Have you seen that TV commercial where a guy stops random people coming by his little stand to ask a question? After his friendly greeting, he simply says, “How’s your heart?” But other than the obvious indicators that they do, indeed, have a heart and that it’s functioning well enough to keep them erect and conscious, they have no idea what the answer really is. Then the heart guy produces a little electronic device with two small pads and begins his sales pitch by asking them to put a couple fingertips on each pad. Almost immediately, the little instrument begins to produce what he refers to as a genuine “medical grade” cardiogram (whatever that means, right?). That lets the person know right away if he or she is about to drop dead from some kind of cardiac malfunction. 

Devices Are Watching Us ~
Electronic engineers have devised positively amazing ways to monitor everything about us. If I happen to fall down, for instance, my smart watch will inform me and ask politely if I’d like it to call someone. Next thing you know, it’s gonna be interrupting my dinner and saying something like, “Look, you’ve already had two rolls – and you know you don’t need that third one. I really don’t wanna hear you fumbling around at 2:00 a.m. looking for Gas-X pills, so just put it back where you got it, okay?”

Easily accessible, accurate ways to monitor how our hearts are functioning are really an incredible blessing, but as marvelous as our modern electronic devices are, there’s another kind of heart monitor that predates them by thousands of years . . . God, who, by the way, actually invented and created our human bodies, mentions the term “heart” nearly 1,000  times in His Word. But in virtually every case, He’s talking about something other than that physical pump in our chest cavity. His primary concern is about the functioning of that central, immaterial part of us that directs our thoughts and behaviors and defines who we are and why we’re here. What He chose to monitor is the nature of what flows into and out of that spiritual cavity in our lives. Jesus later followed that by giving us a graphic example of how God’s system works. He mentioned it on more than one occasion, one of which was in the course of a rather heated exchange with His opponents that sounded like this: 

Brood of vipers! How can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things. But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned. (Matthew 12:34–37 NKJV)

A Divinely Ordained Relationship ~
God’s heart monitoring process, and the point I want to emphasize in this discussion, is defined by that reference to the connection that exists between our heart and our mouth. God designed the two to be indelibly interrelated. The nature of the content flowing out of our mouths gives us a direct and accurate indication of the nature of the content we’ve allowed to flow into our hearts. That relationship is as divinely ordained as anything else God designed into us, and it’s not going to change. God’s motivation for creating that relationship is no different than ours for inventing instruments to monitor our physical hearts. That is, to give us a way to know when something’s going wrong – and that we’re in danger of a catastrophic failure. 

Just last week, I saw a political ad that kicked in a blend of emotions, like disgust, outrage, grief, and anger. It left me with a deep sense of dread and the need not to just ignore it as another stupid political stunt. The ad was simply a person running for some kind of political office whose only appeal for support was expressed in the obscene phrase, “F__ Trump.” Her profane two-word speech was followed by a montage of a half-dozen or so other people, some of whom were public figures, repeating the same filthy statement. It was a graphic and very disturbing indication of the generalized, and mostly accepted, moral degradation we’ve sunk to in this country.   

A Warning Not to be Ignored ~
Let me say quickly and clearly . . . My intention in addressing this has nothing to do with promoting, defending, or condemning a political position. My concern has to do with more important things than that. What motivates me is what that filthy political ad has to say about the condition of the hearts of our country. It’s bad enough when verbal sewage like that is used in private situations, but when it shows up in an ad that will be shown in every kind of medium, it’s a warning that those who claim to be followers of Jesus must not ignore. It’s time to stop turning deaf ears and blind eyes to disgusting exhibitions of moral depravity and remind ourselves and each other that admonitions like the one Paul delivered to the church in Ephesus are as much the Word of God as the Lord’s Prayer: 

Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma. But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints; neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks. (Ephesians 5:1–4 NKJV)

biblegateway.com/passageBut now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. (Colossians 3:8 NKJV)

The key to understanding how God’s heart monitor works is found in the word, abundance. God doesn’t just say that the toxic filth coming out of someone’s mouth is coming from his or her heart. He says it’s coming out of the abundance of the heart. The picture is of a vessel being filled to the point that it begins to overflow. Overflow doesn’t happen until the vessel has received all it can hold and additional input can’t be contained, so it just goes wherever it can. That’s the abundance God is talking about. When so much evil, filth, perversion, rage, or anarchy has been absorbed that there’s no more room, it just flows out through the mouth.

Listening to that ad was nauseating and distressing, but if we see it as a flashing red light from God’s heart monitoring system, it’s clear that the response He wants from us is more than just feeling distressed about how accepting we’ve become of profanity. What He wants, instead, is for us to respond like we would if a physical heart monitor flashed a warning. In that situation, we wouldn’t just hang our heads and whine about the flashing red light, and we wouldn’t blame the mechanism for the heart’s defect. Monitors don’t create problems. They just detect and reveal them. What we would do instead, is get busy doing all we could to treat the condition. The only way to change what the monitor reveals is to change the condition of the heart. And that’s the task we face.

Principle Works Both Ways ~
Jesus was careful to indicate that the overflow of our heart can either be like that broken pipe in D.C., pumping millions of gallons of raw sewage into the Potomac River, or it can be like an artesian well, pumping gallons of refreshing, thirst-quenching, life-sustaining water to everyone we meet. The treatment for a nation’s diseased heart is simple . . .

• • More of us need to get busy pouring in the good stuff until we can’t hold anymore.
  • Change in our country’s heart demands that more of us do something other than just condemn the condition.
  • Change demands that we start soaking up the joy, loading up the love, pulling in the grace, tapping into Truth, and reaching for every story of righteousness, justice, generosity and goodness we can find. 

Unfortunately, our heart’s overflow is so often fed by someone else’s input. That’s how evil multiplies – but it’s also how hearts of love, joy, peace, and all those other beautiful realities become the overflow of a nation that nourishes the world. May God lead us to so many good things today that our hearts just run out of room – and through His abundant overflow, it can then move to create the sorely needed beauty, goodness, and change in someone else’s heart.

“TWEETABLES” ~ Click to tweet and share from the quotes below.  Each one links directly back to this article through Twitter . . .

• • • Easily accessible, accurate ways to monitor how our hearts are functioning are really an incredible blessing, but as marvelous as our modern electronic devices are, there’s another kind of heart monitor that predates them by thousands of yrs. @GallaghersPen (Click here to Tweet)
    • It’s bad enough when verbal sewage is used in private situations, but when it shows up in an ad that will be shown in every kind of medium, it’s a warning that those who claim to be followers of Jesus must not ignore. @GallaghersPen (Click here to Tweet)
    • The key to understanding how God’s heart monitor works is found in the word, abundance. He doesn’t just say that the toxic filth coming from someone’s mouth is coming from his or her heart. He says it’s coming out of the ‘abundance’ of the heart. @GallaghersPen (Click here to Tweet)
    • Additional input can’t be contained, so overflow goes wherever it can. That’s the abundance God talks about. When so much evil, filth, perversion, rage, or anarchy has been absorbed that there’s no more room, it flows out through the mouth. @GallaghersPen (Click here to Tweet) 
    • The treatment for a nation’s diseased heart is simple. More of us need to get busy pouring in the good stuff until we can’t hold anymore. Change in our country’s heart demands that more of us do something other than just condemn the condition. @GallaghersPen (Click here to Tweet) 
    • Change demands that we start soaking up the joy, loading up the love, pulling in the grace, tapping into Truth, and reaching for every story of righteousness, justice, generosity and goodness we can find. @GallaghersPen (Click here to Tweet)

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