The Bible has many verses that refer to the heart. You will find a great majority of them in the Psalms. These verses, however, are about our spiritual hearts. The Scripture writers had to be writing about the spiritual heart because they wouldn't have been able to see the physical heart - the X-ray machine wasn't invented until 1895. Per GotQuestions.com, the heart is that spiritual part of us where our emotions and desires dwell. For ease of reference, I will refer to the non-physical heart as the spiritual heart in this post to avoid confusion.
Interestingly, the spiritual heart has a foreskin, which a physical heart does not have. The spiritual heart's foreskin can be read about in the Old Testament in Deuteronomy 10:6, Deuteronomy 30:6, Jeremiah 4:4, and in many other places in the Old and New Testaments. I will delve further into spiritual circumcision in a future post.
Those who believe in God have spiritual hearts that are pure, clean, and that glorify God. Our spiritual heart instructs us (Psalm 16:7). If we delight in the Lord, He will give us the desires of our hearts (Psalm 17:3). Our spiritual hearts, however, can be dismayed because of sin or because of circumstances (Psalm 38:8(b)). If we do sin and repent of our sin, however, God will give us a clean spiritual heart (Psalm 51:10) Our spiritual hearts believe unto righteousness and we must believe in our spiritual hearts before we can confess with our mouths that Christ is Lord and Savior (Romans 10:10).
As for those with spiritual hearts that don't believe in God? Jeremiah 17:9 reads: "The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?" This verse describes those who are unsaved and don't believe in God. They are tempted and lured by the things of this world. In Romans 1:21(b), the apostle Paul writes: "because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened." Their foolish hearts lead them into darkness and God will punish them for that, as explained further in verse 24: "For this reason God gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves."
But those who believe in God but depart from the faith are cursed, as it reads in Jeremiah 17:5: "Thus says the Lord, 'Cursed is the man who trusts in man, And makes flesh his strength, Whose heart departs from the Lord.'" Dear reader, what is the state of your spiritual heart? Do you believe and trust in God with your whole heart? Or do you just know of God and do not glorify and believe in Him? (And if this is you, how did you find this blog?) Have you followed the Lord once but have departed from the faith? If this is you, return to the Lord and pray for forgiveness and reconciliation with Him. The time will come when it will be too late for you to make the choice to return to God.
Did you know that I have an author page on Amazon.com? The link is in the right-hand column, but here it is for easy reference: Diane's author page on Amazon I have self-published books of posts from this blog, and there is also a book with Lenten and Advent monologues. If you purchase a book, please leave a review; it helps the algorithm.
Thanks as always for reading! I'm so sorry it's taken me so long to publish a new post. I hope to start writing more regularly again soon.
Diane
