On Saturday mornings at Starbucks, a group of girlfriends and I get together and have been reading a book by Joyce Meyer called A Leader in the Making. The title of this book almost kept me from even opening the cover to read it because I don’t think of myself as a leader and don’t feel qualified to be one. I prefer to stay in the background and out of the limelight. But as I began to read page after page, I soon realized that to be a leader I don’t need to speak before crowds of people, be the pastor of a church or have my own television ministry. I can be a leader in my own family, within my circle of friends or at my workplace. To be a leader you need to be willing to be used by God and to love as He loves. Joyce tells us that in order to be effective we must have a "right heart attitude". As I read through the chapters dealing with our hearts, it got me to thinking just how important our heart really is both physically and spiritually. When God created us He put our heart smack dab in the middle of our bodies and made it the most important organ we have. Without it pumping blood, oxygen and vital nutrients to all parts of our body we would die. It keeps us alive and gives us strength. Physically speaking, with it, we live….without it we die. Just as heart diseases can cause this organ to fail and function abnormally and zap us of our physical strength, so to does having a wrong heart attitude. Our spiritual heart can become "diseased" and fail to function the way God intended it to function with a wrong attitude. Just as our heart is important to our physical body, a positive heart attitude is vital to our spiritual body, too. God created us with a heart not only to give us life but so that we can love as He loves us. Love is so important to him that we are commanded to "love one another" (John 15:17). We are also told that of these things "faith, hope and love – the greatest of these is love" (1 Cor. 13:13). Obviously, love is extremely important to God and to truly love as He does, our heart attitude must be right.
Now you might be saying to yourself - ‘my heart attitude is just fine’. That was my thinking until I began to read the chapters on the conditions of the heart. There are two kinds of heart conditions. A positive attitude is one which brings fullness of life to us and to others. It allows us to love others just as Christ loves us. A negative attitude causes our heart to become "diseased" and keeps us from showing Gods love to others. We tend to shy away from looking at things that don’t make us look so good. We push them into the background and hide them so we don’t have to deal with them. How much easier is it for us to point out the negative things in others than it is to see them in ourselves? The negative conditions of the heart take away our Christ-like love, our strength and our life, so to speak. They allow cracks and crevices to appear which give Satan an entrance into our hearts and our lives. We must constantly "guard our hearts" (Prov. 4:23) to keep the enemy from robbing us of the life God intended for us. So what do these negative hearts conditions look like you may be asking? They come in many forms.
· "hard" heart – this kind of heart condition causes you to question not only God but others and their motives. It causes a rebellious spirit.
· "prideful" heart - one of the biggest problems of the heart. It causes our focus to shift from God to ourselves.
· "hypocritical" heart - Do you judge and condemn others for doing the same things you do? Do you see yourself through rose-colored glasses while examining everyone else under a microscope? If you answered yes to either of these questions then you have a hypocritical heart.
· "wounded" heart – wounds from your past or even your present that you have not yet allowed God to heal can keep you from effectively ministering to others.
· "despiteful" heart – wanting to get back at others for what they’ve done to you brings about this condition of the heart. Instead of trying to get revenge on your own, you need to give the situations over to God and allow Him to work them out.
· "greedy/lustful" heart – never being satisfied or always wanting something else. Seeing what others have and never thanking God for what he has given you.
These are only some of the conditions that can adversely affect our spiritual heart. Negative conditions of the heart produce negative heart attitudes which in turn keep us from being spiritually healthy. Take a minute and examine your own heart. Pray and ask God to reveal any negative heart conditions that are causing you to have a bad heart attitude. He is the "Great Physician" and can bring health and healing to your heart. Remember – God wants us to "have life and have it to the fullest" (John 10:10). Don’t let a negative heart condition rob you of a healthy heart and life.
--Ann Ford