? How do we keep it healthy?

It's really, this is a common theme. If you've been here, Cornerstone for any amount of time, you know, it's a common theme that following Jesus, it's not complicated, but it's demanding. Right? And that's so often true in our lives, the issues that we come up against. It's not like really complicated like, well, here's what you need to do, you need to do this. And it's pretty darn simple. It's it's very demanding of us. And we don't like that. So we're like, No, just give me a complicated plan that I can just kind of 123 on instead of this demanding thing. And that's exactly how it is. Whenever it comes to having healthy emotions, if we want to have healthy emotions, if we want to guard our heart. It's very simple, but it's very demanding. And it's this: a healthy heart cost nothing but attention. That's really it. If you were to go to a store, and say I want to buy healthy emotions, I want to buy a healthy heart. The only thing you would have to pay is attention. Pay attention. Have attention in your life. Actually be focused. Notice what's happening in your life. Notice who's feeding into your life. Notice what God is saying to you, notice what your feelings are telling you. Just pay attention. Pay attention, a healthy heart cost nothing but attention again, listen to what it says in Scripture, what we just read today. "The path of the righteous is like the morning sun shining ever brighter to the full light of day. But the way of the weak is like deep darkness, they do not know what makes them stumble." Verse 20. "So my son, pay attention to what I say." Pay attention. Because whenever you pay attention and turn my ear to your words, you'll keep them within your heart. And it will lead you towards a light that is walking in the path of righteous a light, a light that is walking in the path of the light. And it's really that simple. Just pay attention. Pay attention to what's going on.

Whenever I want to take care of my lawn, how I know that I need to guard it in certain areas. How do I know if I need to use a weed whacker? How do I know if I need to put some more seed down? How do I know if I need to spray some weeds? How do I know if I need to mow the lawn? You know how I know all that? It's not through this really complicated, well, I have a bi-monthly I do this and then bi-weekly I do this and then every other month I do that. That's not it. I pay attention. It's that simple. I just pay attention. Whenever I go outside, I just looked around and I notice, and I pay attention to does it need weeded over here? Do I need to trim? Do I need to mow? Do I need to lay down seed, I just pay attention. That's it. I look for the cues that are out there. That's how I keep a healthy lawn.

I want to tell you if you want to have a healthy heart, if you want to guard your heart, look for cues like Scripture said, pay attention. I love that we're talking about paying attention on a day when it is probably so unbelievably hard to pay attention to me because of my voice, right? That's how important it is to just pay attention no matter what's going on in life. No matter what you're going through. Just look for different cues that God is putting your way. We talked about this in week one that I believe what emotions and what moods are. They're notifications. It's like a notification on your phone, moods and emotions. They're an alert to something you need to be paying attention to. So whenever you feel frustration, whenever you feel that, that mood, whenever you feel depression, whenever you feel anger, if you feel joy, whenever you feel happiness, these are all things that are saying, hey, why am I feeling this way? Like, like, why am I feeling so happy right now? Am I doing something that fulfills me? Is it because of the people I'm around, because if it's what I'm doing, I want to make sure I keep putting myself in positions to do this thing. And if it's the people I'm around, I want to be paying attention, so I know why I'm feeling so happy, why I'm feeling filled with joy, so I can pursue this again. So this can happen again, right? And I want to know, if something's causing me to feel bitterness, or resentment, or, or depression, I want to be aware enough that I don't just ride that mood out and have no idea where it came from. No, I want to be able to deal with that thing. I don't want it to grow like a weed. No, I want to be able to deal with it. And the only way I can do that is if I'm actually paying attention to the cues that come up in my life, to the emotions, to the moods to the feelings. You keep your heart healthy by simply paying attention. And it really is that simple.

It just takes work. It just takes work because it's work to really dive into your emotions and your feelings and really see what's going on there. Because it's very easy to feel like, Well, you know, I'm, I'm angry today because I was you know, I was hoping to get this stuff done on my to do list. I didn't get it done. And so I feel angry. And it's very easy to feel like Well, that's just it. That's the surface level. That's why I'm angry today. But dive under. If you never really dive below that, then you just ride that feeling out until it's over. And then it'll probably happen again. It'll happen again in your life, and you'll feel angry. But it's important. And if you really want to make progress in any of these areas, say that same scenario, you're feeling frustrated, like man, there's stuff on my to do list that I wanted to get done. I didn't get done today. But you actually process it, you pay attention, you realize, Hey, this is a notification, this is something I need to be paying attention to. So you go Okay. Why am I this upset about not getting the stuff done now? Like I'm really upset with myself, like I'm really down on myself today for not getting these things done. Why is that? And if you dive down into it, you may be looking at like, well, man, it's because I feel like that's just a bigger emblematic problem of my entire life. I never get stuff done that I need to. Not just taking the trash out. But like actual really important things, I start things I don't finish it. Like I started school, and I knew this is what I wanted to do. And I bailed on it. And I started in this relationship and things were going good. But then I started to get a little bit scared because of commitments, so I bailed on it. And man, that's why I'm so frustrated with myself for not getting this stuff done. Because I realize there's an overarching theme in my life, there is a weed that is growing up, I never get stuff done. And if you don't take the time and the work to actually process that, you'll never get to the bottom of it. You'll never actually get to the real root of the weed and actually fix it and actually get that thing addressed. Otherwise, you'll just have these moods swings your entire life.

