Book Review: "Keeping the Heart: How to Maintain Your Love for God" by John Flavel

I have loved Keeping the Heart: How to Maintain your Love for God by John Flavel! First, I listened to the audiobook and was completely captivated. There were so many goodies floating past me that I wanted to think about and consider further so I purchased the book on Kindle. Though this helped, I realized what I really needed was a good, old paperback version, so I could highlight and mark thought-provoking and soul-searching sections to my heart’s content!

If you are looking for a short book that packs a big punch, then Keeping the Heart is for you! If you want a great book that will prompt deep conversations about the things of the Lord when you meet for discipleship or in a book club, then Keeping the Heart is for you! If you are longing for a solid, devotional type read that will encourage your walk, then Keeping the Heart is your book!

Keeping the Heart is Flavel’s sermon on Proverbs 4:23, which says, “Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life.” In typical puritan fashion, Flavel mines every treasure contained in this verse, then he brings it to bear upon our hearts with full doses of conviction, encouragement, and practical admonition. He begins with these words, “The greatest difficulty in conversion is to win the heart to God; and the greatest difficulty after conversion, is to keep the heart with God.”[1] There it is—the focus and intention in this book—to aid us in keeping our hearts with God! Flavel calls it, “the one great business of a Christian’s life.”[2]

Flavel explains, “To keep the heart then, is carefully to preserve it from sin, which disorders it; and maintain that spiritual frame which fits it for a life of communion with God.”[3] Flavel builds out from that definition in the book, providing observations and reasons from the Scriptures for the close attending to our hearts in keeping them from sin, strengthening them to resist temptation, and to find comfort in the manifold workings of God in our lives. Here are a few tidbits from the book to whet your appetite for more:

“The improvement of our graces depends on the keeping of our hearts. I never knew grace to thrive in a careless soul.”[4]

“The heart may be kept humble by considering of what a clogging nature earthly things are to a soul heartily engaged in the way to heaven.”[5]

“It would much conduce [contribute, lead to] to the settlement of your heart, to consider that by fretting and discontent you do yourself more injury than all your afflictions could do.”[6]

“Is it well then to repine and droop, because your Father consults the advantage of your soul rather than the gratification of your humours [whims, desires]? Because He will bring you to heaven by a nearer way than you are willing to go?”[7]

“If God leave you not in this condition without a promise, you have no reason to repine or despond under it. That is a sad condition indeed to which no promise belongs. …It is better to be as low as hell with a promise, than to be in paradise without one.”[8]

“When you go to God in any duty, take your heart aside and say, ‘Oh my soul, I am now engaged in the greatest work that a creature was ever employed about; I am going into the awful presence of God upon business of everlasting moment. Oh my soul, leave trifling now, be composed, be watchful, be serious; this is no common work, it is soul-work; it is work for eternity; it is work which will bring forth fruit to life or death in the world to come. Pause awhile and consider your sins, your wants, your troubles; keep your thoughts awhile on these before you address yourself to any duty.”[9]

“Cultivate a habit of communion with God. This will prepare you for whatever may take place. This will so sweeten your temper and calm your mind as to secure you against surprisals.”[10]

“Indeed most men need patience to die; but a saint, who understands what death will introduce him to, rather needs patience to live.”[11]

“Christian, you say your heart is dead, and do you wonder that it is, so long as you keep it not with the fountain of life? If your body had been dieted as you soul has, that would have been dead too. And you may never expect that your heart will be in a better state until you take more pains with it.”[12]

Let me close with Flavel’s own words, “Awake then, this moment; get the world under your feet, pant not for the things which a man may have, and eternally lose his soul; but bless God that you may have His service here, and the glory hereafter which He appoints to His chosen.”[13]

[1] John Flavel, Keeping the Heart: How to Maintain Your Love for God (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1999, most recent reprint 2019) 13.

[2] Ibid. 16.

[3] Ibid. 18.

[4] Ibid. 32.

[5] Ibid. 38.

[6] Ibid. 46.

[7] Ibid. 52.

[8] Ibid. 67.

[9] Ibid. 75-76.

[10] Ibid. 87.

[11] Ibid. 104.

[12] Ibid. 109.

[13] Ibid. 118