The Heart

I guess I’ve been thinking a lot about the heart these past two weeks. Mainly the phy sical heart and its importance to the body, but that also made me think of the spiritual body and the importance God places on the condition of the heart in our spiritual well being.

The physical heart is the organ that circulates the blood throughout the body and it is essential to have it doing well in order to be healthy. We all take our heart for granted, but then one day we find out its not working just right. That gets our attention, and we do all that we can to find out what is wrong and h ow it can be fixed. We know our life depends on it.

Our heart must also be very important to God because the Bible mentions the heart 779 times. Of course, this is the spiritual heart that he is referring to, the one that directs our thoughts, our emotions, our decision making, and our relationship with Him and our fellow human beings.

Proverbs 16:9 says, “In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.” The course our lives take will be determined by the conditions of our hearts! It’s in our hearts that we determine who we will live for, who we will serve, and who we will love. It will either be the God of heaven or the god of the world. Some familiar passages about the heart are:
Matthew 5:8, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God.”; Matthew 6:21, “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”; Matthew 12:34, “For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.”; and 1 John 3:20, “For God is greater than our hearts and He knows everything.”

As we strive to keep our hearts healthy so that we might live long on this earth, it is so much more important to keep our hearts pure and focused on God and His word so that we might live for eternity in heaven.
–Jim Keevert