Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Getting Down to the Heart of the Matter

I have been doing heart surgery for over 35 years and I have held over 10,000 hearts in my hands; not many people have had that privelege. After all these years I am still amazed by the physical human heart.

I have observed that there are some intresting correlations between the physical heart and the spiritual heart.

There are three types of problems that affect the physical heart: congenital, traumatic, and acquired. Congenital problems are ones that you are born with, traumatic problems are those that happen to you such as gun shot wounds or lascerations, and acquired problems are those that happen when we don't take care of our hearts, such as coronary artery disease and diseases of the heart valves.

In the same way, we can have spiritual heart problems that are congenital, traumatic, and acquired. We can have congenital problems through generational sin and curses. We have traumatic problems that occur through abuse, neglect, or attacks against our heart that others bring against us. And we can have acquired problems with our heart if we fail to take care of our hearts and keep them free and healthy.

In the Bible, our hearts are God's central concern. To illustrate this point, the heart is mentioned in scripture more than any other subject - 860 times in the Old Testament and 161 times in the New Testament, for a total of 1021 times! It must be of vital importance for so much to be said about our hearts.

Let's focus for a minute on exactly what God means when He talks about our hearts.

The heart is the inner man, the very core and center of life, the innermost part of human personality; it is the essence of our existence and the center of our being.

To sum it up, your heart is the real you - the deepest, truest you.

The Bible says that our hearts can be:

  • cheerful, glad, merry, joyful, rejoicing, or troubled, wounded, pierced, grieved, broken
  • whole or divided
  • wise or foolish
  • steadfast, true, upright, courageous, or freightened, faint, cowardly
  • wandering, forgetful, stubborn, proud, hardened, wicked, perverse or pure and noble

Our hearts contain our emotions and passion, our motives, our conscience, our thoughts, our memory, our creativity, our courage, and our love.

Our hearts are where our life comes from.

In John 10:10, Jesus said the He came to give us life and the life He gives would be abundant.

Abundant life - a never ending quantity of God's quality of life.

But to really experience and enjoy this life that Jesus came to give us, we must realize that life must be lived from a heart that is fully alive and free.

We must come to see that life is not a set of principles or rules to live by; it is not a list of do's and don'ts to perform or avoid. This life can't be managed with programs and steps.

Life was originally intended to be lived from the heart.

The Christian life is really a love affair of the heart.

We love God and others with our whole heart - a heart that is fully alive and free.

5 comments:

  1. Every issue in our life is effected in someway by the health of our heart. So, what does a healthy heart look like?
    Brenda L

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  2. "Thr Christian life is really a love affair of the heart."

    Gotta love that! Followed Brenda's link from Facebook ... keep writing God is in it!

    Thanks for sharing

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  3. "Life must be lived from a heart that is fully alive and free" Yes and Amen!!! Whom the Son sets free is free indeed!

    Thank you for Words of Life!!

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  4. Thanks for sharing these insights. Makes me aware of our need to be balanced in caring for our hearts spiritually and physically. Both our physical and spiritual hearts must be healthy to live out Jesus promise of the abundant life. Looking forward to reading more!
    Jean L

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  5. To keep my heart healthy (fully alive) I ingest a daily dose of living bread, today it was from Acts 17:28

    ..."for in Him we live and move and have our being,"
    Brenda L

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