The heart is a simple, yet wonderful organ. Along with the brain, it controls everything in our bodies. As I was reading, studying and praying one day on the gospel and the promises and hope that sustain the life of the gospel in our hearts and lives, it struck me that the human heart seems to provide a wonderful parallel for the spiritual heart.
Human Cardiology 101
This may be an education for you as it was for me. If not, bear with me nonetheless. The heart has four chambers. They are divided into two chambers in the right side of the heart, and two in the left. In each chamber there is an atria and a ventricle.
The function of the atria is to receive blood pumped into the heart and hold it there until it is ready to be pushed into the ventricles which then pump the re-oxygenated blood back out into the body. The function of the right ventricle is to pump re-oxygenated blood out to the lungs. The left ventricle functions to pump re-oxygenated blood to all the other organs in the body.
To keep all the blood moving in the right direction, God built in four valves. That part is really important. Get the blood flowing in the wrong direction and you're pumping non-re-oxygenated blood back into the organs, and in seconds...you're dead.
Spiritual Cardiology 101: The Oxygen of the Heart is Promise
Now, in my experience, as well as the experiences of an untold number of other believers throughout history, suffering and trial and tribulation and sin all seem to sap us for strength. Big duh there, right? I guess you could say that these things drain the oxygen from our spiritual blood. Which means our blood needs to be re-oxygenated. So what's the oxygen?
For those who've read this blog for any length of time, you'll know what the oxygen is:
It's the life-flow of the gospel of Jesus Christ. In short...it's promise. The very "heartbeat" of saving faith is found in hearing the promises of God, believing they are for YOU, and living like you believe God will keep those promises. A good summary of saving faith is found in Romans 4:21, where we read of Abraham, "He was fully convinced that God is able to do whatever He promises."
Salvation begins when God reveals Himself to man. He reveals Himself to man in such a way that man's heart is opened up to see the true revelation of this God. The "heartbeat" of this revelation of God is that He is a promise-making and a promise-keeping God.
And there's something about this mysterious revelation of His promise that actually creates, sparks, ignites and then fans into flame a decision to act based on that promise. That's called obedience, and it's the natural outflow of a heart that has been fully convinced that God is able to keep His promises. When you believe God will keep His promise, you make decisions differently than you did when you didn't believe God's promises.
About the Author: Rob is a entrepreneur in Statesboro, GA, where he envisions and pursues missional-shaped business for the kingdom. He and his wife Sherri have been married for 18 years and together have three sons and a daughter. Rob believes the mission of the gospel is summed up in four simple phrases: know God, obey Jesus, make disciples, and plant churches. This is the pursuit of his life, as well as the point of his blog.
