Understanding the Heart - Episode 17 - NewCREEations

We’ve talked about how God made us as three part beings – body, soul and spirit. Today I want to begin talking about our hearts.

The word heart is found over 700 times in the King James version of the Bible so obviously it’s important. It turns out the Biblical understanding of our heart is different than our modern understanding.

When the Bible talks about our heart it is not referring to the hunk of muscle in our chest that pumps our blood around. Instead of being a physical thing, our heart is more of an intangible thing. it means the essence or core of who we are.

It turns out that our heart is found at the place where our spirit and soul intersect. It’s that place of overlap where our soul touches our spirit and our spirit touches our soul.

Because our heart is that connection point between our spirit and our soul it acts like a governor in a car to limit our speed when it comes to moving forward in the spiritual things of God.

Guard Your Heart

Guarding our hearts is very important. Proverbs (4:23) says it this way.

Keep your heart with all diligence, For out of it spring the issues of life.

Keep means to set a watch over, to preserve, to guard from danger, to be kept close or blockaded

Here’s how the Amplified Bible puts it:

Keep and guard your heart with all vigilance and above all that you guard…

The word Issues refers to borders, boundaries, extremities. It means the outgoing extremity of a border, the source of life, and escape from death

So let me boil that down into “Chris Speak” that makes sense to me.

The idea is that we need to pay close attention to the condition of our hearts because it is our heart’s condition that ultimately determines how big our influence is for the Kingdom of God.

The New Living Translation says, “it determines the course of your life.”

Our heart is what determines the course of our lives.

Results are a Product of Our Hearts

Our heart is the control valve that determines how much we let out of our spirit versus how much we keep our natural man in charge.

Let’s look in Luke 6:45 to see how Jesus put it.

A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

Because our heart is that control valve between our spirit and our soul, what we feed it will affect the results we get in our lives. “Out of it spring the issues of life.”

Notice some of the things that don’t determine the course of our lives:

• Our current financial condition – That says something about where we are right now, not who we are.
• Our health – We may have medical issues, but they do not define us. Our focus should be elsewhere.
• Our families – We are not chained to the problems and hangups that our earthly families may have because we have been adopted into the heavenly family.
• Any of our circumstances – As believers we are overcomers, not victims of circumstance.

None of those things determine the course of our lives. Our heart does.

But here’s what happens for most folks. They fixate on and worry about those sorts of things. When they do that, they do damage to their hearts. And it’s their damaged hearts which sets the course of their lives down a road of distraction and despair.

That’s why it’s important that we don’t worry and fixate on all the negative stuff that might possibly (but generally doesn’t) go wrong.

Actually I think that’s something we should start talking about next time – how to truly stop worrying once and for all so our lives aren’t sucked down by that negative anchor. Until then though, enjoy!

Used with permission from Chris Cree.