Have you ever looked at your heart to determine where it is at? I don’t mean physically, rather, spiritually. What is the condition of your heart? What does that even mean? I imagine most of us would respond with something along the lines of “our hearts are the center of our emotions and our feelings.”
I think we can say our “heart”, as it is referred to in the bible, describes the state of our relationship with God, at any specific moment in time. I would say there are two extremes of the heart and an endless number of variations in between. Our heart can be bursting with an overflowing love for God from which sacrificial service to the Lord blossoms. Or our heart can be cold and hard and in a state of conditional love for God, from which self-centeredness sprouts.
Let me explain, when our heart is in sacrificial service, there is a distinct feeling of fullness, a bursting forth of love. This love is the driving force which fuels our thoughts, our words and our actions. When our heart is in this place, we glorify God. In this place we conduct selfless acts, our thoughts are obedient to Christ, our actions portray the hands and feet of Jesus and we become disciples of His word and reflections of Jesus. We seek to surrender; we seek to trust; we seek righteousness and we seek to follow the path to which we have been called. It is in this space where we can proclaim, like David, in Psalm 57:7 “My heart, O God, is steadfast, my heart is steadfast; I will sing and make music.” It is in this place, where we find the fullness of love and peace, irrespective of any trial we find ourselves in.
Conversely, we have the opposite spectrum where we love conditionally. I would describe this as a hard heart towards God. Well what does that mean? It means we focus on our selfish desires, our needs and wants from our worldly perspective. If we are in our “happy” place and God has fulfilled our desires, we choose to love Him back. I don’t know about you, but just typing that last line made me cringe. The thought of being so self-centered, when God has given us His everything – His love, His Son – is shameful. Yet I have been there, and perhaps if we all chose to take a step back and look at ourselves, we may see we have all been in this state at one time or another.
When we are in this state, I believe our thoughts are fully self-centric, our thoughts are absorbed by what will please us, our actions self-serving, our words thoughtless and haphazard. This leaves us in a very empty, unfulfilled place, yet we experience instant gratification that fills us at some surface level, a fleeting moment. At the end of it, we are left emptier than where we began and longing for more. It is in this space where we find the application of Matthew 15:19 “For out of the heart come evil thoughts – murder, adultery, sexual immortality, theft, false testimony and slander.”
But what shapes the condition of our heart at any one moment, on any given day? Like our physical heart, our spiritual heart is shaped by how we invest time and care for it. Think of our physical heart, it needs to be strengthened through exercise, it needs to be nourished with healthy food , it needs to be protected from harm by making choices to avoid things that will poison it (smoking, alcohol, etc.). When our physical heart is in good shape, through taking these measures, it pumps blood through the body and supplies oxygen and nutrients to all our body’s organs and tissues to keep them alive and functioning.
Our spiritual heart is no different. It is strengthened by enduring the rigorous trials of life which produce perseverance. It is nourished by feeding it with the wisdom of the word of God. It is protected by a gateway, which represents our trust in God to let in what we need for our heart to soften and grow. By putting our full trust in God, our hearts are protected, and we find the peace that transcends all understanding. When our spiritual heart is in good shape, it pumps love and compassion to all whom God has called us to reach out to, to glorify Him.
Proverbs 4:23 tells us “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” So, what can we do to keep a healthy spiritual heart? Here are three thoughts to consider.
We stay in the Word of God. We spend time reading scripture and asking the Holy Spirit to teach us, to grant us wisdom and to settle these truths in our minds and our hearts. This will allow us to effectively use the sword of the spirit in the everyday battles of life.
We surrender our will in faith and trust to God’s leading, regardless of the life circumstances we find ourselves in. James 1:1-4 “We consider it pure joy when we undergo trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work in you so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
We make our thoughts obedient to Jesus. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10:5, “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” When we think like Jesus, we will act like Jesus and we will show the heart of Jesus.
We all want to be good stewards of our heart and the bible shows us many biblical characters with this same desire. King David Psalm 139:23 “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.” Every day will be a challenge of where we find ourselves on the heart spectrum; it is up to us to stay mindful, like King David, and seek God’s hand to mold us.
We are not alone in forming our hearts, because we are human. We need God to guide us, to lead us to achieve that end. However, we are given free will, and the choice to actively pursue a pure heart. Jeremiah 29:13 “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”
As humans we tend to gravitate towards an action plan that achieves an end goal, in this case “how do I achieve a pure heart?” We talked about guarding our hearts by reading scripture, surrendering our will, and being obedient to God. These are all good intentional things to do, however, we must recognize that it is how passionately we love God that ultimately shapes our heart. That passion can be petitioned to God and He will hear us. Psalm 51:10 “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me”
Heavenly Father,
You are love, You are peace, You are Grace, You are Mercy. Shine upon Your children as we ask for You to stir in us a passionate love for You, so that You might create in us a pure heart through which You are glorified in this world. Father we lift our hearts to You today and claim Your promise in Philippians 4:7 “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
Amen