"Check your heart"
Mark 12:30; John 4:24

Pastor Jack Anderson

Introduction. Vance Havner once said of Believers, "We are so subnormal that if we were to become normal, people would think we were abnormal. If we show so little signs of life, people will conclude that if we are not dead yet, we are certainly getting sick".
For a church to be genuinely alive, it must be healthy. For the church to be healthy, the Christians, that compose it, must be healthy. Church health has become the real issue in our age.
Healthy things grow. Healthy churches grow. Healthy Christians grow in the knowledge of Christ their Saviour.
But what are the characteristics of a healthy Christian life? When you go to the doctor for a check-up, various tests are done which indicate a basic level of health.
If your temperature is normal, and your blood pressure falls within a certain range, and the test shows the right levels of those things that are supposed to be there and those things that are supposed to be absent, then the doctor knows, that these characteristics indicate a normally healthy individual.
In other words, there are characteristics or indicators as to the health of the human body. There are also those indicators of health in the spiritual body.
The first two essential characteristics of a healthy Christian life are, passionate spirituality and inspiring worship.
If we have a heart that is right before God, we will love Him passionately and worship Him enthusiastically.
1. A Passionate Love For God
How can we love God passionately? Jesus gives us four ways to love God. These are found in His reply to the question, whatthe greatest commandments in Scripture.
Mark 12:30 and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with thy entire mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.
Jesus tells us first that we must love the Lord your God with all our hearts.
To love the Lord with all our heart means to love Him with pure devotion. It's not enough to give Christ a place in our hearts., we are called to love Him with all of our heart.
We are all familiar with how it was, when we met that one who captured our heart. We've all heard of the "look of love." When you love someone with all of your heart, you think about him or her almost all of the time. You long to be with them. They are the priority in your life.
To love God with all your heart is much like that. It means that your heart is devoted to Him. It means that you are faithful to Him. He becomes the most important person in your life.
A. W. Tozer once said that, "We are called to an everlasting preoccupation with God."
But the love that we are to have for God has another characteristic. You are not only to love God with all your heart; you are to love Him with all your soul.
The soul speaks of our emotions. To love God with all our soul means that our love for God ought to be full of passion. Indeed, when we think of a love affair, we think of passion. And we are all people of passion.
While we may try to deny our emotions, our emotions have a way of rising to the surface, in spite of all our efforts to hide them. Now, emotions are good, for God created them. And we need to say that it's all right to express them, especially, as we express them in love for God. We ought to be emotional about our love for God.
Unfortunately, our culture is growing more cynical every day. People are disillusioned and have become apathetic. The word apathetic literally means "without passion."
We cannot afford to be apathetic about our love for God. We must be excited about our relationship with Jesus. We must be passionate.
In the Song of Solomon, we hear about the passionate kind of love we ought to have for God. The Bride says of her beloved-
Song 1:2 "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine. Again, we hear her say: "Show me Thy face" let me hear your voice".
Real love is passionate love. To love God with all our soul means, that we must be involved with all our emotions in our relationship to Him. And, when you've really given Jesus all of your heart, then it's easy to become excited about following Him. Our love for Christ begins with a pure devotion and expresses itself by being full of passion, but there is yet another element. Jesus says that you are to love the Lord your God " with all your mind".
This is a love that is thoroughly considered. Loving Jesus doesn't simply mean jumping up and down or doing cartwheels in the aisle.
We ought to be excited about Him and express our emotions, but we are not talking about an emotional expression that bypasses the mind.
It is clear from the Scripture that God fully intends for our minds to be involved in our love for Him. In Romans 12, we are told that our minds need to be renewed. In 1 Peter we are told to prepare our minds for work. And here, we are told to love God with our entire mind.
A mind, committed to Christ and being transformed by His renewing power can be a tremendous asset to the Kingdom. Christianity makes sense and anyone, who thoughtfully considers the plan of God, will soon be able to effectively communicate just how wonderful Christianity is.
I believe that a mind, committed to God, will become a mind into which God will pour His wisdom and His knowledge. He has all wisdom and all knowledge. And as we commit our ways to Him, even into our thought processes, He will begin to impart His wisdom and His knowledge to us.
All of our mental ability ought to be dedicated to loving God.
Then not only are you to love God with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind, you are to love Him with all your strength.
Christianity-- is not just a heart dedicated to God, a soul full of passionate love for Jesus, and a mind committed to thoroughly consider the whole Word of God, Christianity must be fully lived out. To love God with all our strength means to love God in all that we do.
In Col. 3:17 And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him.
: 23 And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men;
24 Knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ.
Christianity-- that is just in the heart and in the head, may be either sentimentalism or mere intellectualism.
For Christianity to be alive, it must be lived out. This is what makes the Christian faith the most powerful force in the world.
To truly love God, you must love Him in all you do. A distinctive Christian lifestyle must be evident in the way you live your life
James tells us that we ought to be "doers of the word." Christianity becomes powerful, as it's lived out in the marketplace of this world. A person's spiritual health is exactly proportional to their love for God.
I love, my God, but with no love of mine,
For I have none to give I love thee, Lord,
But all the love is thine, For by thy love I live.
Mark 12:30 and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.

A Passionate Love For God.

A Pure Worship of God.
This brings in the second characteristic of a healthy Christian life. Christians, who have a passionate spirituality, marked by a fervent love for God, will express that love in the enthusiastic worship of God. This is inspiring worship. But, how do we worship God enthusiastically?
John 4:24 God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

Jesus said, " To worship God in spirit and truth means that we worship the true God. It means that our worship should be in honesty and integrity. It means that our worship should be spiritual, full of passion, engaging the whole person, and supernatural in nature. Our worship ought to be inspired and inspiring.

