Diving Guardrails: Protecting Your Heart & Intentions
"He who keeps the commandment keeps his soul, but he who is careless of conduct will die." — Proverbs 19:16 (NASB)
I came across a Mike Waters cartoon I haven't been able to shake. Two men stand beside a rail fence labeled "God's Commands." One is fed up. "I hate being confined by this fence," he says. "I'm jumping over it." As he leaps, the other shouts, "Wait! It's not a fence — it's a guardrail!" In the final frame, the jumper is plummeting off a cliff. Beneath the drawing runs the proverb that gives it its teeth: "He who keeps the commandment keeps his soul, but he who is careless of conduct will die."
Nobody has ever resented a guardrail on a mountain road. You don't curse the steel rail for limiting your freedom — you're grateful it's there when the curve comes. That's the reframe the cartoon offers: God's commands were never a fence meant to confine us. They're guardrails set by a Father who loves us, placed at the edge of every cliff we'd drive off if left to ourselves. "He who keeps the commandment keeps his soul." Obedience isn't the price of the good life — it's the protection of it.
A few years ago, I drove straight toward one of those cliffs. I went through a very public trial, and when it ended, I was a mess — bitter, full of rage, aching for vengeance and justice. More than anything, I wanted the world to hear my side. Opportunities came: sympathetic ears, open platforms, invitations to tell it all. Everything in me wanted to take them.
But when I was honest with God, I knew my motives weren't pure. I wasn't burning to tell the story to glorify God; I wanted to be understood, defended, and vindicated. Before I took a single step, I needed the Lord to perform surgery on my heart — and I needed to wait until He had finished. My emotions were in the driver's seat, and emotions make a poor guide when they're at the wheel.
Instead of a green light, He gave me sixteen questions. Not new commandments — I want to be clear about that. God's commands are the guardrails; these questions were simply my way of examining my heart before acting and checking whether I was staying within them. Before I shared a word of my story, I had to answer each one honestly. Here are five:
Is my purpose in sharing my story to serve the Lord or myself?
Will sharing my story enhance or diminish God's glory?
Do Scriptures support sharing my story?
Will sharing my story hurt others?
Will sharing my story be a good or bad example for my daughters?
To this day, I haven't been able to answer them the way I'd need to in order to go public — so the story remains largely untold, shared only with a few close friends who asked without my prompting. I don't offer that as evidence of my discipline. Left to myself, I'd have told it years ago, motives and all. The guardrails did the holding. That's the whole testimony: not my restraint, but His protection.
I've learned to build smaller versions of the same thing. When my heart feels misaligned — when I can tell my emotions are doing the driving — I open my journal and write my guardrails before acting. There's something about seeing them in ink that keeps me honest. Memory edits itself; the page doesn't. On paper, I answer all the questions, not just the convenient ones. "Keep your heart with all vigilance," Scripture says, "for from it flow the springs of life" (Proverbs 4:23, ESV). The heart is the well everything else draws from, which is why it needs guarding more than our schedules or our words.
God's commands guard the heart from the outside. The questions we prayerfully set for ourselves guard it from the inside. Both are acts of love.
The man in the cartoon thought freedom was on the other side of the fence. It wasn't. Freedom was staying on the road. The very commandment you're tempted to climb over may be the one keeping your soul (Proverbs 19:16).
BIG IDEA: God's commands aren't a fence that confines you; they're a guardrail that keeps you from the cliff. When your motives are murky and your emotions are loud, the wise move isn't to jump — it's to name the guardrails and stay within them.
Questions to Ponder: Have you ever set guardrails to keep yourself from speaking or acting on impure motives? If you never have, what tends to happen in the heat of the moment without them? Can you remember a time you had none — and said or did something you later regretted? Looking back, what guardrail could have kept you on the road? And is there a situation in front of you right now, emotions running loud, where you need to stop and build some?
Application: With your journal in hand, bring the Lord a situation where your emotions are loud right now and you feel the pull to act — the reply you want to fire off, the confrontation you want to have, the purchase you want to make, the story you want to tell, the score you want to settle. If nothing comes to mind, look harder; we're in these moments more often than we admit. Ask Him honestly — are my motives to serve Him, or myself? — then list the ones that are really about you. Then write your guardrails — the specific questions you must answer before you act. Don't trust them to memory; put them on paper, where the whole fence stands. Commit not to cross them until every one is satisfied, no matter how strong the pull. Then, when the moment has passed, record what happened — what you didn't do and how the Lord protected you and others through your restraint. Over time, your journal becomes a record of the cliffs you never went over.