Heart Trouble

Heart Trouble

By Pastor Jim May

I want to get to the heart of the matter this evening and start out by saying that we all have heart trouble. Now some of you may say, “Not me, my heart is as healthy as a horse. My doctor told me so.” Well, just let me say that your doctor doesn’t know everything, after all, he still just “practicing medicine”.

Now before anyone gets up in arms let me tell you that the heart trouble I’m talking about is not with that fist size muscle in your chest that pumps the blood throughout your body. I’m talking about the real heart, the soul, mind and spirit that make up who you really are.

Jeremiah 17:9-10, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings."

Some people have an enlarged heart. If they were as big as their heart, they wouldn’t be able to fit in the door because their heart is really big and it’s growing larger every day. Someone with a big heart is a giver, not a taker. They are the first to volunteer and the last to leave. God loves people with a big heart. If you love God with all your heart, you can’t help but have a big heart.

Others are more like that proverbial Grinch in the old Christmas classic. Their heart is so small that they have no room inside of it to love anyone. They are completely self-centered. They take all that they can get and give nothing in return.

Of course, the rest of us are somewhere in between. The vast majority of people can have either a big heart or a small heart depending upon the circumstances that they face. If you want to look at it from the standpoint of integrity, most of us can be pretty hypocritical at times. We may not mean to be. We might not want to be. We may not even want to confess that we are and yet on the inside, down deep inside our own heart, we know its true.

In the natural body there are a lot of reasons why we may have heart trouble. We may have inherited some Bad genes. That’s why I don’t wear jeans much. I never heard one doctor say that “bad slacks” contribute to heart trouble.

Another factor is that you might be a male. I said, “a male, not a mule.” Of course if a male is mule-headed the risk factor for heart trouble rises significantly – And you may get hit with a frying pan and not live long enough to develop heart trouble.

The fact is that most couple run into heart trouble just weeks or months, and sometimes only hours, after making their most solemn vows to one another. What kind of heart trouble is that? Well, once the honeymoon is over, and people settle down to living the day-to-day married life, they often discover that their “heart” really isn’t in it.

A young man marries a young lady who is such a beautiful sight to behold. Then, in no time at all, he wakes up one morning, and can’t hardly stand to behold the sight of her. That young lady is swept off her feet by her knight in shining armor because she senses passion and fire in his heart. But in just a few days she’ll finally wake up to realize that he is no Knight, but stays out all night; that his armor is rusted, dull and broken; and that the fire and passion she sensed was nothing more than oil burning off the old truck engine they were sitting in. Somehow, in a few short years, there’s a transformation that takes place and if the couples’ hearts aren’t woven together in true love, then the eyes, the mind and the body may start to wander.

I want to confess to you right here and now that my wife and I have always had a perfect relationship. I told her I would say that. Our hearts are knit together as one, and she lets me know that if I try to rip that knitting that I won’t live to see another day. I know that I’d better not let my eyes wander too much or she’ll knock the mind out of me and this body will be out cold.

Another factor that contributes to heart trouble is something called Diabetes. We often call it sugar diabetes because it is the result of either too much sugar, or not enough sugar in the blood. Now I won’t get into the causes of diabetes or we could be here all night. Let’s just say that it’s a sugar problem and leave it at that.