Guard Your Own Spirit

Through the prophet Malachi, God speaks to men who had grown careless with their marriages, and he says, "guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth." The word guard suggests a watchman on a wall, someone awake and paying attention while others sleep.

Faithlessness rarely arrives all at once. It creeps in through small unguarded moments, a late night with the phone or a look held a second too long. God tells a husband that the place to stand watch is his own spirit, the inner life where these things take root long before they show. Many men guard their outward behavior while leaving the heart undefended, and then wonder why they keep falling.

If your spirit has been left unguarded, the God who commands the watch is also willing to help you keep it. He does not ask you to stand on that wall alone. Ask him tonight to guard your heart where you cannot, to make you alert to the first small compromise, and to keep you faithful to the woman he joined to you.