It's an Issue Of The Heart

But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”

We need to allow God to show us the condition of our hearts.

I have had the privilege to speak here a few times now. The last time I was supposed to speak here though, I didn’t ever make it to the pulpit. I made it through the front door, into Pastor Lance’s office but that is the furthest I made it into the building. I was told to leave the building. Before you get upset let me back up about 15 minutes prior to this happening.

You see on the way here I got a phone call on my cell phone from my sister. I was surprised to hear the phone ring because I normally don’t get any service out in this area. The phone did ring though long enough for me to answer, and my sister tell me she was with our mother, and was taking her to the hospital, she is not doing good at all she said. She told me I should come to the hospital because mom was not doing well at all. I told her I was on my way to preach, and I would have to wait until after the service. She said if I were you I would get here as soon as possible, because I am not sure she is going to make it. That is all I heard before I lost signal, and the call was dropped. So, Nita, my wife kept trying to call her back on her phone while I kept driving toward the church.

I had a dilemma, I was filling in for Pastor Lance, I told him I would do it, and I don’t go back on my word, and besides we are supposed to be trusting God right. I remember thinking what a bad example that would be if I did not trust God enough to take care of my mother so I was able to preach, and then go to the hospital.

I got to the church here and my wife and I came on in. I asked if I could use a landline to make a phone call. They took me to Pastor Lance’s office to use his phone. While I was on the phone my wife filled your wonderful leadership in on the phone call that I had received. When I got off the phone with my sister, they did not hesitate to tell me to get out of here; they would take care of the Sunday morning service for me.

I did not know what to say or do. I was overwhelmed by their earnest concern for my mother’s health, and the love, and grace they showed me in my time of desperation. They not only offered to fill in for me, they handed me the check for speaking that day, I refused to take it but they insisted, which I am glad they did, because I ended up staying a month in St Louis at Barnes Jewish Hospital so the money was a blessing.

That takes me to where I left off. Your leadership kicked me out of the building, but they did so with Love and Mercy on their mind. They never even hesitated on anything they did that morning for me and my family. I want to thank them for it.

Thank you First Avilla church family, for having a Christ like spirit. I have always felt that spirit every time I have come here. I have told you before, and I have told my home church in a sermon I did there recently about the sweet-sweet spirit that is in this place. I told them how much I love this church, and how much I love your Pastor.

I appreciated the fact that you all kept in touch with me, and prayed for me and my mother. You were asking how mom was doing so that you could pray for her. Some of you might not know what was going on with mom, and are wondering what happened.

Mom has had heart issues from an early age. She was born with a condition that involves the arteries, and veins in her body particularly the ones to her heart are very small. She had her first heart attack in her late 40s. Long story short the left side of her heart failed, and she now has an LVAD. Left Ventricular Assistance Device, which put in simple terms is the left side of her heart is replaced with a pump. The left side cavity is still there but it does not beat.

With mom having heart issues that day, and this church showing a sweet loving heart, I thought it would be appropriate this time to speak on heart issues.

The human heart is not only a mechanical organ, it is a spiritual organ.

Biological scientist who study the anatomy of the human body consider the heart to be the most important organ of the body.

The heart beats around 100,000 times per day, and 35 million times a year. It is the power house of the entire body. It circulates blood throughout the body carrying oxygen, and nutrients to provide energy so the body can function.

Cardiology is the branch of medicine that studies disease and abnormalities of the human heart. Wonderful people, and doctors at Barnes Jewish hospital in St Louis who study cardiology is who God used to save the life of my mother. They have books upon books they have studied, and some of the doctors at Barnes have even written some of these books on LVAD's, and heart transplants. During the month I was up there I was able to pick up a few of these books to read up on the LVAD's, and Heart transplants. To be honest with you I didn't understand a whole lot of what I was reading.

One thing I did read that was simple was they pointed out that they have found there to be a direct relationship between the physical heart, and the spiritual heart. Almost all of these books point out that when there is sin, stress, and a lot of negativity in someones life; the heart is directly affected. Heart disease is the direct result of all of these things in our lives.

As hard as a medical journal is for me to understand there is a book we can all understand on the spiritual heart, and that is the Bible. says God gives us the wisdom to treat a diseased spiritual heart. He makes us Spiritual Cardiologist in a sense.

Proverbs 2:10 ESV

for wisdom will come into your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul;

The heart is mentioned around 987 times in the Bible, and almost every one of those times it is dealing with the spiritual heart. So while the heart is the most important organ in the body, God tells us the spiritual heart is an important topic to him.

The Great Commandment is to love God with all our our hearts. That commandment also goes on to say we are to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, which I believe to be true of most of this congregation. This commandment is the only "law" we have concerning spiritual things. Jesus wiped out all the Judaistic rules, and traditions with just this one command. If we just follow this one law to Love God unconditionally, and to love our neighbors as ourselves everything else just falls into place.

