Bill Johnson - Heart Health, Keeping Your Heart Healthy
A number of occasions, I sat down with my whole family. I said, «You guys know all I want to do is honor Jesus. All I want to do with my life is simply to bring Jesus glory. If you see anything that is not consistent with that, I’m not just giving you permission to point it out; I’m asking you to point it out.» Well, hey there, welcome back! I’m so glad that you’re joining us. Have you thought at all about last week’s Proverbs 3:5-6? I don’t want to spend a lot of time there, but there’s one thought or point worth making: it says, «In all your ways acknowledge Him.» If you remember from last week, we talked about how all of us have different areas; maybe you’re a schoolteacher, and you have that way of life. You may be in charge of a committee or a neighborhood group. You have all these different responsibilities in life, and the challenge for us is to recognize God in those assignments but then come to experience Him in those assignments.
Here’s the point I wanted to make: it explains to me why sometimes you’ll have a guy who is a genius in business and really represents the Lord well. He’ll be generous, kind, and only do business in a way that is win-win, so that everyone involved prospers—from the business they buy from to the people they sell to. It’s a win-win, so godly in that sense. Yet, you might find this businessman who has come to know the Lord as a steward of resources, ideas, and people, but he never came to know the Lord as a husband or father. Therefore, his home life can sometimes be a mess. It’s not that he doesn’t know the Lord; it’s that he literally has never come to know the Lord in a way that would influence his life to represent Jesus well in that part of his life.
Here’s the invitation I throw out again: every one of us can come to know Jesus experientially. That means encountering the person of the Lord Jesus Christ in such a way that He impacts the course of our lives, and the success—which is a biblical term—of that direction in our lives. All right, now let’s go to chapter 4 of Proverbs. I had a friend—oh goodness, this was a few months before I got married, and I’ve been married for 48 years. So, it was actually about 49 years ago that I had a friend come to me and say, «Bill, I want to share this verse with you. It’s like one of the most important verses of my life,» and it’s in Proverbs 4:23. Just take a look at it; it says, «Keep your heart,» or the translation I learned says, «Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flows the issues of life.»
As soon as he shared that with me, literally from that December of 1972, it pierced me so deeply that it has shaped my thinking and values ever since. «Watch over your heart.» I don’t believe that’s an invitation to be introspective because I know for me, introspection has cost me and hurt me a lot. I’ve never met anyone who went deep inside, soul-searching, and came out encouraged. I mean, I’ve never met anyone who came out saying, «Wow, wait till you see what I found!» It doesn’t happen that way. We go soul-searching and find problems. So, I don’t think it is that. I don’t think the Lord is inviting us to that kind of navel-gazing approach to life, but rather it’s an alarm that says, «Watch over your heart because attitudes and values come out of that place.»
If you see impatience or certain things that are not right, they suddenly become appealing where there’s an appetite for something that’s not right, not healthy. As soon as those things take any form or shape, they immediately need to be repented of and dealt with. We used to do this with our children. Our discipline in raising them was based on attitude; we focused on the heart. In that way, we actually prevented a lot of bad conduct. We would notice impatience, bitterness, or whatever difficulties they were going through as people. We would see that in a child and say, «All right, son, go to your room. I’m going to give you 10 minutes to take care of that.» They would learn over time that they weren’t controlled by the people around them but had mastery over their own hearts—a lesson we required of them as they were growing up and something we had to learn ourselves.
I actually, on a number of occasions, sat down with my whole family and said, «You guys know all I want to do is honor Jesus. Everything I want to do with my life is simply to bring Jesus glory. If you see anything that is not consistent with that, I’m not just giving you permission to point it out; I’m asking you to point it out and address it.» Even my children; I did that. Now, obviously, they still have to maintain respect and all the other parts of family protocol, which you figure out in your own home. But for me, there were times I remember when a guy almost hit us with his car. I laid into my horn; I was very angry with him. Later, I pulled over with the family and said, «Guys, I am so sorry. I responded outside of the character of Christ.» I don’t remember how I worded it, but I turned to them and said, «I was so wrong.» I remember Eric, my oldest son, saying, «Yeah, Dad, you were really wrong. That was wrong.» I couldn’t get mad at him because I had invited him to do that. I want people around me to say, «It feels like you’re getting careless here,» or «It feels like you should pay more attention there.» What is that? It’s watching over the heart.
Why? Because everything in your life flows out of that one place. The heart is the seat of affection. Listen to this: out of the heart, man believes. The heart is where faith is nurtured and developed. All the things that are valuable to us, the love of God, flow to us and through us, from our own hearts to humanity around us. Everything about our life that is of great significance is connected to the heart. Therefore, it’s vital that when you see or taste salt water coming out of that part of your life, you recognize, «That’s not right. That has a tinge of resentment or sarcasm, or whatever it might be. That’s not good. I’ve got to make sure to clean that up.»
So we get before the Lord, we repent deeply. We’re going to wrap it up with just a couple more verses here. In verse 22, it says, «For they are life; these are the words of God, the words of wisdom. They are life to those who find them and health to all their flesh.» Here’s what I want to do; I want to throw something out that I will cover more thoroughly in the weeks to come: wisdom, by nature, has divine health attached to it. Wisdom, by nature, has abundance attached to it. There are certain things—it’s almost like they come with the package. It’s in the design of those who reign in life to have the resources they need to accomplish their purpose and to be radically generous to affect the people around them. Wisdom has with it the attachment of divine health, a way of approaching life that keeps us in a place of physical strength and emotional and mental strength.
So I pray that for you. I pray that every one of us would get to not just explore but to actually delight in and enjoy, in the coming weeks and months, the manifestation of wisdom as it affects health, our finances, our family life, and our relationships. May every one of us see the beautiful fruit of reigning in life. I pray that over you right now in Jesus' name. I bless you with that. Amen. Next week, we’re going to take a look at a very interesting verse out of Proverbs 5 and this whole concept of the purpose of the community. That’s what we’ll look at next—join us!