How’s My Heart? 4-6-08

Twenty-two days after you were conceived, a tiny little electrical pulse stimulated the heart muscle, the myocardia, of your left and right atria to contract. It’s called an “atrial kick” and it forced blood into your ventricles. That movement was so faint that it could not be detected, even with amplification, but it was, in fact, the first beat of your heart, only 22 days after you were conceived and it’s never stopped from that day ’till this-70 milliliters of blood with every contraction, 14,000 pints being pumped every day, 100,000 beats of your heart every day from that day to this one.

Maybe your heart skipped a beat a long time ago when you first saw that very attractive person you are sitting next to right now and you might want to lean over right now and tell them that or give them a little squeeze just to let him know. Maybe you are sitting next to a very attractive person that you never saw until today and your heart skipped a beat right in this service, but you’ll have to give him a little squeeze on your own time, not here, now. OK?

God gave us these amazing gifts called our hearts, our physical hearts, and of course, we can’t even make them beat on our own. Anybody here absent minded? Anybody here like forget where your car keys are, where you are parked or something, where the car is, where the kids are? Imagine if our hearts only beat when we remember to tell it. We would be in serious trouble. But they don’t. God just created them so that that beat goes on whether we are aware of it or not. It’s a gift from God.

But God didn’t just give you a physical heart. God gave us all a spiritual heart. There is an inner me, there is an inner you, that part of you that chooses, that part of you that devotes, that part of you that commits, that part of you that wills, and the truth is that no matter how well you take care of it, your physical heart is going to wear out someday. It’s going to stop beating sooner or later. But your spiritual heart, the core of the core you-that goes on forever. And that’s [what] the writer of the book of Proverbs says, he says this:

Above all else guard your heart for it is the wellspring of your life. (Proverbs 4:23)

Don’t worry so much, the writer of the Proverbs is saying, about how you are doing in terms of security, physical health, material well being, all of that stuff. That has its place. But above all of that, the top of the list, the first priority is guard your heart, watch your heart, care for your heart because your whole life flows out of your heart. So the question is, What’s the condition of my heart, my spiritual heart, my heart for God and my heart for people?

That’s what this message is really about, because it is possible for us to be deceived about the true condition of our hearts. This is true physically, but it’s also true spiritually. There is a fascinating parallel, I think, between the physical heart and the spiritual heart at this point, as there will be [at] one or two other points in this message. How do we find out the true condition of our heart? This is from a research cardiologist. This is what Hardwin wrote: We see people come in all the time and look perfectly healthy. You wouldn’t know there was anything wrong with their heart. Simple tests can be done like listening to the heart, doing an EKG, things still look fine. But put that person under stress and now we see there’s something wrong, maybe life threatening. If we hadn’t examined them under stress, we might never have found the problem and there could have been dire consequences but caught in time we had a chance to correct it.

They can live a healthy life if we examine their heart when they are under stress. And I think precisely the same thing is true when it comes to our spiritual life. A healthy heart spiritually is just a heart that loves what God loves. An unhealthy heart, spiritually, is a heart that loves the wrong things in the wrong way for the wrong reasons. And John warns about disordered desire. This is from 1 John.2

Do not love the world or anything in the world. If you love the world, love for the Father is not in you. For everything in the world-the cravings of sinful people, the lust of their eyes and their boasting about what they have and what they do… (1 John 2:15-16)

Now when he says, “Don’t love the world,” he doesn’t mean don’t love the human race or don’t love creation or noble achievements in culture or beauty. That’s not what that means. God loves that stuff. In fact, the most famous verse in all the Bible is from John, For God so loved the world, he gave his son. (John 3:16) God loves the world. What John is talking about here, world here means human existence as it gets junked up and disordered, apart from God-an unhealthy heart that’s marked by cravings and lust and disordered desires and pride.

Now here’s the thing. When it comes to my spiritual life, sometimes I might think my heart’s OK. I come to church and we worship and I see myself worshiping and I think, “Man, I must love God.” We sing a song together and I’m singing and my feelings are kind of caught up in the beauty of that song and I think, “Gosh, I really love God.” And then comes stress. Then comes a problem in a relationship with another person. Then comes something at work that doesn’t go the way I want it to go. Then comes financial pressure where I don’t have as much money as I think I want to have, need to have, got to have. Then comes change that I didn’t initiate, that I don’t think I want. Then comes temptation.

When I am faced with not getting what my heart truly wants-under stress-that’s when I find out the truth about my heart, and a lot of times the truth about my heart is not nearly as good as what I had thought it was. I’ll give you a very small example. This one isn’t terribly dark. I have ones that are much darker but I’m not going to tell you those today, but this is a small one.

