ReflectionsTuesday airs each week on GospelBellsRadio.com, where Pastor Ayo Agunloye reflects on current themes from Your Potter’s House, the daily devotional he writes and publishes. This report is an edited summary of the broadcast, faithful to the teaching as delivered and prepared so that listeners and readers may revisit it, study it, and pass it on. Added Scripture references are provided to aid personal study.
Continuing October’s Your Potter’s House reflection on cultivating a heart after God’s own heart, Pastor Ayo Agunloye presses deeper into what cultivation actually requires. The month’s thread runs from Genesis 2:5—no fruit because no plants, no plants because the seed never sprouted, no sprouting because God withheld the rain, and no rain “because there was no one to cultivate the land.” Having established that the ground God is waiting for is the human heart, this week names a second responsibility that always travels with the first.
God’s original commission to humanity had two edges, not one: “dress it, and keep it.” Cultivate—and guard. Develop what He entrusts to you, and protect it.
To tend the heart without defending it, or to defend it without ever developing it, is to fail half of the commission.
🎧 Listen to the Full Episode Below
A rich, practical message, closing with an unusually candid exchange on choosing accountability partners—and whether a spouse can be one. Worth an unhurried, honest listen.
🔎 The Heart God Searches For
The pastor first recalls why the heart matters so much: God is still searching, heart by heart, for someone after His own. The search for David was no small thing. When Samuel came to Jesse’s house, he was immediately swept away by Eliab—his height, bearing, and presentation—and raised the oil to anoint him. God interrupted: “the LORD seeth not as man seeth… the LORD looketh on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). Seven sons passed; seven times, “I have rejected this one also.”
God does not search our mantras, our wall confessions, our church attendance, or how reverently we treat our pastors. He runs each heart through a spiritual test, asking one thing: after what is this heart going?
The verbs are deliberate—“the LORD hath sought him a man after his own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14); “I have found David” (Acts 13:22). To seek and to find is the language of a careful search, not a casual choice.
📜 A Commission Older Than the Great Commission
The text is Genesis 2:7–15, closing with verse 15: “And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.”
We know the Great Commission of Matthew 28:18–20, the pastor notes, but are almost unaware of any other—yet this one predates it, and predates even the fall. Before sin entered the world, God gave humanity a two-fold charge: to cultivate the garden, and to guard it.
Whatever God entrusts to us requires both responsible development and continuous protection. That principle was written into creation before anything went wrong.
🌱 The First Edge: Cultivate
God did not place Adam in Eden merely to enjoy its beauty; He gave him work. Cultivation means making what God has given productive—nurturing it to maturity, drawing out its potential, causing it to yield and multiply. Our spiritual lives, families, works, ministries, gifts, and relationships all require intentional care; none of them flourish through neglect.
The pastor makes a striking observation about the Hebrew sense of the word: to till or cultivate is the same word as to serve or worship. There is no sacred-secular divide.
When we work, we worship. When we rest, we worship. The so-called “secular” work, done unto God, is itself worship—which is why the Sabbath flows naturally within the rhythm of work, not against it.
His vivid example is Isaac (Genesis 26). Each time Isaac dug a well, the herdsmen drove him off claiming it; he simply moved on and dug again, refusing to quarrel—“you don’t fight with someone who has nothing to lose”—until he reached Rehoboth, where there was room, and reaped a hundredfold. “Where others were complaining, he was multiplying, because he was cultivating what was in him.”
The warning lands close to home, especially in church life: when we lose ourselves in grievance—they took this role from me, they gave that position to another—it is usually a sign we have stopped cultivating. “If you are doing what God has given you to do, you are too busy to complain about what people are doing to you.” And the gift to cultivate may be one others look down on. He recalls a Lagos traffic warden so joyfully diligent—directing cars with a dance—that drivers happily waited and even tossed him money, until he was eventually featured on national news, recognised, and promoted. Cultivate what is in your hand, however small it looks now; it may become the thing people celebrate later.
🛡️ The Second Edge: Guard
Cultivation alone leaves what you have developed vulnerable. “The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy” (John 10:10)—and the world is full of his agents. No one starts a poultry farm without at least a minimal barrier against the passing hand that would help itself to the eggs. God likewise expects us to protect what He has placed in our care, not leave it to the free access of the enemy.
