“Your heart rate is too low,” my doctor said.
At a recent physical, my doctor did a baseline EKG and discovered that my resting heart rate was far below normal. I then found myself searching for a cardiologist for the first time in my nearly forty-eight years of life. A week later, I was given a heart rate monitor to wear. The contraption was glued to my chest and I wore it 24/7 for a week. I hope to soon learn the results.
As we well know—whether we passed 9th grade biology or not—the heart is what keeps us alive. This muscle pumps blood through the circulatory system to the rest of the body and beats about 100,000 times a day. It rests in the center of our chest and is central to our life and wellness.
I don’t know about you, but I rarely think about the work my heart is doing and until I hit forty, I hardly thought about what it needed to remain healthy. But our heart does need monitoring and care. That’s why the doctor listens to it at each visit and urges patients to stay away from fried and fatty foods.
The Bible talks about the heart a lot. Not so much our physical heart—though we ought to steward its care. Rather, the Bible talks about our spiritual heart, what lies at the center of who we are. Contrary to cheesy romance movies, when the Bible talks about our heart, it doesn’t mean the source of our feelings as opposed to our thoughts, as in “just follow your heart.” Rather, the Bible uses the word “heart” to refer to the core of who we are and it includes our thoughts, feelings, desires, choices, and will. All these act on and influence the other, with our desires often leading the way.
The Bible also teaches us that the heart is fallen in sin—a condition which began with the fall of man in Genesis 3. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9). It is not our circumstances or what other people do or say that is the source of our problems. As Jesus taught, it is not what is outside of us that defiles us, but what is in us. “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person” (Mark 7:20-23). James teaches that disordered desires of the heart cause our conflicts in life, “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?” (James 4:1).
Because of this, Proverbs urges us to guard the heart, “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life” (4:23). The Hebrew word for “keep” is the same word used to talk about the watchmen who stand watch on the walls of the city, alert and ready to respond when enemies come near. The word is used to mean preserving or maintaining as well as protecting and guarding.[1] When it comes to keeping our heart, we need to both preserve and protect it.
To preserve our heart, we keep it healthy. We nurture it and tend to it by feasting on the Word of God. We allow the Word to examine and try our hearts. God gave us His Spirit who uses the Word to sanctify our hearts—to change and transform us from the inside out. The more we study and meditate on the Word, the more we see the true state of our hearts. We see those things which don’t belong, the sins which we so easily ignore. We see the pride, self-righteousness, and selfishness. We the see ways in which we fail to love God with all heart, our disordered desires and idols we worship—those things we look to for hope and life and meaning apart from God. As the Spirit uses the Word to convict us and show us our sin, we look to his grace to remind us of the gospel and who we are in Christ. We confess and repent and rejoice in the gospel which saves us. The Spirit then helps us remove those idols we worship and grow in greater love and knowledge of our Savior.
We also must guard our heart, keeping watch for those things which tempt, deceive, and draw us into sin, including ungodly influences from the world and temptations from evil. As Ephesians 6 reminds us, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (v.12). We wear our Ephesians 6 armaments into battle each day, aware that arrows are flying at us left and right. And we follow Jesus’ command to watch and pray (Matthew 26:41).
In all our heart-keeping, we must never forget that God is the ultimate heart-keeper for nothing can separate us from his great love for us in Christ. And more, he has provided the means of grace for us to preserve and protect our heart. We have the gift of the Spirit who lives within us, the very power of God—the same power who raised Christ from the dead. We have all the promises of God fulfilled in Jesus Christ. We have access to the throne of grace. We have the very Word of God to read, study, and meditate upon. And we have the community of faith which walks beside us in the journey.
No doubt, I am very aware of my physical heart these days and the need to monitor it. To keep and protect it. Even as I do so, I know it has an expiration date. However, my spiritual heart does not. How much more ought I to keep it? For it is my life. “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life” (4:23).
Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash
[1] With All Your Heart by A. Craig Troxel, p. 155.
