Heart Smart

Heart Smart
Julia Bettencourt
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"Incline not my heart to any evil thing, to practice wicked works with men
that work iniquity: and let me not eat of their dainties." Psalm 141:4


With such a health conscious craze going on, we hear all the talk of being Heart Smart. Our heart is a valuable organ and we have to take care of it. There are so many things that affect whether our heart will function properly. The way we eat factors in, our exercise, and how we live our lives in general.

I wonder how smart we are with our hearts where our Christian living is concerned. We know we should take care of our hearts but do we consciously do it? The Bible gives us some things that we can do to improve the functioning of our heart.

Tips To Be Heart Smart.

1. Believe With Your Heart.
To begin with we need to have a personal relationship with Christ in order to have our heart pumping correctly. We have to see our need of salvation.

"That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. " Romans 10:9

2. Purpose With Your Heart.
I love the story of Daniel. He was someone who took care of his heart. He decided he wasn't going to intake the harmful things of the world and he chose to keep his heart pure and working properly.

"But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king's meat, nor with the wine which he drank: therefore he requested of the prince of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself. " Daniel 1:8

3. Serve With Your Heart.
Serving Christ is one of the best exercises for our heart. It's like doing a cardiovascular workout! Even Joshua was still doing this exercise when he was well up into years. It says in Joshua 23:2, that he told the people, "...I am old and stricken in age" and yet later in the passage he makes a commitment before the people of Israel that he was going to serve God. Even at his age he was exercising by serving God.

"And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD. " Joshua 24:15

4. Sing With Your Heart.
What a lift to our heart singing can be. When we are joyful and rejoicing in the Lord in our hearts, it's like giving our hearts a healthy dose of whole grain.

"Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and
spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your
heart to the Lord." Ephesians 5:19

5. Trust With Your Heart.
Nothing can help us breath easier than trusting the Lord. It can make our heart beat in the proper way.

"Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding." Proverbs 3:5

6. Love With Your Heart.
There's something about having love in our hearts that makes that blood pump through our veins a little better. God not only wants us to love Him but love others too.

"And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself. " Luke 10:27
Conclusion:
If we don't take care of our heart, it can lead to all kinds of health problems such as heart disease and congestive heart failure. There are certain things we need to do in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle in order to take care of our heart. The same is true in the Christian life. Maybe we should make a commitment to do a few things to be Heart Smart.

How about living a pure life and keeping out the impurities of the world? How about decreasing your stress by relying on God more? What about increasing your physical activity by serving the Lord more and being active for Him? How about more intake of that heart healthy Word of God? Christ wants us to have strong and vital lives and we cannot have the lives He intended if we don't take care of our hearts.

So, are you Heart Smart?

God Has Filled My Blessing Basket

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"By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually,
that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name." Hebrews 13:15


Giving praise to the Lord is one of the best ways to express our thanks to God for His blessings and yet how many of us do it on a regular basis? Yes, we normally go through our routines of thanking God for our food before we eat, sometimes we even thank Him for the clothes we wear and praise Him for the sunshine. Around the Thanksgiving holiday we may even list out our blessings and reflect on what God has done, but to do we really "offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually" as our theme verse, Hebrews 13:15, states?

Continual doesn't just mean once a year or even once a day for that matter. It implies that it is repeated without interruption. David said in Psalm 34:1, "...His praise shall continually be in my mouth." He also said, "At midnight I will rise to give thanks unto thee because of thy righteous judgments." (Psalm 119:62)

When's the last time we found ourselves up at midnight thanking the Lord? Later on in that same psalm David says, "Seven times a day do I praise thee because of thy righteous judgments." Do we stop seven times a day to praise God? Do we even stop once or twice to praise Him?

Now that we know that we need to praise God continually, how do we do it? If you think that all praising God involves is sitting in a small group in a quiet place, whispering quiet praise songs--think again! Praising God is an active thing.

The Bible says the following about praise. "shout for joy" (Ps. 32:11) "O clap your hands" (Ps. 47:1) "sing" (Ps. 47:6) "make a loud noise" (Ps. 98:4) "lift up your hands" (Ps. 134:2) "with the sound of trumpet" (Ps. 150:3) "upon the loud cymbals" (150:5) "make a joyful noise" (Ps. 98:4) "rejoice" (Ps. 98:4) "with harp" (Ps. 33:2) We are not to keep praising God to ourselves. We are to "...make known his deeds among the people." (Psalm 105:1) In other words if you receive a blessing--tell someone about it.

If we are going to develop a lifestyle of praise to God continually we need to put things in perspective. Realize who God is and we who are not. "Know ye that the Lord he is God: it is he that hath made us and not we ourselves; we are his people and the sheep of his pasture." (Psalm 100:3,4) We need to recognize that all of the things we find in our blessing basket come from above.

P Praise God because He is POWERFUL."Now these are thy servants and thy people, whom thou hast redeemed by thy great power, and by thy strong hand."Nehemiah 1:10"Touching the Almighty, we cannot find him out: he is excellent in power, and in judgment, and in plenty of justice: he will not afflict."Job 27:23

R Praise God because of His RIGHTEOUSNESS.

"Thy righteousness is like the great mountains; thy judgments are a great deep: O LORD, thou preservest man and beast." Psalm 36:6

"...for the LORD our God is righteous in all his works which he doeth..." Daniel 9:14

A Praise God because he is ABLE.

"Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above
all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh
in us." Ephesians 3:20
"And God is able to make all grace abound toward you;
that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things,
may abound to every good work." 2 Corinthians 9:8

I Praise God because He is INFINITE.

"'O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge
of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past
finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath
been his counsellor? Or who hath first given to him, and it shall
be recompensed unto him again? For of him, and through him,
and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen."
Romans 11:33-36

S Praise God because of His STRENGTH.

"God is my strength and power:
And he maketh my way perfect." 2 Samuel 22:33
"The LORD reigneth, he is clothed with majesty; the LORD
is clothed with strength, wherewith he hath girded himself:
the world also is stablished, that it cannot be moved." Psalm 93:1

E Praise God because He is EVERLASTING.

"Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the
everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends
of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no
searching of his understanding." Isaiah 40:28
"...and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor,
The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince
of Peace." Isaiah 9:6

P-R-A-I-S-E!

So, are you praising God?