December 14, 2025
“Guard your heart more than anything else, because the source of your life flows from it.” Proverbs 4:23 (GW)
“Watch over your heart with all diligence, For from it flow the springs of life.” Proverbs 4:23 (NASB)
“Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.” Proverbs 4:23 (NLT)
“Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.” Proverbs 4:23 (ESV)
“Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” Proverbs 4:23 (NIV)
There are moments in life when the body reveals what the heart has been silently carrying. I remember a season many years ago when my own body cried out in a way I could no longer ignore. I had been rushed to the hospital with severe chest tightness, shortness of breath, and symptoms that looked and felt like a heart attack. After three days of tests and constant monitoring, the diagnosis came back as “asthma.” Yet deep inside, I knew my body was telling the story, my heart had been trying to communicate for far too long.
Physically, I was exhausted working a full-time and a part-time job while pressing through Bible college and later seminary. Emotionally, I was carrying disappointments, frustrations, and deep unspoken anger. As a divorced mother, I shouldered responsibilities alone that should have been shared. My son Anthony and daughter Portia were in college, and while I wanted to feel supported, I often felt abandoned and overwhelmed by what their father chose not to do. Socially, I had withdrawn. I was too wounded to trust, too busy to rest, and too overwhelmed to feel. Spiritually, though active in church, studying Scripture, and faithfully serving, I was running on a half-tank. I was doing church work, but I wasn’t doing the work of the church within my heart. Publicly dedicated, privately depleted.
And it was in that vulnerable place that God began to teach me personally what I would later teach others in my book Every Beat of My Heart. He used the condition of my physical heart to reveal the condition of my emotional and spiritual heart. I learned that healing from within is impossible when the heart remains unguarded, overloaded, and untreated. God began showing me that Proverbs 4:23 was not merely a verse to quote, it was a life-saving command!
“Guard your heart more than anything else, because the source of your life flows from it.”
That season became the birthplace of what would later become my ministry, “Healing From Within.” It is my passion and is deeply important to me because I have lived the consequences of an unhealed heart. I learned firsthand that you can love God, serve faithfully, work diligently, and still be slowly breaking on the inside. Untreated emotional wounds, unaddressed anger, unspoken resentment, and spiritual depletion do not stay buried; they eventually surface in the body, the mind, and the soul. My physical crisis was simply an echo of an overwhelmed heart. God was showing me that true wholeness does not begin with medication, accomplishments, or more activity. It begins in the heart. When the inner life is healed and aligned with Christ, everything else, physically, relationally, emotionally, socially, and spiritually, begins to change.
As I reflect on that chapter of my life, the emotional wounds, the quiet anger, the disappointment, the unforgiveness I tried to bury, I recognize a truth deeply connected to this Christmas message:
The Heart Cannot Heal While Holding What God is Asking us to Release.
Recently, I finished teaching a BC-1 class, “Self-Confrontation,” with Dr. Thelma Caruthers at New Hope Missionary Baptist Church, Dr. Arron L. Chapman, Pastor. As we listened to the students’ closing testimonies, our hearts were moved. They spoke openly about anger, rebellion, unforgiveness, unresolved disappointment, hidden wounds, and long-standing emotional burdens. These were not just isolated issues; these were heart issues and barriers to spiritual growth. Obstacles to emotional stability. Roots that impacted physical health, relational interactions, and inner peace.
Listening to their stories, we realized how timely and necessary it is, especially in the Christmas season, to address these hindrances to wholeness. Christmas is the celebration of our Savior’s arrival, the One who came to make us whole in every area of life: spirit, soul, and body. And Paul reminds us in 1 Thessalonians 5:21-23 that God desires to sanctify us completely, preserving our whole being blameless and whole. God cares about our thoughts, our emotions, our relationships, our physical bodies, and our spiritual condition.
But wholeness cannot take root in a heart clogged with bitterness and unforgiveness. It cannot flourish in a soul weighed down by
unforgiveness or resentment. These issues are not only spiritual, but they also affect us mentally, relationally, emotionally, socially, and physically. They block the very healing Jesus came to bring.
And so, this Christmas, I feel compelled to share about a gift we often leave unopened: the gift of releasing bitterness, forgiving fully, and allowing God’s healing to flow from the inside out.
If we truly want to walk in the wholeness God desires, we must first confront what is happening within us. Healing From Within is not optional; it is essential.
Whatever we refuse to address will eventually address us. Whatever we do not surrender to God will continue shaping our health, our peace, our relationships, and even our witness.
HEART CHECK: What is your heart silently holding that God is gently asking you to release: bitterness, unforgiveness, resentment, the acid of old anger, trauma, unresolved disappointment, or hurt? Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal the places where your heart is still tender, wounded, or guarded. Ask yourself if you are allowing yourself to feel what you feel?
This is the season to lay our hearts before the One who came to heal them. This is the season to open the gift of forgiveness. This is the season to open the gift of healing. This is the season to open the gift of wholeness that Christ Himself came to bring.
HEART CHALLENGE: The Gift You Must Unwrap
- Lay down the bitterness. Bring it to the Savior -the Lord Jesus Christ, name it, and release it.
- Surrender the grudge. It is heavier than you think; let God carry what you were never meant to hold.
- Forgive even if the other person never apologizes.
- Forgiveness is between you and God. Reconciliation is between you and the other person. Only one is required.
- Open your heart to healing. You cannot pour in grace where bitterness is blocking the flow.
- Receive Christ’s peace.
This is the peace the angels declared that first Christmas night: “Peace on earth, goodwill toward men.” Luke 2:14. It wasn’t just a greeting; it was a healing announcement.
A RELEASING 
HEART: A releasing heart is a heart that has decided to surrender and release what Christ has died for! It is the heart that chooses freedom over familiarity with pain. It lets go of bitterness, unforgiveness, and resentment ~ not because the hurt was small, but because Christ is greater. A releasing heart trusts God with justice, healing, and restoration, allowing His peace to replace what once poisoned the soul. When the heart releases what weighs it down, it creates space for healing, wholeness, and the life God intended to flow freely within.
The Heart Cannot Heal While Holding Onto What is Hurting It.
PRAYER: Father God, thank You for Your authoritative, inerrant, and inspired Word that gives us clear instruction on how we can make room for the healing that Christ came to bring. Father God, thank You that Your healing power touches every part of who we are, spirit, soul, and body. Lord, we release what has wounded us so that You can heal us from within. Teach us to open our hearts daily to Your truth and surrender every wound into Your loving hands. Heal us from within, Lord. Remove bitterness, fear, guilt, and shame, and replace them with Your peace, joy, and freedom. Let our lives reflect Your grace, and may our healing become a testimony of Your transforming love, in the Precious, Powerful, and Preeminent Name of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen.
✨ An Invitation
If you desire to continue the journey of healing, wholeness, and restoration in Christ, I warmly invite you to join me in my Facebook group, Healing From Within ~ A Journey to Wholeness in Christ. It is a safe, faith-filled space where we encourage one another, share biblical truth, and walk together toward healing from the inside out. You don’t have to walk this journey alone.
👉 Join us here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/940168626404532 ~ Healing From Within – A Journey to Wholeness in Christ
REFERENCES: Logos Bible Study, WORDsearch, Life Application Series, Various Study Bibles
