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.
Now in the spiritual realm we can develop diabetes also. It’s caused by an imbalanced diet the truth of God’s Word or the word’s of a worldly wise man preacher who does nothing but feed you sweet things. We need to get some meat of the Word. We need to eat some vegetables, even though sometimes they are like swallowing bitter herbs. Everything that is good for you in the Word of God doesn’t always go down smooth. Sometimes it takes a chaser of the water of the Holy Ghost to help us digest it.
Another culprit that brings on heart trouble in the natural body is a little thing that we all dread called “Old Age”. Now I haven’t gotten there yet. I’m still just a kid. But some of you are really close to that line and it won’t be but a few days until someone looks at you and say, “Man, you’re really old. You have so many wrinkles that even Botox won’t work. If they tried to do a facelift on some of us, they’d have to pull the skin all the way back over our heads until our nose pointed straight up in the air, then we would drown in one of our Louisiana rains.
Let’s face it, we are all getting older because we don’t like the alternative which is death. Death just never interested me that much, so I try to ignore it’s existence as much as I can. But time marches on. The seconds tick away, days fly by like telephone poles on the side of the highway, and the longer I stick around the faster those poles go by until sometimes they even look for like a fence post.
Now what about developing heart trouble in a spiritual sense? What does getting older have to do with that? The simple fact is that if our relationship with Jesus isn’t renewed every day, then our heart is growing cold and we are going to have heart trouble. We can’t allow that relationship to grow old or stale, but we need to seek to know him more all the time.
A stale relationship with Jesus means that we have a lukewarm heart and God despises lukewarm people. We have to stay on fire for God and stay close to Jesus.
Another cause of heart trouble is something called “hypertension” or high blood pressure. Do you know what causes that in the natural body? Sometimes the doctors can’t determine the cause so they just treat the symptom.
Boy, that sounds like some preachers I know. They refuse to face the fact that the heart of man is basically evil and filled with sin, which the main underlying cause of spiritual heart trouble. Instead they treat the symptoms of that sin with counseling, social gatherings and seminars to help people try to be perfect on their own. The only way to get rid of spiritual heart trouble is through repentance and accepting the perfect blood of Jesus Christ as your cleaning power for sin.
One of the causes that doctors have found is hardening of the arteries. Could we compare this to the hardening of the heart by Christians?
I believe that a main cause of Heart trouble for Christians is the fact that we lack faith that God can and will do what he says in his Word. If we did, we wouldn’t worry so much and fret over every little thing that doesn’t go just right in our lives. Worry adds to tension which results in high blood pressure. Again, it’s all because we don’t Jesus well enough, because if we did, we would learn that we could trust him.
Other things that cause the natural body to have heart trouble are smoking, too much fat in your diet and bad cholesterol levels. These are things that we take into our bodies that defile our bodies. Let me remind you what Paul taught concerning how we are treat our bodies.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20, "What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s."
Now a lot of people have bad habits like smoking, drinking, eating the wrong foods or perhaps way too much of the right kinds of foods. Now you can look at me and tell that I’m not one of those people. I am a fine specimen and have the perfect figure. I’m “on the level”; my bubble’s in the middle, right where it’s supposed to be!
It’s kind of like something that I heard someone say last night, “Yes sweetheart, you sill have the perfect hour glass figure. The only problem is that someone poured 2 hours worth of sand in it.”
We don’t mean to defile our body. We don’t want to be in violation of God’s law, and it’s a hard thing to always eat right and get the right kind of exercise. But I wonder how much of our excuses God is going to accept? If we refuse to stop smoking, does that bear any resemblance to committing suicide slowly? If we refuse to watch our diet and throw caution to the wind, are we taking care of what Jesus purchased with his own blood, or are we allowing his investment to expand in unhealthy ways?
Some people have had a lifetime of bad habits and it has resulted in physical problems that cannot be cured except by a miracle from God. God can heal. He can make everything perfect, but He doesn’t always choose to do so. Sometimes he allow us to suffer the consequences of our past actions and forces us to trust him to make all things right in the end. Sometimes our faults are what keep us faithful for without that “thorn in our side” we might forget to pray.
I never have to deal with past faults because I just don’t have any. Well, okay, maybe one or two little ones. Okay, so I have a lost of faults, but God is faithful to help me overcome every one of them if I just sell out to him, keep my heart right before him and serve him to the end.
The bottom line is that every man, born into this world, has heart trouble; escept for one. The Jesus Christ was the only child ever born with a perfect heart. He never developed heart trouble. His heart was so large that he was willing to die on a rugged cross because he loved sinful men so much.
But each of us is born with heart trouble. Our heart is dead to Christ. We need that Spiritual Rebirth to have a new heart that beats after God and stays in rhythm.
David, a man after God’s own heart, wrote in Psalms 51:10, "Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me."
In Ezekiel 36:26-27, God made a promise those who would seek him, "A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them."
Finally, Jesus also promised us help for our hearts just before he left this world to go back into Heaven. This is what he promised.
John 14:26-27, "But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."
The Holy Ghost within you is there to help you have a healthy heart before God. He is there to teach you the ways of the Lord that will strengthen you heart. He is there to be a constant reminder of how good God is, of what Jesus has done for you, and to remind you also, every time you fail to keep God’s Word.
Above all things, a healthy heart is a peaceful heart and we can have a peaceful heart because the Prince of Peace lives within our heart. Jesus on inside is our hope and our shield. He says, “don’t be troubled; don’t worry; don’t fear or lose faith.”
Just hold on to Jesus and let him create in you a strong and clean heart.”
