Exercise for a Healthy Heart

Your heart is a muscle, and with exercise it gets stronger and healthier allowing you to live a more fulfilling life.

This is also true for our spiritual lives. The Apostle Paul said, “For bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come.” (1 Timothy 4:8)

The more we exercise our spiritual lives our spiritual heart enlarges and we’ll do great things for God. But how do we exercise our hearts?

“I will run the course of Your commandments, for You shall enlarge my heart … The proud have forged a lie against me, but I will keep Your precepts with my whole heart. Their heart is as fat as grease, but I delight in Your law.” (Psalm 119:32, 69-70)

When we live according to God’s word we exercise our hearts and they become healthy and larger. But when we don’t then fat builds around our hearts making it harder for our spirit to breathe and for our heart to pump God’s life giving blood.

A fat covered heart is evil, arrogant, and lies, while a healthy heart brings life to everyone.

Jesus said, “A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.” (Luke 6:45)

Therefore, to have a healthy heart, one that is enlarged for service to the Lord, is to run in the way of God’s word, to delight ourselves in His word as necessary food. Jesus said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” (Matthew 4:4)

But when we become arrogant and self-absorbed, that is when fat will build up and cover our hearts decreasing it in size and will hinder our walk with God.