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Diagnosing and Treating Your Spiritual Heart Symptoms

INTRODUCTION

A. The spiritual heart is widely misunderstood in our day, and of our major problem with regard to being sound and faithful has to do with heart problems.

1. Many are dying spiritually each day because of moral heart disease.

2. Great process, though, has been made in understanding the disorders of the physical heart

3. Yet while great leaps and bounds have brought us to a point to where bypass surgery has about the same risk as an appendectomy, the moral center of man’s being has been shrouded in myth and fiction.

B. The spiritual heart, like the physical heart, is constructed of four chambers.

1. All four chambers have a distinct function and each must be kept in proper working order to ensure a healthy heart.

2. Your physical heart has four chambers. The upper two are called the “atria” – the lower two are called the “ventricles”

3. The four chambers to the spiritual heart are:

a. The Digestive Chamber

b. The Combustion Chamber

c. The Judicial Chamber

d. The Executive Chamber

C. Let’s now begin a study of the four chambers of the moral heart, and notice that when we keep these in good working order we will be the kind of Christian God wants us to be.

DISCUSSION:

A. THE INTELLECT IS THE DIGESTIVE CHAMBER OF THE SPIRITUAL HEART

1. This chamber equips man for three activities:

a. Knowing

b. Thinking

c. Understanding

2. It’s function for the moral man is closely kin to that of the digestive organs for the physical man

a. It is not just a receptacle but a facility for knowledge just as the stomach is not just a silo but a refinery for food.

b. The intellect collects and stores (knowing), chews and breaks down (thinking), and then distributes and assimilates (understanding) the information and experience gathered through the five senses.

3. Faith is an act of intellect, not an act of the emotion

a. Paul said, “For with the heart man believeth …”(Romans 10:10)

b. Paul is speaking of the intellect because faith is an intellectual persuasion based on knowing, thinking and
understanding the evidence about God

c. Romans 10:17

4. There are three rules for the care of the intellect that correspond to the three God-given faculties that it possesses:

a. Proper diet

b. Proper exercise

c. Proper clothing

5. The proper diet for the intellect is “truth”

a. John 8:32

b. John 14:6

6. The proper exercise for the intellect is the “study and meditation” of truth

a. 1 Timothy 4:13

b. 2 Timothy 2:15

7. The only way to clothe the intellect and protect it from the hazards of such elements as falsehood and myths is by “applying the truth to oneself”

B. THE EMOTION IS THE COMBUSTION CHAMBER OF THE SPIRITUAL HEART

1. As the word emotion suggests it is the portion of the heart that moves man.

a. The emotions are fueled by the intellect

b. The information and experience gathered through the five senses and digested by the intellect feed and ignite reactions within the emotion chamber.

c. These reactions, or emotions, then spark a chemical change within the body that “turn on” a man for action – to flee, to fight, to cry, to rejoice, to love.

d. So intense are physiological changes that accompany the emotions, that the ancients identified the seat of the emotions in the belly and lions.

1) Listen to Peter … 1 Peter 1:13

2) This passage indicates that emotional reaction can and must be controlled reactions which prepare a man to run in the right direction

2. A man controls his emotions by steering his intellect

a. He turns off his emotional burners by turning his head or his attention and by refining the mixture of information and experience which fuel his emotion

b. A man controls his emotions by pondering wholesome things … Philippians 4:8

c. Meekness or gentleness id chiefly the virtue of mastering the emotions

1) A man like Esau who is a slave to his passions will sell his inheritance for a mess of pottage

2) If we never master our self we are always a slave to another

3) The meek, on the other hand, inherit the earth (Matthew 5:5)

C. THE CONSCIENCE IS THE JUDICIAL CHAMBER OF THE MORAL HEART

1. Conscience is the apparatus that sits in judgment over a man’s actions and is for this reason described as the Judicial Chamber of the heart.

a. As the judge of a man’s moral condition it is constantly on watch delivering its verdict on past, present, and even future action.

b. It commends or condemns past action, accuses or excuses present conduct, and approves or disapproves contemplated activity … Romans 2:15

2. The conscience is properly a judicial and not a legislative chamber

a. The conscience does not make laws, it only enforces them

b. The conscience must be informed properly of right and wrong, truth and falsehood, good and evil, sin and righteousness, vice and virtue

c. The conscience is good at judging and policing action, but it is only as dependable as the standard it has been taught.

3. The conscience is quite vulnerable to three sorts of injuries:

a. An uneducated or misinformed conscience like an ignorant jury or a sleeping dog will let the trespasser go free, sothat Paul said when he persecuted the church … Acts 26:9

b. If regularly disregarded and so trampled upon, like unshod feet, the conscience grows callous after its blisters heal and becomes dull and insensitive … Ephesians 4:19

c. If truth is the friend of the conscience, then a lie is its worse enemy, just like a false witness is the foe of a court
room. For this reason the conscience of liars and hypocrites are said to be seared … 1 Timothy 4:2

D. THE WILL IS THE EXECUTIVE CHAMBER OF THE SPIRITUAL HEART

1. Man is endowed with the power of choice and the will is the seat of that faculty.

a. The other chambers of the moral heart are subject to the will

b. The intellect empowers the will to make informed decisions, but the attention of the intellect is turned by the will

c. A man decides with what to fill his intellect like he does his belly, by a pattern of choices he develops habits of
thought, and having understood a truth he decided what to do about it.

d. While the will must push the intellect, it must restrain the emotion

1) The emotions tug at the will like a horse at the reins, but the will is in the saddle and tames the hearts (or emotion) by turning the head (or intellect) this way and that

2) In fact, we sometimes say to the impatient, “Hold your horses!”

2. The conscience lobbies the executive chamber of the will to act in accord with justice.

a. The will decided whether to heed or to trample the appeals of the conscience.

b. Furthermore, by an act of will man applies the intellect to the training of his conscience and so chooses his counselors like a president chooses his cabinet.

c. He can fill it with flatterers who always applaud him or fill it with wise advisers who censure him when necessary

CONCLUSION:

A. The physical heart is a thing of wonder but the spiritual heart is even more so.

B. See how it is made, learn how it functions, know the risk factors, and understand how to care for your moral heart – keep it healthy.

C. Invitation

*Outlined and edited from an article by Jason Moore