But even as "good" as some of us are, we still have some issues of spiritual heart disease. We don't fully love God like we should, and we definitley don't fully love our neighbors like we should.

In order to be spiritual cardiologists we have to understand the structure, and function of our spiritual heart.

The Bible lays out this structure, and gives us the function of our spiritual heart. Because of this, it will enable us through reading it, studying it, and allowing the Holy Spirit to speak to us through His word, to recognize the spiritual heart diseases, and abnormalities we have.

Our Spiritual Heart According to the Bible

Just as what we eat directly affects our physical heart, what we put in our spiritual heart directly affects our actions, our feelings and emotions, our attitude, our relationship with others, and most importantly our relationship with our Heavenly Father.

I later found out while we were in the hospital in St Louis the Saturday before my mother had issues she had went to a local burger joint, and had a chubby cheese burger, and onion rings. Weeks after she was doing better I was kidding her that the Chubby Cheese blocked her arteries all up. All kidding aside we don't know for sure, but the grease in her lunch may have been the final piece of cholesterol that blocked her up.

If we want a healthy heart we are supposed to eat fruits, vegetables, low fat foods, and everything else that doesn't taste as good as a big old juicy steak and potatoes.

If we want a healthy spiritual heart we want to put things in it like the fruits of the Spirit, reading and studying God's Word, prayer.

We also want to control the things that go in through our sensory organs like our eyes, our ears, our relationships. The more good things, spiritual things we see, hear, touch, and feel, the healthier our spiritual heart will be.

On the same note the more bad things we see, hear, touch, feel our spiritual heart will be damaged, and our spiritual heart and arteries will get clogged up, and be full of all this unhealthy stuff, and it wont' leave much room for the good stuff. Do this too long and we will be heading to a spiritual heart attack.

The heart pushes whatever we put into it out the rest of the body clogging arteries in other places of the body besides the arteries on the heart. Whatever we put into your spiritual heart is pushed out through our actions, our words good or bad, it affects our decisions on the places we go. What we put in our spiritual heart will decide the fruit we bear, good or bad.

He wants us to have good feelings, and emotions in our heart. He wants us to have Him and His love on our hearts. If we rely solely on ourselves, other people, things of this world to fill our hearts we will be badly disappointed. Nothing from us will fill our hearts with good things, because of this corrupted flesh, our hearts would be filled with bad things, worthless things.

Mark 7:21–23 ESV

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 7:21–23 ESV

What are some the good things the Bible says we want to be putting in our spiritual heart?

First and foremost we want to have the Holy Spirit in our heart.

Romans 5:5 ESV

and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

The Holy Spirit lives in our heart if we are saved. God’s love is poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. It is up to us in how much of God’s love we will allow in our hearts. When we restrict it with our humanness, with all the bad things we let come into our hearts. The things we should not see, or hear, or touch. The relationships that are not appropriate. Anything that is sin, that competes with God in our lives. Since God’s love can’t be in the same presence with all this bad stuff His love can’t show through us with sin stored up in our heart.

Take out the bowl, set it on the table, this represents us our soul. Take the water and pour it into the bowl representing the Holy Spirit being poured into us at the time of our salvation. Show the dry sponge, it represents our heart, that has been dried up by the corruption of sin, representing man’s hardness of heart. When there is sin, when there is a hardness of heart it feels like a tightness in our chest, like the heart is hard. We feel empty and lost like this sponge is empty. Put the sponge in the water with hand squeezing it, the corruptness of sin still in our lives is squeezing our heart. Our heart is in the Holy Spirit, but it won’t take in much water or Holy Spirit because we still have some sin in our lives. Pull hand out of the water squeeze the sponge not much comes out, it is not hard anymore, a little bit of God’s love comes out of it, but there is too much sin still squeezing it off. Open hand dunk sponge in the water let it fill the pores. The more sin we eliminate from our lives, the less things we see, hear, touch, and do that competes with God the less the Holy Spirit has to compete with the more of God’s love will go into our hearts. Pull the sponge out, and say the more of God’s love that is in our hearts, the more of God’s love will pour out of us onto others. Show the sponge is completely soft. The more of the Holy Spirit in our hearts the softer more tender our heart becomes. God’s love was poured into us at the time of our salvation, just as the water was poured into the bowl. The water doesn’t leave the bowl, and neither does our salvation leave us. God’s love remains in us. But sin can creep back into our lives slowly squeezing off our heart again restricting how much of God’s love goes into our hearts, thereby restricting the amount of God’s love that oozes out of us. squeeze the sponge again and dip into the water bring it out and show not much water comes out of it if any. Dip it back in without squeezing it and say with nothing restricting the sponge water just pours out of it, just like God’s love can pour out of our hearts if we have nothing restricting it.

