Keep Your Heart With All Diligence

"The LORD looks down from heaven, he sees all the children of man; 

from where he sits enthroned he looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth, 

he who fashions the hearts of them all and observes all their deeds."  Psalm 33:13-15 ESV

Did you know that there is a connection between the brain and the heart?  In an article entitled "The Heart-Brain Connection" on the HeartMath Institute's website, the author states "the heart actually sends more signals to the brain than the brain sends to the heart."  What is even more interesting, these scientists have discovered there is so much connectivity between the heart and the brain that "higher cognitive faculties such as attention, perception, memory, and problem-solving"  are directly affected by what is going on in our hearts. "In other words, not only does the heart respond to the brain, but the brain continuously responds to the heart. The article goes on to explain that contrary to what we were taught in school that the only function of the heart is to pump blood and gives oxygen to the body, it does far more to the point of giving orders to the brain.

The Bible is full of phrases such as "he did evil in his heart", "in his heart", "the integrity of his heart", "he set his heart", Pharaoh hardened his heart", "his heart failed him", "a true heart", etc.  In fact, the Scriptures refer to the heart as the center of man's being over 800 times in the Old and New Testaments.  Early on when I was studying the Scriptures, I wondered why God spoke of our hearts in this fashion. When I asked my professors, they always explained these phrases are figurative, and the writers of Scripture used the word heart to mean the seat of our will and emotions.  

The 19 years of research done by the HeartMath Institute on the connection between in heart and the brain indicate that God was not just being figurative when he spoke of the heart. The heart is literally the seat of the will and emotions and it tells our brain what it wants to do. Hence we find expressions in the Scripture such as, "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh", David was "a man after God's own heart", and "the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it."  

While thinking about the heart and how closely connected it is to our brains (and our overall health), it occurred to me that I should be even more diligent about keeping my heart pure.  David in the Psalms said, "Create in my a clean heart oh God, and renew a right spirit within me." And in Proverbs, we find "keep thy heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life." Young's Literal Translation states it even clearer. "Above every charge keep thy heart, for out of it are the outgoings of life." (Proverbs 4:23) 

~Joy