Golden Cage

“Does she have a pulse?”

Have you ever heard that in a movie or TV show?  That’s the de facto standard question in a drama when it comes to trauma.  I’m told it’s a pretty typical question in the medical community as well.  I would imagine so.

Checking someone’s pulse tells you on a most basic level if he or she is alive.  There are a few other things you can tell from a pulse but if you want to know more about someone’s health, you have to do more than check the pulse.

After all, merely being alive isn’t the quality of life most of us desire.

Did you know the same is true for your spiritual heart, too?  We have to know our hearts.  Unfortunately, we are a bad judge of our character and spiritual development.  Fortunately,  a trip to the Spiritual Cardiologist through His Word and Worship is just the “medicine” we need to take our spiritual pulse.

Proverbs 4:23 provides this counsel:

Above all else, guard your heart,
for everything you do flows from it.

The condition of our hearts determines the direction of our lives.  Why is it children can miss the clothes pilled up on the floor but can find the container of ice-cream buried under the frozen vegetables in the freezer?  Their hearts are focused on it!

If the groundwater of our hearts is spoiled by sin and the junk of life, the water supply to the rest of our spiritual lives will be as polluted.  This is why it’s so important to regularly pray the prayer of Psalm 139:23-24: “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.  See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

This underscores why we as disciples of the Lord Jesus spend time impressing His Word onto our hearts: it determines our outlook.  When we allow the sin of negativity and cynicism to rule in our hearts, how do you think the entire world will look?  When we allow the sin of pride and hypocrisy rule in our hearts, how do you think the rest of the world will look?

Yeah…it’s not pretty, is it?

Jesus taught: “What comes out of a person is what defiles them.  For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person” (Mark 7:20–23).

Dear brother or sister in Christ, make your appointment with our Spiritual Cardiologist today!  Place the force field of God’s transforming Word drenched in the power of the Holy Spirit over your heart so “rivers of living water will flow from within” you (John 7:38).