This has long been my husband’s favorite hymn. The song has an Irish tune, and the Irish notes are heard in the melody still. The hymn was written with five verses though four are only ever published in most hymnals. I want to look at the rare third verse. The song is in the public domain, and you can find the song at www.hymnary.org.

As I read over verse three, there is so much packed into the four-lined stanza. I could go into spiritual warfare, delighting in the Lord, the Lord is our refuge our strong tower, and he is our power who will take us to be with him either in death or at the end of all things.  Here is the verse that is left out of most hymnals.

Be thou my breastplate, my sword for the fight;
Be thou my dignity, thou my delight.
Thou my soul’s shelter, thou my high tow’r;
Raise thou me Heav’nward, O Pow’r of my pow’r.

The writer prays “Be thou my breastplate.” Ephesians 6 speaks of the armor of a Christian. Part of this armor is the breastplate which protects a soldier’s heart. A soldier cannot survive long on a battlefield if his chest and heart are exposed. As Christian soldiers, we are the same. We need to protect our heart. Many things are shot at us throughout a day aimed at taking out our heart.

Proverbs 4:23

Watch over your heart with all diligence,
For from it flow the springs of life.

In other words, what we fill our heart with is what will pour from our life. The bible has much to say about protecting our heart and how what we put in our heart comes out in our life.  Jesus in speaking to temple leaders put it this way,

Matthew 12:34

You offspring of vipers, how can you, being evil, express any good things? For the mouth speaks from that which fills the heart.

So, the question is, how can I protect my heart? I think there are three areas of our life in which we can guard our hearts: what we watch, what we listen to and what we dwell on.

I am not here to tell you to stop watching television or stop listening to music you like or to only read a certain kind of book. You must work that out with the Lord. However, you remember the old adage, “garbage in, garbage out,” well it is true. What we watch on television or the movies we choose to go see fills our hearts with violence, perversity, and other sins that make it easy for us to accept and turn a blind eye to in society. There are things on television now that would have been shocking only a few years ago. Yet we have become accustomed to these things as common place. They should still be shocking.

We also guard our hearts by what we listen to. Music is a powerful medium. We listen to music for many reasons. When we need some background noise to enhance study, when we are celebrating, when we are sorrowful, when we want to relax. Some people will say they listen for the words. While others say it is about the beat. Either way music gets into our heart. Will it not be better for it to be music that uplifts rather than songs about cheating, stealing, murder, abuse of all kinds? Again, it is about choices. I am not going to tell you what kind of music to listen to, but I will say that what we put in our ears and eyes affects our hearts.

This is also true with what we read. I am a reader. I would surround myself with books if I could. My family toured a home the other day which had a library which at one time contained 50,000 books. It was a dream for me. I could imagine the books I would place in such a space. I don’t read my Bible all day. I have favorite genres I go back to and some I don’t come near to touch. Even within the genres I enjoy there are still some I stay away from. Books, more specifically, words have a way of getting deep into our hearts and minds. The psalmist perhaps understood this when he wrote this verse:

Psalm 119:11

¹¹ I have treasured Your word in my heart,
So that I may not sin against You.

It is so important that we have a regular plan for putting God’s word in our heart. One way is to memorize a verse each week. As we work through memorizing the verse we meditate on the verse and spend time on the meaning. The process strengthens our breastplate and in turn guards our heart.

Our stanza of study become even more beautiful when we consider how connected it is. We move from breastplate to sword. God’s word is our sword. As we learn to spend more time in His word, our bible becomes a sword against the things we see on television, in movies, what we listen to in music, and what we read and ultimately what we dwell on. He is our refuge and strong tower. The more time we spend in his word the more he becomes our dignity and delight.  He is our hiding place when the world is too much, and our soul needs a break from the craziness that is the world.

We cannot do this on our own. We need him to be our breastplate. We need him to be our dignity. We need him to be our sword and our strong tower. If you are struggling today with your breastplate and realize your heart is unguarded in any of these areas I have mentioned, take it to him and let him be your vision and your power.

Angela