My Heart And My Eyes Series

INTRO.- My heart and my eyes. How important is your heart and your eyes? Both are important to life and one to a better life.

ILL.- A lady said to her doctor: "Doctor, take a look at me. When I woke up this morning, I looked at myself in the mirror and saw my hair all wiry and frazzled up, my skin was all wrinkled and pasty, my eyes were blood-shot and bugging out, and I had this corpse-like look on my face! What's wrong with me, Doctor?" The doctor looked her over for a couple of minutes, then calmly said, "Well, I can tell you one thing... there isn't anything wrong with your eyesight."

ILL.- I have struggled with poor eyesight all my life. I have both myopia and amblyopia. Myopia is nearsightedness and this is why I take off my glasses to read scripture when I’m preaching. The font size is a bit smaller than I would like. I need glasses to see far away (as in driving) because everything is blurry otherwise. Many of you may have myopia as well.

Amblyopia is lazy eye. In amblyopia, visual stimulation either fails to transmit or is poorly transmitted through the optic nerve to the brain for a continuous period of time. In other words, I don’t see well out of this lazy eye.

I was also born with a heart murmur. That sounds a bit scary but in reality, it’s not a big problem. Here is what I read about it: “Many parents fear the worst when their child is diagnosed with a heart murmur, but this diagnosis is actually extremely common. In fact, many kids are found to have a heart murmur at some point during their lives. Most murmurs are not a cause for concern and do not affect the child's health at all.”

I never did know if a heart murmur was serious or not. Perhaps when I was born they may have considered it to be more of a scary thing. I remember, however, when I ran my first marathon at age 44 (I think). I stood at that starting line in Huntsville, AL, thinking, “I wonder if I will live through this marathon?” I did live through it but sometimes people don’t.

Here is something I read about running and death: The death of marathon runners is less than one death per 100,000 racers. “Our data shows, quite strongly, that marathon running is safe for the vast majority of runners,” Dr. Pham says, “and I suspect that, for many of the runners, the activity saved them from suffering a heart attack that might otherwise have been brought on by a sedentary, unhealthy lifestyle.”

So actually running is a healthy activity and good for the heart if it’s not overdone, which I did. And even though my heart and my eyes are vitally important there is something more important. What’s that? My spiritual heart and my spiritual vision. Obviously, we all should be concerned about our physical health, but since we are spirit and will live forever in eternity we need to take care of our spiritual lives, our spiritual heart and our spiritual eyesight.

I Timothy 4:8 “For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.”

Albert Barnes wrote of this Psalm: “This psalm was probably a private meditation on what David had done, and was a personal examination of his spirit and motives." We need this too.

II Corinthians 13:5 “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves."

PROP.- The path to greater spiritual strength and depth.

1- We keep pride and haughtiness far from us

2- We are not concerned with matters beyond us

3- We have become quiet and still before God

I WE KEEP PRIDE AND HAUGHTINESS FAR FROM US

1 My heart is not proud, O Lord, my eyes are not haughty;

ILL.- A preacher was on program at a district convention to preach for twenty minutes. The other preachers from the district were sitting behind him in the choir section, giving him moral support and throwing in an occasional "Amen" to help the preacher along. The preacher preached his twenty minutes and continued on despite alloted time. He preached for 30 minutes, then forty minutes and then for an hour. He even continued for an hour and ten minutes.

Finally, a brother sitting on the front row took a song book and threw it at the preacher that was still going strong in his message. The preacher saw the song book as it was hurled his way and he ducked. The song book hit one of the preachers sitting in the choir section. As the man in the choir section was going down, you could hear him say, "Hit me again, I can still hear him preaching!"