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 . . .
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- 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 . . .
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- 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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Brother,
I think of how, in our lifetime, we’ve seen such a decay in our nation’s and our personal morality. There was a time when even much less vulgar words than f___ were considered cursing and not allowed on radio and television. Today, these words are so commonplace that we don’t even hear them. How did that happen?
I firmly believe it is because too many Christian people, and I have to include myself among them, chose to stand idly by and allow the slow, methodical, destruction of our nation’s (and the world’s) moral character. Rather than stand up in the public eye and say, “No More! We will not allow this to happen on our watch!”, we acquiesced silently while Satan and those who serve him took over the nation’s narrative and not so quietly changed the course of mankind. Oh, a few of us, stood up in our churches and homes, but we didn’t want to make waves and possibly offend the rights of those who were destroying the civility, morality, and national values we once fought wars to protect.
Rather than band together and elect true Christians who would oppose the moral decay of our nation’s media, classrooms, private and public industry, we fought internally among ourselves over the issues — many of which go directly against the Word of God — and became a divided church. Fewer and fewer churches today stand on God’s Word as many have become more like the world than their founder, Jesus Christ.
Instead of coming together and defending the moral decay that has resulted in cities burning as people riot for the sake of rioting, cursing runs amok, and babies are murdered in the womb in the name of convenience, all claiming a moral right to do so. There is now, nor ever, a moral right to live immoral lives. Yet, we stand in pulpits all across the world and defend their right to live immorally. Don’t think so? Go into today’s mega churches in large metropolitan areas and listen to them teach the prosperity gospel and other false gospel narratives. Walk into a United Methodist church and allow the openly gay female or transvestite pastor deliver the Sunday morning message. Look at the voting record of small, local congregations to see how many “fine, upstanding, morally right” church members voted to allow alcohol and liquor to be served in their communities, or voted public officials into office who opposed a biblical worldview, or find a Christian church within the confines of a “Sharia Zone” in Minneapolis, MN or elsewhere that won’t even allow the local government to enter to protect the citizens living there and enforce the laws of this land.
Can we return from this society of destruction? Not entirely. God’s Word foretells of the day when “good is called evil, and evil is called good” (Isaiah 5:20, paraphrased). We know from God’s word that this world is perishing. Yet, we also know that while a great many will “fall away”, more will be taken out of this world on that Day. To protect ourselves and our families from destruction, we must stand upon God’s Word and its biblical values, morals, and other teachings within our homes. From our homes, we must stand on them and oppose our children’s schools and its teachings, then our communities, then our region, state, and nation. This can only happen, revival of our nation can only occur, when today’s Christians refuse to surrender to those worldly conditions and mindsets that allowed this pervasive evil, vile, mindset of hatred, division, and sin to take control of the hearts of people.
I know I am “preaching to the choir” here, my friend, but the longer we remain silent to what is happening in our own hearts and lives, the more we choose to not say anything publicly and make a stand for how God teaches us to live as true Christians, then the more difficult the battle becomes.
Thank you for this powerful post. As you may have noticed, you evoked a powerful response from me, and I pray that your words stir the hearts of many others who read your truths each week. God’s blessings to you and your darling wife, Ms. Diane. Stay in the fight, my friend. Our families are worth the effort!
You have unloaded a powerful response, indeed, my brother. And like you mentioned, I stand convicted. What we’re seeing now didn’t just begin. It’s been festering right under our noses for far too long. Now, the verbal sewage has so permeated our culture that many “Christians” hardly even notice it. Beyond that, far too many engage in it whenever some knucklehead cuts them off in traffic, or when they get a little irritated over some minor inconvenience. In spite of that, I believe that some degree of change can happen if enough of us repent for our failure to live out the principles domonstrated by the King we serve and to bring His Kingdom to life here and now. Jesus made it clear that a “good tree” produces “good fruit.” We are obviously living at a time when good is declared to be evil and and evil proclaimed as good, but the One we serve never gets them confused. He has equipped us to do good things, because the Author of everything good lives in us. I’m convinced that He will anything and everything “good” that He empowers us to do and turn it into fruit for His Kingdom and that gives me hope.