It is so important to just pay attention. Just pay attention to what God is putting on your heart, and to actually dive in and do the work. And here's the thing. Whenever you dive in and do the work, and that work can look like a lot, it can look like prayer, like letting God actually speak to you, it can look like journaling, it can look like going into counseling, there's a whole load of what doing work can look like to get your emotions in check, whatever it is for you, you got to do it because it's that vital. And it's that important. And here's the amazing thing is that when you do that it doesn't just help you with the moods and the feelings that you're dealing with now, it helps you with the ones that are yet to come. Like it helps you into the future too.

So I told you, the people who own the house before us they were like yard fanatics right?  They had an irrigation system put in and everything like that. So the first year that Jessica and I lived there whenever it was springtime, we were like taken aback at how good the yard looked, like it looks really good coming right out of winter normally we're used to the yard looking kind of a little bit dead and the grass is all just bad looking stuff. But this house, we come out of it and it's looks great. We're like well this is kind of weird especially looking at other houses on our street right? Why is ours look so good? We realize oh, it's because the people before us did all this work. The people before us put down the treatment that's good to put down right before winter starts and and they were doing all the little things that you need to do to get it in a good place once spring comes. They did all of that work. So once the weather broke, our yard was already looking good and what it did was it made it so much easier for us to maintain what they had already built up.

The same is true with your heart, I kid you not. The same is true with your emotions and with your feelings and with your moods. Get started on it today, and the you in five years is going to be so grateful to you. Because that fulfilling future that God has in mind for you, it only happens whenever you do the work now, when you actually do the work and you get your emotions and your feelings and your moods in place now. And what's so amazing about it is as you go on in life and crap continues to happen, because it does, right? You lose people. Friendships go away, hard stuff happens. That's just how life is. But if you do the work, man, the farther you get down the road, the easier it becomes in those moments because you are healthy, just like that lawn that was treated the right way. And then the next year made it so much easier to get it back up to where it should be. The same is true with you. The more you deal with stuff, the next time life throws you a curveball, you're able to deal with it so much more healthy, and so much quicker than you ever did before.

So it doesn't just help you now it helps you later, as well. So I want to ask you, as we close out today, are you paying attention? Like are you actually paying attention to the things that are happening in your life, to the things that you're feeling, to your moods to your emotions? Can I just say that some of us the reason and I mean, this is a lot of us. A lot of us are over emotional. Don't believe me just go on social media and scroll for just a few minutes. You'll see people airing all kinds of stuff that you're like, Whoa, you posted that? Wow. Okay, you posted that. Because we're so over emotional. And I believe one of the biggest reasons, I kid you not, that we are so over emotional, is we're so busy. We are so busy. We have no time to process things, no proper time to actually process our feelings, no time to actually dive into why we're so angry or why we're so depressed or why we're so bitter or why we're so jealous. We take zero time to ever process that because we're just so busy. And so what we do is go from one dysfunctional mood to another and a lot of us waste years that way. Waste years that way.

So I want to tell you, if you want to be able to start paying attention, you have got to slow down. Slow down, I promise you, you'll save yourself time in the long run. The healthier you get now, the better you set yourself up for the future. So slow down so you can pay attention. Let God speak. Let him point out areas of your lawn that need more care that need more water that need guarded, and then above all else, guard it.

I want to pray with you. All right, Let's bow our heads. And let's pray together. Father, God, we thank you so much for the truth of your Word. We thank you that there is a path of righteousness, a path that shines ever brighter as we walk upon it. God what that says to me is that as we start taking steps in the way we should go that things can become easier for us because they become more of a habit. So God today, we want to instill the habit of guarding our heart, of actually taking our moods and our emotions and our feelings, all of these good, God given things that you've given us. And we want to use them the way we're supposed to. So God help us to submit all of those things to you. That we would actually guard our heart through the power of your Holy Spirit, that we would not be oblivious to what we're putting into our heart, that we will not be oblivious to the different things vying and competing for our heart, but that we would be aware of what's going on by paying attention. And then working with you to resolve any issues that we see. We love you so much. Father, we thank you for your promise that you're good on your word. We give you all the honor all the glory and all the praise. That's in your name that we pray. Amen.