Cardiac Christians

Do you ever stop and think about your heart? In all the murder and mayhem shows on TV what’s the first thing they do when they discover a body? Check to see if there is a pulse, a heartbeat. Life begins and ends with the heart.

Hardly much bigger than your fist your heart will beat 60 times a minute, 3600 times an hour, 86,400 times a day. If you live to be 70 then your heart will have beat 25,550 days and your heart will have beat 2,207,520,000 times. Every minute of our lives the heart pumps over 1 1/4 gallon of blood through our bodies, that's almost 80 gallons of blood an hour, 1902 gallons of blood a day; and again that is just one day.

The above information I pulled off of Webmd.com…why? I have been having some issues with my heart… physically and spiritually. In my usual way, when I want to understand something…I research it. Also, in my usual way, I research in every available context. Most importantly, The Word of God.

The Word of God uses the word ‘heart’ hundreds of times from the first time it is mentioned in the book of Genesis until the last time it is mentioned in the book of Revelation.   Very few of those instances refer to the organ that beats in your chest. Instead it refers to our love, our loyalty and our attitudes, both toward God and toward others.

What Makes a Heart Unhealthy?

Most of us have heard of Hardening of the Arteries but there is also a hardening of the heart and it happens as a result of the walls of the heart thickening. Eventually as the heart wall becomes thicker the heart muscles in effect become hard and unable to pump blood the way they are supposed to.

In the bible we read of people having a hard heart and that means that they are not responsive to God and his will. To have a hard heart means that you have closed yourself off from God, from his teachings, from his guidance, from his correction and ultimately from his Grace. You have thickened the wall between you and God; you have made it more difficult for God to work in you the way he wants to.

Matthew 12:35 A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart.

Often what is defined as heart disease doesn’t have anything to do with the pump itself but with the rest of the mechanisms breaking down. Hardened or blocked arteries, clots, and leaky or faulty valves; plumbing and the electrical. Often as Christians our hearts are in the right place but the things outside our heart prevent us from being healthy.

Matthew 22:37-39 “you must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and your entire mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

Ask yourself concerning the physical and spiritual heart:

Do I consume too much and the wrong types of spiritual and physical food? Do I do ‘the right stuff” for my spiritual and physical heart?

People talk about a cure for cancer and yet heart disease kills more people than cancer and… we have a cure! Sometimes it takes something dramatic to happen; a heart attack will often cause people to change their lifestyle but sometimes not. If you want to reduce your chance of heart disease you will quit smoking, get your weight down to a healthy level and start exercising (Work in progress for me).

In our spiritual life if we want to have a healthy heart it boils down to the same things, what we consume and what we do. It’s not enough to say you love God and love others if that doesn’t affect how you live. Time and time again we read that a tree will be judged by its fruit and that salt water and fresh water can’t come from the same spring.

Faith by itself isn’t enough!

It’s not too late to change…..

I want to change.

Do you?