Sylvia Neusch: Above All Else Guard Your Heart
Sep 12, 2026
[Editor's note: Below is a transcribed excerpt from Sylvia Neusch's ElijahForce interview, hosted by Julie Smith. You can watch the full episode, "God Is Close to the Brokenhearted," using the link at the bottom of this article.] Guard Your Heart and Keep the Waters Flowing Sylvia: "The Lord, He kept highlighting this one verse. It's a key Scripture for us, and it's Proverbs 4:23: 'Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life' (NIV 1984). And I just kept hearing Him say that. "This was personal for me, first, as I was navigating, watching, and listening to these exposures; sometimes it was people we knew, or people we had respected or followed... And He just kept saying, 'Guard your heart. Guard your heart.' So I spent some time with Him, just kind of like, 'Okay, well, what does that look like? What do You want me to guard and how?' "And He just really let me spend some time meditating on that [verse]. And you know where it talks about how the heart is like the wellspring of life? Well, we have a little fountain on our back patio... and I like the sound of running water, so that is why I had it, but it became pretty quickly a bird feeding [area]. Birds were playing in it; they'd come to drink, and squirrels and rabbits and bunnies were coming up on my porch and drinking out of it. It's a little fountain; it's not very large. It's got a little pump, and it continually runs; I just leave it plugged in. But over time—the debris from the stuff that the birds are putting in there, or whatever, and just the pollen in the air—things begin to clog it. We have hard water here, and it gets clogged. I have to take it inside and clean it, run vinegar water through it so that it's flowing. And the Lord began to show me a picture of that. Our heart, it's a wellspring; it's supposed to be flowing. And yet if it's clogged, then it can't. It just stops. It just becomes stagnant. He showed me that picture. "He said in John 7 that out of your belly shall flow rivers of living water. So that's the picture we're supposed to be—this wellspring of water flowing out of us, this river of living water, and yet the enemy wants to pollute our wellspring. He wants to stop that flow. So I felt the importance of guarding our heart is so pivotal right now for the Body of Christ. We Keep the Lens Clean So We Can See God Clearly "I felt like He also showed me our heart is like a lens. "I love taking pictures on my iPhone. I love photography and just finding the perfect picture. We've probably all had this experience of taking a few pictures and then looking at them and seeing that they're foggy. I realize, 'Oh no, my lens was dirty.' And that happens so easily, because your phone is all over the place. It's in your hands; it's in your purse. I have to clean that lens or the pictures will get cloudy, and our heart is really like that as well. It's another picture. It's like the wellspring, but it's also like a lens.
"I think many times we forget that we are to be stewards over our heart, to walk in purity of heart. And that entails a number of different things. It's not just a one and [done] thing, but there's a number of different ways that our heart can be affected. How Did They Miss It? "So the Lord had me start looking at some things in the gospels, where we see that people missed the reality of who Jesus was. He was there, He was the Messiah, He was in their midst, but yet they were blind. They just didn't see Him for who He was. And many times we find that they had a preconceived idea or a lens—a religious lens—that they were looking through, and it caused them to miss who He was. It was a muddy perception that caused their heart to not really see who God was. "There's a place in Matthew 23:25 where Jesus was talking to the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, and He was telling them, 'You're focusing on cleaning the outside of the cup, but the inside is dirty.'" Julie: "Yeah, I remember that." Sylvia: "Yeah, and it's such a good picture. So often we're so focused on the outside of the cup, [when] He was like, 'Look at the inside of the cup. Look at the inside.' To me, that was really that religious lens that was just missing who Jesus was. So only the pure in heart could see and perceive what He was doing. Above All Else "In all of that, I feel like the Body of Christ is in a place of needing an upgrade and an awareness in our perception of how the enemy works to cloud our hearts, and just be on our guard. When it says 'Above all else, guard your heart,' that's a pretty big statement. This is hyper important, super important—ABOVE ALL ELSE. So number one on the list: guard your heart. "This is what Solomon was sharing with his sons: 'Above all else, guard your heart.' I hear that father telling his sons that." Julie: "Now, when you talk about guarding your heart for today, maybe list some things that we should guard our hearts against, like sin, offense, unforgiveness, anger—you know, things that are not the fruit of the Spirit. What do you see that people need to guard their heart [against] today that they struggle with?"