Thankfully, there are places where the Word of God is still authoritative and the principles Jesus taught and demonstrated are held as the standard for our behavior. My first job, as I tried to say in the post, is to monitor my own heart and mouth. It’s like that picture Jesus gave of the guy trying to get the splinter out of someone else’s eye while he’s got a 2×4 sticking out of his. I’m grieved over how many years I wasted being caught up in what I’ve come to call “church games,” i.e. time (and life) consuming things like running pointless and generally fruitless programs, wrestling over knit-picking procedural preferences, refereeing fights over empty traditions, and trying to smooth some influential church member’s ruffled feathers, but I can’t go back and recoup any of those years. What I can do is cry out to the living God to forgive us, cleanse us, and magnify Himself and His redemptive power through us.
This isn’t the first ones Jesus’ followers have drifted from the mission and allowed the enemy to have free reign to fill the earth with the awful suffering that depraved and demonic human beings can inflict on each other. But regardless of what confronts us, our calling remains and our job doesn’t change–and He will never fail to equip us to carry out the mission He gave us. And beyond the encouragement that seeing yuur name in my inbox always brings, I love the reminder that we’re not the only ones involved in this fight. Every week I see thousands of people gathering to worship the One who died to redeem us. Last Sunday morning we watched at least 60 people declare their faith through baptism. I see young people, older people, rich people, and people struggling to make it get together to worship. But as exciting as that is, it’e even more hopeful to watch them leave and head out into the teeth of this world’s moral darkness recharged with a light the enemy cannot resist and truth that the lies can’t overcome..
So, thank you once again, J.D. You have made our day brighter and smacked us upside the head with the kind of love that nourishes and strengthens our soul. God bless you for the lift and may He send someone your way armed with the kinds of stuff you pass out so freely to others.
Because he’s had so many physical heart issues, Danny cannot bear listening to the commercial you mentioned in your opening paragraph, Ron. We’ve gotten in the habit of muting all commercials when we’re watching certain news programs. It makes for a less noisy, distressing day, for sure. As for that disgusting political ad, I’ve seen it and actually felt violated by it. So sad and disturbing to think that profanity has become the abundant product of their misguided hearts. May we seek to have hearts that beat with God’s rhythm, overflowing with love and compassion as Jesus would wish for us. Praying right now, too, for Israel, our troops and our allies in the Middle East, and for the full liberation of the Iranian people. Blessings!
You are so wise, Martha. Shielding Danny’s heart from undue and unnecessary stress both emotionally and physically is such a good thing to do. I think it’s one of those things that will serve to help keep him happy, optimistic, and functioning as well as possible for all the time you get to have together. Seeing that commercial and the many times that kind of language is used in public settings and when media cameras are rolling is tough for me to handle. I feel all kinds of things inside that are not helpful for me or anyone else. But at least I don’t allow myself to get all wrapped up in the predictable back and forth garbage that always erupts in the aftermath of such things–which is what the perpetrators of sought to create when they published it. We need to be aware of the enemy’s tactics and know where the attacks are directed, but my main concern, as I tried to indicate, is to focus what energy and resources I have on things that might help strengthen the hearts of those I’m privileged to be in contact with. I want to be doing all I can to ensure that my own heart is being filled with as much of the positive, uplifting, enlightening, and soul nourishing things that Jesus taught and demonstrated as I can cram into it. I want the overflow of our hearts to pour into those around us in ways that enrich and magnify His Kingdom and that counteracts some of the filth that the enemy dispenses continually.
Anyhow, dear sister, thank you again for your encouraging response. Diane and I love seeing how you guys are engaging life together and how you’re serving the Lord in so many ways. God bless you for allowing us into that special circle of friends and fans that surround you. We’re looking forward to joining with you to welcome this upcoming season of renewal and hope that Springtime always is. Share a Tennessee hug with each other from us and have a joyful weekend together.