[Difference Makers ls] Live Heart Healthy Sample

Live Heart Healthy

My daughter gave me a milk chocolate peanut butter cup. She said, “Daddy, it is healthy!” The wrapper had the word organic on it, so it must be good, right? Organic makes everything okay: the sugar, the fat, etc. 

We love buzzwords. If something is organic, hybrid, biodegradable, gluten-free, that makes it okay. One of the big phrases that is on all sorts of foods right now is heart healthy. God wants us to be heart healthy. He wants us to have hearts that are spiritually healthy. Physical health is important too, but if you live organic and gluten-free and all those cool words but don’t have God, you’re missing it. 

To look at what God says about being heart healthy, we are going to study Isaiah. Isaiah is the 23rd book of the Old Testament. Isaiah is amazing in that it mimics the whole Bible; it is like a Bible within the Bible. The Bible has 66 books; Isaiah has 66 chapters. The Old Testament has 39 books; there are 39 chapters in the first section of Isaiah. The New Testament has 27 books; there are 27 chapters in the second section of Isaiah. They even focus on the same themes: God’s righteousness, justice, and holiness in the Old Testament and the first part of Isaiah, and God’s glory, compassion, and grace in the New Testament and the second part of Isaiah. The name Isaiah means the Lord saves, and that is the message of the Bible too.

The book was written between 740 BC and 700 BC. Isaiah 1:1 tells us that the prophet saw this vision during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. His ministry spanned 40 years, throughout the rule of four kings. 

In Isaiah, the word holy comes up 33 times—compared to 26 times in the rest of the Old Testament. Isaiah emphasizes that God is holy, and that because He is holy, God is serious about love and sin. The more you get into God’s love, the less desirable sin is going to be. And, the more you get into sin, the less desirable God’s love is going to be. 

To stand up as difference makers, we need to be heart healthy. 

Lord, heal our hearts so that we can put away sin, love you, and be holy.