Customer Reviews

Keeping the Heart (Puritan Writings)

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I have said to my students that if I were locked away for the rest of my life and could only have 3 books with me, I would take my Bible, Calvin's Institutes and Keeping the Heart. Flavel's "Keeping the Heart" is, in my opinion one of the best books written since the close of the Apostolic age. Flavel is a man who walked with his God - you can sense that as you read. I think this is the most important and also most ignored aspect of the whole of the Christian life: The keeping and right ordering of the heart. Flavel shows that heart work is not only the most important but also the hardest work. THIS heart work is what separates those Christians who go about their business for decades without giving thought to their hearts and those who commune with the Lord in all that they do. Read this book Christian! You will be so blessed.

Puritan John Flavel (1630-1691) in Keeping the Heart (originally titled: A Saint Indeed or The Great Work of a Christian Opened and Pressed) has proven to be a steady and timely friend to me over the last year. This book has been a near constant companion during that time and I have made my way through it a number of times. I suppose that I am familiar enough with the book now to write a review so that others may be encouraged to spend time with this heart-shepherding work as well; however, I in no way do I feel that I have mastered its contents or the practice of them. I am convinced though that this book will prove to me to be a lifelong companion whose true worth I could only underestimate.

Using Proverbs 4:23 ("Keep your heart with all vigilance for from it flow the springs of life."), Flavel creates a treatise designed for all professing Christians. The aim is that the contents of the heart be laid bare, so that sin which is present is seen as sin and dealt with as a believer should and that the heart be guided to be pure in its devotion and affection for God. He does this, not with law, but by constantly pointing the believer to God's grace as the grounds and means for his sanctification. Flavel is not content to merely convey information, rather, with each point he carefully takes aim at your very soul and deftly fires shot after gospel-saturated, God-glorifying shot. Make sure you read this book slowly and prayerfully, allowing each purifying blow to have its full affect on your heart.

The treatise is basically broken down into four sections:
1."What keeping the heart presupposes" (Six statements describing what is basic in keeping the heart).
2."Why keeping the heart is a great business" (Six statements and their exposition explaining why the life of a Christian should be described as a life of "keeping their heart")
3."Special seasons for keeping the heart" (104 specific pieces of advice particularly tailored for 12 seasons of life in which special diligence is necessary to guard the heart)
4."Uses" of means in keeping the heart (Examples and guidelines on using information, exhortation, direction, and consolation in the keeping of the heart).

Keeping the Heart is a work that is difficult to navigate without seeing the "big picture" of what Flavel is setting out to do. I therefore recommend you acquire a copy that includes the "Outline" by Maureen Bradley. Each of the statements, seasons, or uses alluded to in describing the structure of the work has many subpoints underneath it. I would recommend in your reading that you decide to either read one statement/season/use at a time (roughly 10 pages a piece, although they vary dramatically), or to use it devotionally in much smaller chunks by reading one subpoint at a time. After your first time through the work, you will then be able to quickly navigate to the heart-shepherding help that is particular to your struggle or circumstance.

You will be well-served to read Keeping the Heart, working through the 17th century language (Flavel is not nearly as difficult as many other Puritans and the Soli Deo Gloria edition has helpfully modernized spelling, formatting, and grammar).

This is very good work by the fearless Puritan John Flavel. The whole book is basically a discourse on Proverbs 4:23: "Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life". There are wonderful insights and powerful exhortations dealing with the subject of heart-keeping, and the writing style is easily understood, the sections concise and straightforward. The only drawback is the particular edition Amazon sells - the fascimilie is full of technical errors in punctuation, words cut-off, sentence jumbling. It can get to be a little distracting, like a trainwreck in the middle of a paragraph, severing your concentration till you figure out and try and piece together the typographical error.

Otherwise, a very helpful book for believers concerned with keeping their hearts pure before God. Highly recommended.

"The heart of man is his worst part before it is regenerated, and the best afterward," Flavel writes. "It is the seat of principles, and the fountain of actions. The eye of God is, and the eye of the Christian ought to be principally fixed upon it."

But what ought we to look for in our self-assessment of our heart? And what dangers assail it given certain seasons in our lives? Flavel is a master physician, giving us the answers to both those questions using as his diagnostic tool the word of God. Indeed every pointer, every prescription, cites Scripture to lend it authority and sends the reader back to the word of God wherein lies our ultimate health. Distilled here is the wisdom of a man of God in whose company we will recharged to "keep our heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life" (Prov. 4:23).