Heart Monitor

Are you familiar with a Holter heart monitor? It’s a little contraption the size of a Walkman that is strapped around a patient’s waist for 24 hours. It has seven cords plugged into it, each one attached to an electrode taped somewhere on the patient’s body. The little monitor has a battery-powered computer chip in it that records every heartbeat for 24 hours so that the doctor can check the behavior of the heart over the course of an average day. The patient is encouraged to continue his normal routine, even play sports as long as the contraption does not get wet. With loose clothes on, no one could tell that the person is wearing anything special.

In a spiritual sense, our hearts are being monitored all day, all the time. “Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7) God’s got a lifetime, (more than) 24-hour heart monitor attached to each one of us and He knows our condition at any given time.

Spiritually speaking, our heart condition is a very complex matter. The Bible says our hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked and the situation is worse than we can ever understand (Jeremiah 17:9). But our hearts can also love God and desire to please Him. David was known to have had a heart after God even when he committed one grievous sin after another. One thing’s for sure, only God can fully know our hearts. “But I, the Lord, search all hearts and examine secret motives” (Jeremiah 17:10).

This knowledge is both uncomfortable and comforting at the same time. Uncomfortable, because God knows the worst about us, (even the secrets that we want to be buried six feet under); but comforting in that He still loves us in spite of it.

So, what do we do now? We rejoice because we have a gracious God who accepts us for who we are. And because of this wonderful love, we will strive to be His best children we can ever be; to carry out His mission in the world – to be the light and salt of this world. In doing so, we do not and cannot rely on our own deceitful hearts. While living out our daily lives, in making day to day decisions, we need to rely on prayer and a daily review of His word through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We cannot live a life that is acceptable to God without relying on Christ and on His revealed Truth – the Bible.