Romans 10:10 For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.
The heart is known to be the central part of the body. The life of a person is in their blood and this blood is pumped by the heart. Hence, our heart is what sustains our life. What we have in our hearts determines what we do. And our attitude (what we do) determines our altitude (how far we go).
In the theme scripture, we see that the heart plays a vital role in salvation. As a matter of fact, everything about life flows from the heart. Proverbs 4:23 Guard your heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life. The Bible, when talking about the heart, usually means our spirit. Just like the heart is the central part of the physical body, the human spirit is the core and essence of who we are. Once a person’s heart stops, we know they no longer have physical life. This is the same for a person whose spirit is not in communion with the Spirit of God. When was the last time you prayed to God about your heart? We would rather pray about material things most times than this. Everything you would become is a result of the content of your heart. There are things that don’t come to us not because God doesn’t want them for us, our hearts are not yet ready for those things. And if the heart is not ready for those things, the things can take us away from God or amplify a negative character we have.
One day, I asked God for a prayer point and I was amazed when He told me the heart. I wanted to understand why, so I read scriptures concerning the heart. By the time I was done, I knew why. How your life goes is based on your heart, so instead of just praying about doing great things, pray for a heart that would produce that. I started praying recently that the Holy Spirit will work on me so that I can become the kind of person that can fulfill God’s purposes for my life because this current version of me can’t receive all that God has for me.
The internal would always affect the external so if I want to see a change in my life on the outside, I would have to first work on what goes inside of me. It’s the same with the heart. I can only do great things if I have the capacity for great things and that capacity is built in the spirit or heart of a person.
David said in Psalm 119:11 I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Note that he didn’t say: I have memorized or quoted or spoken your Word that I might not sin against you. The Word you apply easily is the one in your heart. When the Word is just in your conscious mind or on your lips, it’s not a guarantee that you actually live by it. The heart is also the subconscious mind. You can quote a verse of scripture without it manifesting in your life personally. David talked about putting God’s Word in his heart and it had to affect his action – that I might not sin against you. Take a look at Solomon, for instance, who is described as the wisest person that ever lived. His end was terrible. He knew so much and spoke wisdom but his heart was later turned from the Lord and that was the beginning of his disastrous end. Once his heart was turned, the wisdom no longer mattered. This means what you know does not matter until it actually begins to affect your actions because it is now in your heart.
Proverbs 23:7 says, As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. I thought we think with our minds but here we see that whatever we think about continually, will end up in our hearts and form our belief system.
Our hearts and mind work in synchrony.
As a result, what you fill your mind with, ends up in your heart. The mind is like your mouth where you put food. The food you eat doesn’t stay in your mouth. It goes through processes and finally ends somewhere. That ‘somewhere’ can be likened to the heart.
What is in your heart determines your speech pattern. In other words, what you talk about most and what easily flows out of your mouth reflects the composition of your heart. In Psalm 19:14, David said, May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock, and my Redeemer. What you meditate on eventually comes out when you speak. For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. In simple terms, if we want our lives to go a certain direction, let’s think or meditate on that.
The way to guard your heart is to control the things that go into your mind. Be choosy about your thoughts. Think about the right things as stated in Philippians 4:8. Think about how you can change lives. Think about doing exploits and you’d end up that way because your thoughts determine your destination.
It’s important to pray about our hearts more regularly because there are things that get there without our knowledge. Pride, bitterness, unforgiveness, hatred, malice, lust, etc. And these can hinder our prayers because God connects with our hearts as He is Spirit just like the real you is also a spirit. Once the heart is choked with these things, we can’t receive spiritual signals as easily as we should. David asked God to create in him a clean heart and renew a right spirit within him and in Ezekiel, God says He will give His people a new heart and remove their hearts of stone.
The truth is that once we are born again, we have received a new heart but to experience the benefits of that new heart, we would need to regulate the things we feed on to maintain that heart. The things we feed on come through spiritual portals like our eyes and ears. So what we look at and hear has a great influence on the state of our spirit or heart. No wonder the Bible says in Romans 10:17 that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Faith is what strengthens our human spirit but before we can walk in it, we must hear something. See what Proverbs 4:20-22 says: My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart. For they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh. Do you see the words in bold? This is the summary of everything said so far. What you hear and see will enter your heart and they can either give life or snuff life out of you thus eventually affecting your body too.
The Word In Clarity 
Fantastic. I appreciated how seamlessly you wove scripture into your message, in a way that was easy to follow and understand. Thank you for some good “food” for thought.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Awesome Lecture great illustration.Blessings Shalom
LikeLiked by 1 person