Keep the Heart

Welcome back to Proverbs chapter 19 on Build Your Bible Habit. The theme of upright living is woven throughout this chapter, giving us principles to put into practice right away. If you haven’t started doing so, I suggest that you pray before listening to these Proverbs. Ask the Lord to show you what to work on from the chapter, and then watch for pop quizzes throughout your day. Remember, sometimes people are the "tests" in life.

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Here’s a question I’ve been asked a lot since my Norman passed away: "Francie, are you ever going to remarry?" There’s nothing wrong with the question itself, but may I tell you how it sounds to my ears? (I am only speaking for Francie here, not for all of widowkind!) It sounds like this:

Francie, when are you going to become whole again?

Francie, when are you going to stop being single?

Francie, what’s a nice girl like you doing i...

REPLAY THURSDAY: Guile is the art of being deceitful, dishonest, and double-dealing in our interactions with others. Guile is easy to practice because it's carnal, and carnal behaviors come naturally.

It's also problematic, because a person with guile cannot be trusted. Genuine Christianity is hard to find, but if we'll let God "create clean hearts" within us, we can become people who are without guile. Without the false front.

Rea...

Does it seem to you like people are more stressed out lately? The further we move along the timeline of what the Bible calls “last days,” the more we are seeing people who are operating in a constant level of distress. But is this our lot in life? Do we have to live as if life is ganging up on us and we have no way to stop it?

It’s unreasonable to expect life to be free of trouble. Job recognized this when he spoke these words in J...

REPLAY THURSDAY: A friend of mine once said to me, "If you don't like my cooking, lie to me." She was just kidding, but it reminded me how easy it is for us to pick and choose when we're going to lie or tell the truth. Lying is habit forming, but it is also a breakable habit.

When we know better, we can do better. God can help us to remove this habit from our lives, but we will need to ask for His help and yield to His Word.

"Remov...

Welcome back to BUILD YOUR BIBLE HABIT, the popular audio Proverbs series. Chapter 29 opens with a warning about being stubborn:

"He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy." (Proverbs 29:1)

Stubbornness can fill our lives with unnecessary chaos and pain. This is another loaded chapter, and it will take you less than five minutes to read and listen!

Visit the shop links be...

Welcome to REPLAY THURSDAY, where you'll hear the most popular episodes from the previous season. This episode first aired on February 13, 2023, the day before Valentine's Day. Not exactly the kind of episode for a romantic holiday, but thousands of downloads later, it was one of the most played episodes of 2023.

It's devastating to hear about marriages and families exploding because of inappropriate relationships. This has become ...

BUILD YOUR BIBLE HABIT with the daily Proverbs system. 

You won't have to wrestle with yourself to develop and embrace this habit. Simply press play. In four minutes, you've covered one chapter of Proverbs. Repeat this daily, and you'll finish the entire book of Proverbs every month!

Gain wisdom, increase in understanding, and learn how to handle the issues of life while deepening your walk with God. 

"Keep thy heart with all dilig...

AN INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR KATHY ASHLEY

When Kathy Ashley heart about "AI," those letters brought two different words to her mind. Not "artificial intelligence," but Arrogance and Ignorance. This is the kind of AI that leads to an artificial inflation of self, and it's hazardous to our spiritual health.

Arrogance is pride on steroids. When you mix arrogance with ignorance, this creates a puffed up conceit that is deceptive. We can be...

BONUS BIBLE SERIES: Build Your Bible Habit! 

Do you struggle to get into Scripture daily? You're not alone, but this problem can be fixed and we'd like to help. For years, people have used the Proverb-a-Day system to build a daily Bible reading habit, and it has been very successful in helping people to develop a daily habit of reading and Bible study. If you've been repeating the same mistakes and falling in the same ditch, perhap...

Welcome to a REPLAY REFRESHER from Keep the Heart!

"Don't Be Fooled" first aired in January of 2023, and thousands of downloads later, people are still clicking this episode. These are confusing times, and we need more wisdom and discretion to be alert to the hazards of falling from the truth of God's Word. 

Have you ever listened to someone who was trying to sound like they knew what they were talking about, but you could tell tha...

BUILD YOUR BIBLE HABIT with daily Proverbs

Are you still trying to develop a habit of daily Bible reading? Here's an easy way to begin: one daily Proverb. In less than five minutes per day, you'll be on your way to building a Bible habit that will lead you from reading to studying and more!

Here's another practical tip: quit putting it off. Enough with the delays and excuses. Grab your ear buds and your Bible. You can do this. You'...

Wouldn’t it be great if we could have advance instructions from God for the day? I mean, what if God could warn us in writing, guiding us to the right way to handle stressful situations that often catch us off guard? Wouldn’t that be grand?

God already does this. He gives us instructions in advance, but we don’t always read or heed them. Instead, we try to live the Christian life on our own terms, making up solutions as we go along...

Build Your Bible Habit is the popular audio Proverbs series, available in a complete library here: Build Your Bible Habit Audio Proverbs Library

By reading along or listening to a daily chapter of Proverbs, you will develop the habit of being in the Word daily. Soon, Proverbs won't be enough. You'll want more. The Bible is bottomless!

BOOKS IN THE SHOP AT KEEP THE HEART

Ponder the Path: A 31-Day Devotional by Francie Taylor

Fret No...

Christmas Replay

This episode, "Minimizing Strife at Family Gatherings" is one of the most-replayed episodes in our podcast library. There's something about "the most wonderful time of the year" that tends to bring out the some of the least wonderful qualities in people. How can we have gatherings with loved ones who have strongly held opinions that differ from ours without things turning into a war of words?

Or what about the gues...

BONUS BIBLE SERIES REPLAYS: Welcome to Proverbs chapter 14 on Build Your Bible Habit. This chapter covers the wise, the foolish, the scorner, the backslider, the angry person and more! Once again, God has given us instructions on the right and wrong ways to live. It’s like being served a meal where there are things that we really like mixed with things that we’d rather not eat, even though they’re very good for us. We need both for...

How many of you love it when things go according to plan? Most of us do, but real life inserts some strange changes when we least expect it. In fact, that’s part of our problem: we expect things to go normally all the time.

Things may go way off script: The wedding wasn’t supposed to be called off, but suddenly it was. The doctor appointment was supposed to be just a routine check-up, not a frightening diagnosis. The car was runnin...

Welcome to Teachback Tuesday, where we replay the most popular episodes from previous seasons. This episode, The Empty Chair and Other Firsts of Grief is approaching the 10,000 download mark, which tells us something we already knew: grief is an ongoing rotation in life. Some of us are in the roles of comforters, while others need comforting. When it's our turn to grieve, we experience how deeply life changes with the absence of a ...