Devotions by Christine Caine

Read John 10:10

Our enemy Satan is a thief who wants to steal our lives, but Jesus came to bring us abundant life.

Spiritual Heart Attacks

Unhealthy habits can often account for the breakdown of our physical bodies. For example, the more common causes of a physical heart attack are stress, a high-fat diet, lack of exercise, smoking and high blood pressure. By eliminating the potentially harmful behavior patterns that lead to blockages in our arteries, we can prevent a heart attack from ever happening. The best cure is prevention.

The same is true in our spiritual lives. We cannot ignore those things that cause a blockage in our spiritual heart muscle. Lack of spiritual health can cause us to leave our first love, which will eventually lead to a spiritual heart attack. Once we suffer such a heart attack, we find that our hearts no longer beat passionately for God or his purposes. Instead, we substitute formalism for faith and empty ritual for the life of the Spirit. In essence, by just going through the religious motions, we plug ourselves into an artificial life-support system. We mistakenly think we are alive, but in reality we are only existing.

If we disconnected the wires from our empty rituals, there would actually be a spiritual flat line with no evidence of the life of God flowing in and through us. We were never created to settle for mere religion. Jesus did not die so that we could have a religious belief system––but rather a life-giving relationship with our Father.

If we fail to care for our spiritual hearts and neglect their health, we will never possess the spiritual strength we need to love God completely. By guarding our hearts, we ensure that the enemy has no access to them and is therefore unable to steal the abundant life that Jesus came to give us.

I believe that as Christians we all possess a sincere desire to love God with all our hearts, yet we often unknowingly allow little things to build up inside of us. Slowly, these small subtle obstructions form very large blockages, which over a period of time clog our spiritual arteries and harden our hearts by depriving them of access to their life source. We must do whatever it takes to ensure that these have no place in our lives as followers of Jesus.

Point to Ponder

Are you guarding your heart from a spiritual heart attack? Are you engaging in healthy spiritual habits and avoiding those things that cause spiritual blockages? You don’t have to be a victim. You can take care of your heart, keep it healthy and strong, and use it to love God and others more.