Have you ever read your Bible with your heart unengaged in the text? Have you ever prayed and found your mind wandering just a few seconds in? Served the saints without mindful care for them or any satisfaction in the Lord? I’ve heard many such testimonies over the years. Just this week I’ve re-read a portion of Puritan classic that offers help for the distracted heart and wandering mind. I’d like to share with you the high points.
John Flavel’s Keeping the Heart has been recommended on this blog before.1 I won’t go into a lengthy summary other than to note that the bulk of the book features instructions for guarding the heart during particular seasons of life. Flavel identifies one of those seasons as “the season of duty.” While we may attach negative connotations to the word “duty,” the Puritans did not. For them, duty simply referred biblically-prescribed means of serving and engaging with the Lord. In our terms, this could include anything we do in private devotions, corporate worship, or service to the lost and saved alike. In my pastoral experience, the “duty” most commonly plagued by the distracted heart and wandering mind is our personal devotions. However, the following suggestions will help in any service to God.
How can we avoid distractions in our service to God? Here are a few ways suggested by Flavel.
“Separate yourself from all earthly employments, and set apart some time for solemn time to meet God in duty.”2 Flavel notes that it is impossible to come directly from the world into God’s presence without worldly concerns filling our hearts and minds. Wisdom would call us to devote a short time to mentally and emotionally transition from mundane tasks to devotional service. We could think of this as something like the airlock in a spaceship: a transitional space between wildly different worlds allowing for decompression or recompression. Before charging into prayer, bible reading, or service of any other time, take a few moments to meditate on the reality of what you are doing.
“Having composed your heart by previous meditation, immediately set a guard upon your senses.” This is Puritan-speak for the elimination of distractions. That could mean getting electronics out of the room during your devotional time. However, some distractions cannot be eliminated. So, this may mean consecrating one’s senses to the Lord. “My eyes are devoted to serving and enjoying you right now. So also my ears.” Determine a Holy Spirit-dependent devotion of the senses to God.
“Beg God for a subdued imagination.” That is, pray fervently for God’s help in taming your restless thoughts. “Oh God, I so want to mindfully enjoy you and serve you. I confess an distracted mind. Would you please bring my thoughts into focus on you even as I determine the same?”
Contemplate the reality of God’s holy and solemn presence. “‘A man that is praying,’ says Bernard, ‘should behave himself as if he were entering into the court of heaven, where he sees the Lord upon his throne, surrounded with ten thousand of His angels and saints ministering unto him.’”3 Is it not wonderful that such a God would allow us to approach Him? He has! May we do so mindful of His glorious presence.
When your mind wanders, humble yourself before God, repent, and seek assistance. Repentance is an essential key to any kind of change in sanctification. If by our inattentiveness we minimize the greatness of God and the privilege of knowing and serving Him, we should lament our thoughtlessness. Repentance should always be accompanied by faith, therefore, we ought follow such turning with petitions for God’s help in focusing on Him that we may rightly enjoy Him in service.
“Look at the success and the comfort of your duties as if the keeping of your heart close to God depended very much on them.” The God we serve is one who said of Israel, “this people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me” (Isa 29:13; Matt 15:8). Ought we then as regenerate believers be content to pray, read, and serve with dull hearts and unengaged minds? Surely not. Flavel notes that the promise of Jeremiah 29:13 is made to the person with an engaged heart: “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” Therefore, the engagement of the heart and mind in our service to the Lord is not a peripheral issue, but central. We should ponder this.
These points are a sampling of Flavel's suggestions regarding avoiding distractions in “duty.” Further, they are but a smattering of Flavel’s teaching on keeping the heart more broadly. There is much additional timeless and timely instruction in Keeping the Heart. The whole work would be helpful to you. I certainly pray these points will be.
1 You can read a free pdf version here.
2 Quotation marks indicate direct quotations from the edition linked above.
3 St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermon 12 on Psalm 91.
Comments