Jesus Was Distressed at Their Hardened Hearts "So another situation that came up with Jesus is in Mark 3:5. And just giving a little background, Jesus was in the synagogue, and He saw this man with a shriveled hand, and He was obviously itching to heal him, but He also was aware that the religious were there, and they were looking for a way to trap Jesus... "So it says in Mark 3:5, 'He looked around at them in anger [this is Jesus], and deeply distressed at their hardened hearts, said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." And he stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored' (NIV). "I think this is a really good case to see that Jesus was angry. Sometimes we think feeling angry is a sin; it's not. It's an emotion that we feel. But it's about what we do with that anger. There's a verse where it says, 'Be angry and sin not.' That's in Ephesians [4:26]. Well, Jesus was angry, but He sinned not. And we know a number of different times where He turned over the tables in the temple. There were other times where He did some pretty radical stuff that may not fit our picture of Jesus, but He was angry. "Then it says He was deeply distressed. And what was he distressed at? Their hardened hearts—deeply distressed at their hardened hearts. He was distressed that they were condemning and accusing Him because He showed mercy to a man, and they were standing in a direct contradiction to what God wanted to do. They were choosing law over grace. This is where they were. This was, I think, so key that He was distressed at their hardened hearts. I think when our hearts are hardened He's distressed over that as well. "The word for hardness in that verse is pórósis, which means 'covering with a callous'; it's 'obtuseness of mental discernment' or 'dulled perception' (Strong's G4457). And I thought that was so key. That word 'hardness' may sound kind of simple to us, but there's a deeper thing there. "And so the enemy really wants to derail us through our hurts, the things that come in that cause that hardness of heart. I think why is because he doesn't want us to be able to see or perceive God. It causes a separation. "I know I've experienced times where maybe I'm sensing God saying to do something, and maybe I choose not to, for whatever reason, delayed disobedience or whatever. Then, if we keep doing that, there's a hardness of heart that develops. So the enemy is always working to cause separation between us and the Father. That's what he wants to do. "This is just one way that pureness of heart or those that are pure in heart will see God. I don't know about you, but I want to be pure in heart." (To watch the full interview click here.)
Whatever you do, don't miss another ELIJAH LIST email! Subscribe here. Sylvia Neusch Sylvia Neusch is a wife, mother, pastor, author, prophetic voice, and prophetic blogger. Sylvia operates with an anointing to sense the times and seasons and encourages the Body of Christ in stewarding the current and coming move of God. Through her writing and teaching, Sylvia has a passion to encourage and equip people to discover their true God-given identity, to mature in Christ, and to walk in their God-given destiny. Sylvia and her husband, Richard, are the apostolic founding leaders and elders at True Life, a non-denominational church in Round Rock, Texas. Sylvia recently started a prophetic mentoring ministry for women called The Hundredfold Woman. Sylvia is the author of two books: Rags to Royalty, and Abba's Song: A 49 Day Journey with the Father into Healing, Identity, and Destiny.
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"He led me to the Scripture Matthew 5:8, where it says, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God" (NIV). And "pure" in the Greek in that verse means "clear" or "clean" (Strong's G2513). It's really a picture of someone that's free from mixture or anything else that would just come in to pollute us. I've always been attracted to that verse. The lens is like our heart—the ability to see God. It's an unhindered perception. It's to be pure. And the more clouded it is, the more we have trouble perceiving God. So our ability to see or perceive God is directly affected by the purity of our heart. (Photo via Unsplash)
Sylvia: "Well, this could be really broad with guarding your heart, but today, because we're focusing on walking through this time of this exposure of sin in the Church, how do we navigate walking through that? Are we walking in judgment and unforgiveness? Are we walking in anger? Are we walking in hatred? There are so many ways that the enemy can come in and try to attack us when it's not even our issue, maybe. I'm just seeing the responses online, and it's pretty eye-opening to see this level of so much anger. There's so much bitterness. And these are things that can derail us. They can absolutely derail us. And I'll share a little bit later about some of that, but there are ways that he [the enemy] tries to cause us to not be able to move forward. And bitterness, unforgiveness, and offense are the biggies. (Photo via Unsplash)
