31% of people in the world don’t have access to safe water. That’s according to water.org. That non-profit’s founder is Matt Damon. Since he’s one of my favorite actors, it got my attention when I saw an ad he did to get people behind the project of digging wells in impoverished communities around the world.
Could digging wells be the most important thing in the world for people’s physical health? Maybe so. Excited, I posed that question to my pastor, Ron B, a veteran of mission trips to the countries of southern Africa.
“It certainly would be immensely helpful for all people who can’t get water to gain access to it,” Ron told me, “but it isn’t quite as simple as digging wells.”
It turns out that many third world countries have wells in close proximity to their people, but the wells have been taken over by armed bullies who disallow access by the people for whom the wells were dug. In some places, wells are even poisoned by thugs just to keep the community’s residents weak and vulnerable.
For many people, the most important thing is to guard their community’s existing well.
Proverbs 4:23 states: Above all else, guard your heart, for out of it springs all the issues of your life.
Like many people in the world, we all have a well, one that produces everything we say and do. It makes sense that Solomon would advise us to make guarding it our top priority.
Applied to marriage, everything we say to our spouse, every kind of treatment they get from us, comes from our heart. So our marriages depend, in part, on how well we guard our hearts.
Here’s a simple tool for guarding our heart. It’s called the O.A.T.H. It works like this. Raise your right hand and repeat after me:
OFFENSE. I vow to guard my heart against every offense. I will not take offense to my spouse.
ATTRACTION. I vow to guard my heart against any ungodly attraction. I will not allow anyone or anything to steal the attraction that belongs to my spouse.
TEARING DOWN. I vow to guard my heart against any attack designed to tear down my marriage. I will not entertain the idea of my marriage being defeated.
HAUGHTINESS. I vow to guard my own heart against being puffed up. I choose, instead to be humble, taking a lower position than my spouse.
Congratulations! You’ve taken the OATH to guard your heart to protect your marriage.
Now, keeping your vow will prove to be, of all the things you could do, perhaps Most Important.