It really does make a great difference when you come to a service, in which people are enthusiastic in their praising the Lord, where there is a real celebration of Christ's victory over sin and of His love for us.

Vance Havner: -- There are far too many Churches that start at eleven o'clock sharp and end at twelve o'clock dull."
Enthusiasm in worship means, that we are filled with God. To be filled with God, is to be filled with life, to be filled with love, to be filled with joy, to be filled with hope, to be filled with faith, to be filled with peace, to be filled with power. We serve a Saviour who loves us, a God who has forgiven us, a Lord who provides for our true needs, and a Spirit who empowers us.
When we think of all He has done for us, how can we not be excited about Him? We are told in Psalm 100:4 to, "Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise."
The Scriptures are full of encouragement to praise God. Shout with joy to God, all the earth! Sing the glory of his name; make his praise glorious The world needs to see that we are excited about Jesus. So often, the image that is portrayed is of a group of people having no fun and seeking to keep anyone else from having any either.
True worship engages the whole person and is inspired and inspiring. This happens when we prepare our hearts to worship, when we pray for the worship service, when we pray for the preacher, and when we focus on the goodness of God.
When we make Christ's kingdom and His righteousness our priority, then we will be at worship.
Friends, be ready for worship, and be enthusiastic in worship. Then and our worship will be inspired and inspiring, and people will go away having had an encountered the living God who lives in us.
If you are not loving God passionately and worshiping Him enthusiastically, then you do have a problem with your heart.
Jesus spoke to the church in Ephesus in Revelation 2 and condemned them for forsaking their first love.
He told them to (repent) and to do those things, which they did at first - when they were in love with Him. Don't let your love grow cold. If it has, then fall on your knees until you get it back.
It was said of King Rehoboam in 2 Chr 12:14 and he did evil, because he prepared not his heart to seek the LORD. We must prepare our hearts to seek the Lord.
It is not good enough to amble into a worship service unprepared and then expect God to bless you.
It was said of King Jeroboam "He committed all the sins his father had done before him; his heart was not fully devoted to the LORD his God, as the heart of David his forefather had been."
We must surrender our lives to the Lord without any strings attached. And we must seek the Lord with a single-minded devotion in worship.
Jer 29:13 and ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.
Our lives should be marked by a passionate love for God, a life of pure devotion and full of passion, thoroughly considered and fully lived out.
Our meetings should be marked by enthusiastic worship that comes from a heart full of Christ's presence, His love and His grace. These are marks of a healthy Christian life.
1. A Passionate Love For God
2. A Pure Worship of God
3. A Portraying of the Love of God
A healthy spiritual life will be found in those who reach out in love both to one another and to those, who are without Christ.
1>. Your Love Must Reach In God calls us to love one another John 13:34 A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.

John 13:35 by this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.

1 John 3: 18 My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.
Healthy loving relationships must be built within the church. For those outside the church are watching what happens inside the church, to see if we really are who we claim to be - followers of Jesus. And, all too often we fail at this point and we fall out.
Illustration -- I read a story recently of man who was marooned on a deserted island. He had been there for years and finally he saw a helicopter in the area. He built a fire and signalled the helicopter to land. The pilot gladly offered to take him off the island and said, "Go get the others and we all can leave together."
The marooned man said, "You don't understand, this island is deserted except for me." The pilot inquired, "Well, what are those three huts over there for?" The marooned man replied, "The first hut is my house and the one beside that is where I go to church." The pilot asked, "What's the other hut for?" The man said, "That's where I used to go to church." I've heard of church members, who can't get along with one another, but you ought to be able to get along with yourself! Apparently this man could not even do that.
Let us remember that we don't get to choose who is in the church. If the church were our idea, we would have made it full of people, who were just like us, who thought like us, agreed with us in everything, and did not irritate us in any way.
But like our own family, the church family is not like that. Just as we didn't choose our earthly family, we don't choose our spiritual family either. But we are called to learn to love our earthly and spiritual families.
In fact, Jesus said that our love would be the evidence that we are truly following Him. The Apostle Paul exhorts Believers.

Rom 15:6 that ye may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Rom 15:7 wherefore receive ye one another, as Christ also received us to the glory of God.
We are to receive one another as Jesus received us. When we came to Jesus we were all freely accepted. We must cultivate an attitude of acceptance toward one another.
This is one way we can show our love and the Love of God. We can also show our love by how we act toward one another. We must not love in word only, but also in deed.
We need to think right thoughts about one another, speak right words about one another, and do right deeds for one another. Love, you see, is not a feeling - it is an action of the will.
1> Your Love Must Reach In.
2> Your Love Must Reach Out.
Jesus said that we testify to the world that we are really His disciples, by how we love one another. Love testifies. Love liberates. Love also has the power to liberate others around us. When the world sees our love, they become more receptive to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Your love must not only reach in but it must also reach out. It must reach out to those outside the church, who do not know Christ. We have been given a message that sets others free. We have been given a message that pardons. We have been given a living message.
It is living because we have experienced its power. It is living because we have been set free by believing it. This message is the truth of the gospel of the Love of God in Christ. It's a Message that we are to Proclaim and it's a Love that we are to portray. The greatest tragedy of all is to have the truth that sets men free, and never to share that truth.
Someone once observed that many Christians are like the Arctic River, frozen over at the mouth, when it comes to sharing their faith. Unless we speak the great love of God, others will never hear it. We will not share it if we do not care. We must become people who care. Our hearts need to be changed and right before God.
A Passionate Love for God-
A Pure Worship of God,
Portray the Love of God
We need to see with God's eyes and feel His heart toward those who don't know Him.