Heart Checkup

Confession time!  A few weeks ago, I gave a lesson on the heart. Lessons about the heart were easier to give back in my twenties.  Perhaps it’s because I’ve become more aware of my own heart – both its joys and its flaws.  Texts about the heart have taken on a more practical edge for me.   

Here is a sampling of some texts we reflected on.

Proverbs 4:23: “Watch over your heart with all diligence for from it flow the issues of life.”   

Matthew 5:8:  “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” 

Jeremiah 17:9: “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick.  Who can understand it?’ 

Psalm 19:12:  “Who can discern his errors?” 

Psalm 139:23:  “Search me, O God, and know my anxious thoughts, and see if there is any hurtful way in me.”   

As I thought through these and other texts and talked through them with our congregation, I was again reminded how often and easily I recited them when I was younger.  As the time drew nigh for me to share a lesson about “spiritual heart health”, I thought about how innocent (another confession) my appreciation of these texts had been in earlier years.  Some of that comes with just being young and not yet battle tested.  I also thought about how true it is that as we grow older we become more acquainted with our inclination for sin.  In other words, we learn how volatile and impulsive our hearts can be.  We reach, for example, for Proverbs 4:23 knowing that we live smack in the middle of the reality Jeremiah 17:9 describes.  We encounter thoughts and impulses that can take us into dark places.  Have you ever found yourself struggling with things you never thought would be on your radar?

Someone remarked to me a while back, “I look forward to getting on the other side of forty.”  I said, “What’s on the other side of forty?”  They quipped, “Less of the stuff I’m dealing with on this side of forty.  I just think life will be simpler and easier spiritually when I get on the other side.”  I had to think about that one for a minute.  “Easier…?  Hmmm.”  I remarked, “I think you are in for a surprise.  When you get to the other side of forty, I think you will discover that you are still ‘very human!’”  Sin and its deceitfulness doesn’t stop with “more birthdays”.   Our growth spiritually should certainly see us developing a resistance to some of the things that used to “get at us” at an earlier point in our lives.  But, other spiritual challenges come along that search for new holes in our spirtual armor.  Luke 4:11 says Satan left Jesus after the wilderness temptation experience, lying in wait for another opportunity!

Take David for example.  David does some fantastic things in his life.  He also faces some enormous life challenges.  In his younger years he endures Saul’s antagonism – even his plots to destroy him – refusing to take Saul’s life when he had the opportunity on more than one occasion.  He absorbs the blows on the way to becoming Israel’s next king.  After Saul’s death, he composes a song about him and encourages every Israelite to learn it.  Pretty mature…right? 

But later in life, David leaves Jerusalem as a wounded king to protect the city from civil war at the hands of his son, Absalom.  On the way out of the city, a mean, hateful man named Shimei walks alongside him mocking him, cursing at him and throwing stones his direction (2 Samuel 16:5ff).  A member of David’s entourage wants to “fix the guy’s problem” but David begs him off.  They walk away from the situation and travel on.

Now, fast forward to the end of David’s life.  As he lay upon his death bed (a dying king with a great memory can call attention to a lot of unfinished business!), he calls Solomon’s attention to what Shimei did a “long time ago”.  “Make sure he doesn’t die a natural death”, David says (2 Kings 2:8-9).  And, that’s exactly what happened (2 Kings 2:36-46).

Pre-forty…post-forty…the battles come and go.  They change form, type and degree.  We live in strength in one moment but have to be vigilant for “Shimei” episodes in moments when we are frail.  One thing is certain.  They keep coming.  Paul was right:  “I have not arrived nor have I become perfect” (Philippians 3:12-14).  I think our challenge and calling is to hear the wisdom of Proverbs 4:23 in the awareness of the frailty of our flesh mirrored in David’s cry in Psalm 19:12 knowing that we walk with the One who has passed every test this world could throw at him and who lives to make intercession for us as One who sympathizes with us (Hebrews 7:25; 4:15).  We live in the mix of all of that.  And, in that mix we exercise diligence in matters of the heart.  .

Prayer: O God, save us from both the naiveté and the arrogance that seduce us into becoming less vigilant over our hearts.  As your servant James said so we request that you help us “implant” your word into our hearts so that we might think rightly about our lives and detect the deceitfulness of sin in its many forms.  We know our hearts.  Heal us.  Convict us.  Encourage us.  Restore us.  Equip us.  We need your presence in our hearts.  May the words of our mouth and the meditation of our heart be acceptable in your sight…now and always.  Amen.

Randy Daugherty
Stephenville, Texas