The last couple of years I’ve been trying to learn how to play golf and the reality is: I am a hacker and all I will ever be is a hacker. But last summer my father-in-law went golfing So we go up to the tee box and we each hit our drive and one goes way right and the other goes way left and so we have to go separate to try to find our golf balls and we finally meet again together on the green and make our putts and my Father-in-law was keeping score and he said to me, What did you get? What shall I write down for you?

Now, the hole was a par 4 and the reality is, I got a 7. It took me 7 strokes to get the ball in the hole. But what I thought when my Father-in-las asked the question was, I could tell him I got a 6. A 6 sounds better than a 7. It’s just a double bogey. Even Tiger Woods gets double bogey every now and then, so I’ll say… And then at the same time I’m thinking that, reality is kind of speaking also into my head. The reality is, I got a 7. Will I really feel better about a number that I know is a lie, that I know is not true? Do I really want to combine my incompetence with deception? Is it worth sacrificing my integrity with my Father-in-law? This is only my Father-in-law for crying out loud. It’s just the two of us. Is it worth sacrificing my integrity with my Father-in-law, of all people-for a single stroke?

So I said, Put me down for a 4. Shoot my integrity. I might as well make it worthwhile. See, when my desires are thwarted, that’s stress and then is revealed the true condition of my heart. What does my heart want? What my heart really wants is the reputation for being better than I am. That’s what my heart wants. What my heart really wants is the exultation of me. Under stress I see, if I look, my heart wants credit that I don’t deserve. My heart is willing to be deceptive in order to avoid pain. My heart is so wrapped up around itself that sometimes I will not even notice, listen to or love other people.

Under stress I find I am willing to use withdrawal and avoidance to try to manipulate somebody to get my own way. Under stress I find I’m ready to judge people to cover up my own secret sense of inadequacy or jealousy for what they have. Sin just leaks out of my heart and sometimes some really dark stuff.

Now, if my heart were working right, if our hearts were working right, then they would be appalled by sin because sin is what junks up God’s delightful intent for life and creation. But we are not shocked by it because our hearts are kind of messed up. We try to avoid other stuff.

There was a famous baseball player who achieved a great milestone Barry Bonds after he hit his 499^th home run. He was walked the next three times. Why? It’s because no pitcher wanted to be the one who gave up the homerun that would be forever remembered. Nobody wants his name attached to that event.

In fact, I heard about an interview with Greg Maddox, a Hall of Famer, fabulous pitcher, who pitched a day or two ago. And they were talking about how it feels to pitch to Barry Bonds when he is on the brink of breaking this all-time record. And this was Greg Maddox’s comment, I don’t want to be that guy. I don’t want to be that guy.

See, if my heart was working right, what I would think is, I don’t want to be that guy who messes up the community because I gossiped about somebody. If my heart was working right, I’d think to myself, I don’t want to be that guy who woos another person by lying to them. I don’t want to be that guy who goes through life clutching on to my stuff so much and there are little children that are dying from malnourishment and I could help them, but I don’t because I don’t want to be that guy. I don’t want to be that guy that just messes people up because I never learned how to handle my anger right. I don’t want to be that guy whose heart gets smaller because I am just bitter. I don’t want to be that guy.

There had been this promise God had made so long ago, this wonderful promise to this fallen heart diseased human race. God said, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone. (That’s what I’ve got. I’ve got a heart of stone.) I will remove from you your heart of stone and that will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit in you so that you can love right, so that you can want right. (Ezekiel 36:26-27)

So then the question becomes if God gives us new hearts when we become followers of Jesus, how do we take care of that heart? How do we keep it? How do we guard it? How do we help it grow healthy and strong? Now, again, let’s start with physical hearts. The good news here is: the best way to build a strong, healthy heart physically is do nothing at all. Sit in a chair, lay on a bed, never get up, don’t do anything that would strain it or tax it. Aim at keeping the heart as comfortable and at ease as possible. Right?

No! It doesn’t work that way. Ironically, you have to deliberately expose your heart to what? Anybody here have any idea? Exercise, stress, work, you’ve got to stress your heart. It’s actually in the rhythm of putting demands on it, stressing it and then resting it, that a heart grows really strong, that it beats really, really vigorously. And this is true for your spiritual heart as well. Your heart needs to find rest but that doesn’t mean that we are just to be passive and do nothing.

God knows, God knows that you actually need stress for your spiritual heart to grow strong and healthy and loving and that’s why God has brilliantly created little stress producing mechanisms and placed them strategically all around you and they are called, “other people” and they will frustrate you. They will stress you because they will thwart your will. They will not say to you, “Thy will be done.” They have their own will. How I respond to people in my life is the number one indicator of the condition of my heart.

