Analogies of the Physical Heart and the Spiritual Heart

Guest Blog by Jaclyn Burke

This past week Pastor Duane spoke on the passage of Ephesians 4:17-32. The main theme of that Scripture passage is change. How we have changed through the gospel and how we are to live currently. There are a lot really great “fatty nuggets” of information and wisdom in this portion of Scripture that really spoke heavy to my heart. One part of the sermon really got my wheels turning though and I would like to share that with the rest of you.

Verses 17-19 deal with the old man that we have put off and have changed from in four different ways:

Futility of mind = which means vain, purposeless, selfishness, dumb meaningless things, having no direction.

Walking alone in alienation = walking in your own desires, self, away from the life of God, internally only looking at yourself.

Hard Hearted = closed off to God, dont want to listen to other people or Godly advice, stiff and resistant.

Sensuality = Crave whatever you want and greedy for sin not just passively but switches to a active roll.

During the sermon Duane made several medical references to the heart and blood in analogy to God. As many of you may know I study cardiac medicine and it got some wheels turning in my head about how the heart functions and deeper analogies that can be learned.

Within the body the heart is the pump that supplies the correct pressure for the blood to move through the body. In cardiac medicine we talk a lot about “tissue perfusion” or need vs. demand which means that the body parts away form the heart are getting enough blood supply that they need to properly function. In the blood is contained more than just oxygen but also life giving nutrients that keep the body functioning properly.

Also the blood exchanges with the muscles and the tissues for the toxins in the body and takes it to the kidneys to be cleaned so that our bodies don’t build up an acidosis and become septic. If there is one thing wrong in our physical hearts whether you have high blood pressure, or cholesterol, or a broken valve, or hole in your heart it all effects the rest of your body.

Most of the time disease that leads to and oxygen deficiency systemically is one that is done over long period of time and is worked up to. When the body doesn’t get enough life or oxygen the results can be devastating and symptoms visible to those around.

I think the same can be said of our spiritual walks with the Lord. God is our heart and he is our “life line” as Duane said in his sermon. God is the one that should pump our life or our blood. God is suppose to fill our bodies with the life sustaining nutrients that we need to survive and then cleanse away they toxins that we have stored in our blood or lives that could cause us to become septic and have physical and spiritual death.

Like our physical hearts when we have disease or sin in our lives it affects many different areas of our lives and most of the time we can have visible symptoms of our sins and the results or the diagnoses very devastating.

Point three of the notes is the hardened heart. Duane says in his sermon that when we live apart from God and don’t allow him to be our pump or our “life line” then we become hard hearted and calloused. We become “hard-hearted, closed off to God, and don’t want to listen, stiff, and resistant”. When we don’t surrender to God and his design of living for him and God centered as him being our purpose we become hard hearted.

Just like our spiritual hearts have a design our physical hearts have a design as well. When things in our physical heart come out of whack or disease they too can become hard hearts.

There is a condition called Left Ventricular Hypertrophy. This condition can be defined as the left side of the heart that is so thick, calloused, and hard that it can no longer pump. It becomes so large and stiff in efforts to pump more blood and give the body the life it needs that in the end it actually counter acts its purpose and blocks the pumping and movement of blood out of the heart into the rest of the body. Eventually the heart will suffer a heart attack or have life altering complication to the rest of the body unless prevention or intervention takes place.

Our spiritual hearts also can become so hard that we are not living to the design that God had intended for us. Unless we surrender to God our sins through repentance we will lets our spiritual hearts become stiff, resistance, and hypertrophied.

The fourth point of the things of how not to walk was sensuality. This can be described not just as sexual sins but a broader just thirst for sin. Duane said that it can move from being “passive to a very active roll” of looking or becoming sin greedy. I see this as sin feels nice for its season and when its done it just leaves destruction and pain and so you seek to find more of the fulfillment so you go back to sin again seeking the same pleasure you experienced.

Duane said, “There is a guilt and an emptiness from living life apart from God that becomes like this unsatisfiable void and so we become like these ravenous dogs eating up anything and everything in hopes that it will quench our thirst…but nothing does, we just get more and more hungry.”

I think that this is truth and the only way to fix the cycle is to stop living apart from God and live in the design had intended for our hearts. Sin happens and is going to be a constant presence in our lives. Its how we handle and deal with our sins that keep us away from getting hard hearts and living apart from God.

God calls us to constantly renewing our minds. I believe this means to be in prayer and scripture and be honest with God and those Godly people in our lives about our struggles, and sins. When we start to place distance between our life supply God and live apart from those He has place in our lives thats a true symptom of disease and a broken heart.

These are the things that God has impressed upon my heart to share with all of the church and my fellow friends in the Lord. I hope that this finds you well and that it is beneficial to you and that the point will not be lost with the medical analogies.

I love The Resolved Church and I am thankful for its presence in my life and I think that it is one of the tools currently in my life that is helping me to walking not apart but with God. Thank you for your time if you are reading this and to those that are investing in my life to help me walk with God.

-Jaclyn Burke