1500 Illustrations for Biblical Preaching Holy Spirit, Filling Of

“To be filled with the Holy Spirit is to be filled with one who is already there, in our hearts. Take up a sponge and while it is in your hand squeeze it. In that condition, plunge it in water and submerge it, keeping it in there. It is now in the water and the water is in it. As you hold it in the water, you open your hand, and as you do so the water fills all the pores which you release in this way. It is now filled with the water. When we receive Christ we are born anew and put into that sphere where the Holy Spirit is operating and the Holy Spirit comes to reside in us!! (Romans 8:9)” (Roy Hession, Be Filled Now [Fort Washington, Penn.: Christian Lit., 1968], p. 12).664

What are the things that will pour in and out of us a result of God’s love?

The Fruits of the Spirit

2 Corinthians 1:21–22 ESV

And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.

2 Corinthians 1:21–22 ESV

And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.

Galatians 5:22 ESV

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,

As a result of that we gain.

Galatians 5:22 ESV

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,

How can a heart go wrong with these things being poured into it? Knowing that someone loves you, gives you a good feeling doesn’t it. As human beings we have to feel loved, God put that desire within us. That love is especially precious when we know that it is the God of the universe who loves us most of all.

Joy verses mad, peace verses worry, patience verses impatience, kindness verses being mean, goodness verses badness, faithfulness verses unfaithfulness. Which one of these makes sense to choose to have in our lives? Naturally we would say the good things right,the fruits of the spirit?

So why is it we wouldn’t conscientiously choose the opposites of the fruits of the spirit, but we make decisions that makes the opposite things creep into our lives?

A lot of times it is because of the busyness of life. We get so busy sometimes we neglect to have our quiet times with God, where we pray, read, and study His word. The devil knows what he is doing by keeping us occupied on things that compete with God, and our relationship with God.

We get occupied with kids, family, school, sports, and work that our times with God gets pretty thin sometimes. Don’t get me wrong kids, family, work are all on the top of my list of priorities, but we have got to be spending more time with God. We can even get too busy performing “church” stuff that we forget why we were doing it in the first place, and that is worshipping God.

Going long periods of time without having a right relationship with God leads us to eventually forget about Him. When we forget about God, and our time with Him diminishes our time slowly gets occupied with ungodly things, things that become sin.

Let’s take David for example. We discussed him the last time I spoke here. It was plainly obvious that David was in God’s favor, and that he trusted fully God would take care of him when he was to slay the Giant Philistine. David was in turmoil throughout most of his life but he still praised God, and was not ashamed to write to everyone how much he loves God, and God’s Word.

Luke writes that God called David “A Man After His Own Heart, he will do exactly what I tell him to do”. Even with God’s favor on him, and his love for God, David got occupied with Bathsheba, and lust took over. If sin can take over in the life of a man God considers a man after His own heart, it can certainly take over someone like me.

That is why we have to stay in the Word,we need to keep aright relationship with God our Father by prayer, and fasting. Fasting doesn’t have to be just food, we can fast from anything we do regularly in life that competes with God.

The lesson we learn from David is that even with all his sin, greed, lust, fornication, murder, lying, deceitfulness, he still was forgiven by God’s Grace. David realized what all he had done to hurt God, and was truly sorry for it. He repented of all the evil he had done.

greed, lust, fornication, murder, lying, deceitfulness, he was able to overcome it with God’s help.

David asked God to create in him a clean heart. David asked for a spiritual heart transplant. They not only do LVAD’s at Barnes Jewish Hospital, they also do heart transplant surgeries. Many LVAD patients who do really well recovering , and functioning with the pump are put on a list for a heart transplant.

My mother is not one of those patients. She has had her chest opened up too many times they say. The scar tissue is just too thick from all the surgeries. Matter of fact when they implanted the LVAD she was in surgery for 11 hours just to get her chest opened up.

Matter of fact when they implanted the LVAD she was in surgery for 11 hours just to get her chest opened up. They had to cut through so much scar tissue from previous by pass surgeries. Unable to finish due to fatigue on the whole surgery staff she was taken to ICU to wait until they could schedule her a surgery room again the next day. She waited asleep till around 1:00 the next day for them to finish the surgery.

They had to cut through so much scar tissue from previous by pass surgeries. Unable to finish due to fatigue on the whole surgery staff she was taken to ICU to wait until they could schedule her a surgery room again the next day. She waited asleep till around 1:00 the next day for them to finish the surgery.

With that being said, she can’t have a heart transplant because opening her chest up again will take even longer because she now will have even more scar tissue. Her LVAD is destination therapy for her. So she knows she has limited time left. The LVAD is a centrifugal pump that spins at 9000 RPM’s powered by a small electric motor, so it will eventually wear out.

I met, and got to minister to a lot of heart transplant patients, and their families, mostly the families who were in the waiting room. If you were in the waiting rooms I was in you had a family member who was really ill. They were either waiting on a transplant or an LVAD. Very serious stuff. These are people who feel hopeless, fearful that they won’t be able to speak to their loved ones again.

Their loved one is either going to receive a temporary pump that will eventually wear out, and they will just die. Or, they already have an LVAD and are waiting to receive a used heart from someone else.

Psalm 51:10 ESV