Loving the people in my life, in my world is the primary expression of an authentic love for God. Sometimes churches get a little confused about this. Sometimes in some churches people can have a reputation for being spiritually mature or spiritually giants, even though everybody knows they don’t really love people very much. But that’s never the way that the Bible or Jesus would talk about spirituality. Always it is defined by love for God and love for God is primarily expressed by a love for people and John just hammers this.

Whoever loves his brother, lives in the light…Whoever hates his brother lives in the darkness. (1 John 2:9-10) And then he gets real concrete with this: If anybody has material possessions and sees his brother in need, but has no pity on him… And the idea here is not just that you experience emotions of pity but that you actually do something. If anybody sees a brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and truth. (1 John 3:17-18)

Love God, love people. It’s just that simple. Now, love doesn’t mean always making the other person feel good. Sometimes love confronts. Sometimes it rebukes. Sometimes it warns. Sometimes it challenges. Sometimes it inspires. But to give concrete love to real life, sometimes cranky, always fallen human beings, is the central work of the God-shaped heart and the primary indicator of a human being who loves God. And the reality is, if I don’t love the people that I can see, then John says, I don’t really love God. I might think I do. I might sometimes experience deep emotions when I am reading the Bible or singing a song, but I don’t really. It’s not loving God that I’m doing.

Whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. (1 John 4:7-8)

Therefore, if you have difficult, cranky, impossible, hard-to-love people in your life, know that they are there to be used by God to build your heart and make it strong, and if you don’t have people like that in your life, call the church office because we keep a list of those people and we will assign some of them to you.

Jesus said one time, In my Father’s house are many mansions. In my Father’s heart there’s a room for every human being that’s ever born. (John 14:2) And that same intense love and desire that Jesus has when He looks at you, when He looks at me, He has for every human being that’s ever been born on this planet-every color, every culture, every language, everybody, whatever they do. There is that ache in His heart to embrace them, to call them “child,” to have them come home.

You have never looked into the eyes-this is a thought to take with you this week-you will never look this week into the eyes of a human being for whom Jesus did not die. As you encounter people, when you get mad at somebody at work, when you get impatient with somebody on the expressway-you ever get impatient with anybody on the expressway? Just me?

When you get cross with somebody in your family, when somebody disappoints you this week, just stop and think, This is somebody Jesus went to the cross for. This is somebody Jesus thought was worth dying for. How’s my heart for this person? See, this is part of the question for us at church.

We want to be about the mission God has called us to. We want to be filled up with that kind of love and then we want to just spread it all over the place, but it really starts with our hearts. It doesn’t start with programs or techniques or anything else. So here are a few questions: • Do I carry a burden for people who don’t know Him? • Who am I praying for regularly that doesn’t know God? Now I ask myself that question and you ask it for you. • Am I deliberately getting close to people who don’t know God or is my heart kind of hard toward them? How am I giving value to their lives? How am I helping them to take the next step?

Life Link:

1. What’s the most memorable thing in your life that you went to the doctor for?
2. Review the message
3. The Question
4. What is your spiritual heart? Have you ever been taught to analyze or guard your spiritual heart? Why or why not?
5. What is the benefit of guarding your spiritual heart?
6. How can we tell if we have a heart of flesh? (When we love like God loves – loving so much that we are willing to give our lives so that others might live – not necessarily dying.)
7. Read: I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit in you so that you can love right, so that you can want right. (Ezekiel 36:26-27) What kind of heart do you have? How do we get rid of our heart of stone and get a heart of flesh?
8. During Adam’s message, he made the point that our spiritual hearts become healthy and strong in the same way as our physical hearts become healthy and strong, by exercising, taxing, or otherwise stressing them. How does this understanding help you when you come to a person that is grumpy, disagreeable, or downright irritable?

Worship – during your worship time, I’d like you to develop a time to tell stories about where you have seen God move in your life this week.

I believe the reason why we have such a hard time worshiping in our groups is because we are not regularly looking for God in our lives. I would like to start a new tradition at NC2 – Glory Spotting.

You might explain that glory is often-times defined as the heaviness of God, or the density of God. God is always present everywhere, but there are times in our lives where God’ seems to be even more present, more dense, or thicker in our lives. I’d like us to regularly be pondering this question:

Where have you seen God move this week?

I believe that we cannot worship if we have not seen God, because then God is distant and not connected with our lives – worship becomes a struggle.

Initially, I’m pretty sure that this will be a flop in your meetings, because people are not used to seeing God move or at least not being attentive and remembering what they’ve seen. However, I’m convinced that as you continue to make this question a regular part of your meetings, I believe people will become more alert, more attentive to God showing up in their lives. As people begin to share, I think it will spur others on to seeing God in their own lives. You might encourage people to write down their spotting, so they don’t forget.

Adam