So the command of Proverbs 4:23: “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.” The pastor dwells on all diligence—the thoroughness of corporate “due diligence.” In banking, he recalls, a single overlooked step can see heads roll even for those who neither committed nor benefited from a fraud; the old “call over” system had each clerk’s work checked and signed off by another, precisely so every person would watch carefully. In the same way, we are charged to do all diligence to keep the heart from contamination, destruction, and theft.
Do not let anyone steal your heart from God—as Delilah stole Samson’s heart from his consecration (Judges 16). Bible teachers and pastors included: if they are not endearing your heart to God, you are in danger.
Here the pastor is firm: you, not your pastor, are responsible for your heart. The Bereans were commended as “more noble” because they searched the Scriptures daily to check whether even Paul’s teaching was true (Acts 17:11). To lean on “daddy said so, bishop said so” without that check is to add a leader’s errors—even unintentional ones—to your own. He ties it back to the station’s earlier “Stop & Search” series: just as a driver checks his own papers, tyres, and fire extinguisher before the road-safety officers stop him, so we must stop and search our own hearts before life catches us off guard.
The danger is real, he warns, because “if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect” (Matthew 24:24)—and the deceived, not only the deceiver, bear the cost of being deceived. God has given us what we need to guard against it: the Scriptures, settled conviction, and accountability partners. He recounts standing utterly alone in a congregation that wanted to celebrate sin rather than call it to repentance, pressed so hard that he asked trusted brethren, “are you sure I am still right?”—and, like Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, and Daniel refusing to bend with the crowd (Daniel 3), was strengthened to keep standing. “We must not join a multitude to do evil.” The point of such partners, he adds with a gentle story of a classmate who deliberately phoned the friend who would not hold her to account: you always know who to call, depending on what you actually want.
🌟 Final Reflection
“The Two-Edged Commission” completes a vital pairing. Cultivation without protection leaves the harvest exposed; protection without cultivation produces a guarded but barren life. God’s first charge to humanity holds both together—dress it and keep it—and both must be continuous, because yesterday’s growth does not guarantee tomorrow’s stability.
So the closing question is searching and simple: Am I both cultivating my heart and guarding it? Where one edge has been neglected, the call is to repent and return to the full, God-given responsibility.
Cultivate the heart through His Word and the Spirit’s work; guard it against all that would draw you from Christ. Keep both, and everything else God has placed in your hands begins to fall into place.
❓ Closing Questions
What is the first step in cultivating the heart? First, the pastor says, recognise the heart as something that belongs to God, which you steward on His behalf. Then commit it to His Word—prayerfully seeking His will, intentionally aligning the heart to it, receiving it with conviction (“I believe it, I accept it, I own it”), and learning to obey and stand on it. Guarding, in turn, means building a defence against whatever would pollute that conviction—what we watch, read, and hear—and never letting anyone water down what God has clearly said. “That is exactly what the devil did to Eve.”
How do I choose accountability partners? Choose genuine children of God, and know them beyond the packagingbefore committing—careful selection is itself part of guarding the heart. Look for someone who will tell you the truth; ideally truth carried with grace, but the truth above all. He likens it to surgery: the truth is the necessary cut that removes what is wrong; grace is the anaesthesia and the help that eases the pain and walks with you to recovery. Most of all, pick someone genuinely aiming for heaven—illustrated by a bus he once rode, assuming all were bound for the last stop, only to watch nearly everyone alight at earlier junctions. “Don’t run your race assuming everyone is going where you’re going; confirm they want to get there as much as you do.” (In answering, he flags why discernment matters: false “grace” teaching that excuses sin, and predatory leaders who exploit trust, are precisely the deceptions a guarded heart and Scripture-checking resist.)
Can my spouse be an accountability partner? “Why not?”—indeed a spouse should be the first. But it is not enough on its own: there are moments a couple cannot see an issue the same way, or when one partner is the very one deviating, and then a trusted outside party—a discipler or a mature family—can look at the matter with independent eyes and help them decide rightly.
The episode closes in prayer:
“Father, thank you for the word you have sent us today. Help us with this commission you have placed in our hands, that we may not fail you—to cultivate and to guard our hearts, the primary ground you want us to tend. Prosper GospelBells Radio and carry its voice to the ends of the earth, that even the dead will hear and live. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”
This is a message to act on, not merely admire.
Listen again. Tend the ground, and set a watch over it. And ask God for the grace to keep both edges of the commission—to cultivate your heart, and to guard it.
