Heart Lessons from God

Thank you all for your prayers and words of encouragement as I have been resting and recovering from having the two stints placed in my heart. Your prayers and support has been awesome.

What is God really up to? That’s a legitimate question. What was all that about? Why now? Why the heart thing?

The First heart lesson I’ve learned is that God loves me, but he’s not quite ready to call me home yet because there’s still lots of ministry for me to do for him both in my family and in my church family. It would not have taken much to call me home. The only reason why I am still alive is because God wills for me to be alive.

18 months ago, I had no symptoms, no warnings that out of the four main arteries in the heart, two were 100% blocked and the other two were 90% blocked. I was barely alive and didn’t even know it.

The only reason why I am still here is because God’s not done with me yet.

Since God’s not done with me yet, I need to be a better steward of the life God has given me. While I certainly don’t fear death, that doesn’t mean I don’t need to do my part to manage the life God has given me. Here’s what that means:

·      I will lose 30 pounds by end of February 2011. That gives me six months to lose 30 pounds – five pounds a month.

·      To accomplish that, I will be exercising five days a week, and eating a low-carb, low-fat, and low-sodium diet.

The second heart lesson is that every single day God allows me to be alive will be lived to the fullest for the glory of Jesus Christ. I don’t want to waste a single day doing things that won’t make a difference for Jesus. As someone once said, life is God’s gift to us but what we do with our lives is our gift back to God. I want my life to count. I want my life to make a difference.

So then, what is the heart lesson for the rest of us? You don’t need a heart incident to learn these heart lessons: the only reason why you’re alive is because God’s not done with you yet, and every single day is a gift from God and you don’t want to waste it.

This is what the Psalmist had in mind when he penned these words thousands of years ago, “Show me, O Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life” Psalm 39:4. Because it’s with the end in mind that we will be able to live lives that matter today.

Blessings!

James <><