Keep the Heart Beating
by Nancy Vossen
Cardiac arrest! Heart failure! Numbing pain. The saying “heart-stopping fear” in reverse: fear, then heart stopping. God have mercy, please save my life! Did I just pray? Oh, where is God, when I need him! Who needs God? Who needs prayer? Who needs to pray? The answers are obvious to us. We all need God and so we all need to pray and not just in moments of panic, but all the time. Prayer is a need as certain as we need our hearts to beat. But, the body has many parts and so could it be that the heart’s muscle cells are comparable to the comprisation of certain members of the body of Christ, who as God’s prayer representatives are required to labour more persistently, more earnestly before God’s altar. All believers having a calling from God to serve in his kingdom. And prayer is always a prerequisite to all we do. But there are those who have been appointed specifically to intercede as a priestly duty, in order that Christ’s body may prosper in every way and at all times, as we contend in various ways for the complete unity Jesus prayed for, that we all might continually strive together with God to usher unbelievers into his kingdom.
After my first prayer commission meeting, I naturally discussed it with my husband, Peter. When our conversation came to the part about the numbers of people coming to gather for prayer, Peter asked me if I agreed that prayer is like the heartbeat of the body. The heart is relatively small, (slightly larger than your fist) but is vital to the body; without it you could not live. My brain got activated and I realized what he was saying. Yes of course, the heart pumps blood to every cell in the human body, likewise the ones who pray are able to reach every part of the body of Christ. Peter’s idea is that prayer meetings would not be attended by the mass, but that the heart would be represented there. These participants exercise their muscle cells by praying for other members in need. The human body needs enough heart muscle power to supply all its parts with the life-giving oxygen in the blood. Likewise the body of Christ benefits from those who serve as prayer warriors with spiritual offerings addressed to the Life Giver. The heart itself is made up of individual cardiac muscle cells each with its own nucleus and so is able to beat alone. If you would separate one cardiac muscle cell from all the others, it could beat independently. If you took out a second cardiac muscle cell from the heart, it could be joined to the first one and those two would beat in perfect unity and this procedure could be continued with more and more cardiac muscle cells for in our biological hearts the cells are all connected. In this analogy prayer warriors are able to work alone, but when they gather together in Jesus’ name, additional spiritual activity is performed and enhanced through agreement.
It is through the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit that prayer imparts some reality of God’s “I AM” to people being prayed for. God responds even if the praying person is not able to have any physical contact (nothing visible, nothing vocal) with the person being prayed for. “The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing” (John 6:63a). We are encouraged to “pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests”; God’s intention is for us to “be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints” (Ephesians 6:18). To pray is to believe that the body is dependent on Christ, our Head. God is at work today in believers, because we have received forgiveness and the righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ through his perfectly obedient life: “he humbled himself and became obedient to death - even death on a cross!” (Philippians 2:8b).
Science (which gives us understanding of God’s physical creation) reveals that work only happens when some particular substance is set into motion. The law of inertia, insists that an object at rest will remain at rest unless a force sets it into motion and in the same way an object in motion will continue in motion unless a force acts upon it, restraining it. We want to avoid coronary blockages, so that the heart will be supplied with blood and will be able to continue to feed every cell of the body. Spiritually, we desire the same. The simple idea is to keep the heart beating, so we also ought to keep praying - for ourselves, to avoid spiritual failure, and for others in the body, for their edification.
Sometime after our conversation on prayer, I received a newsletter from Dr. Helen Fadden D.C., C.Ad. and gained a few new insights into the human heart. The heart is the biggest “generator of electomagnetic energy” in the body. The energy the heart sends out “affects every cell in the body.” Amazingly, the brain is not the only organ sending and receiving messages: the heart is “always communicating with every part of the body, and your heart is “exquisitively sensitive to emotions and responds[s] immediately to them.” People who pray are able to communicate God’s resources, his power and his character to various members of the body, and as prayers are multiplied by more heart muscle cells activated and joined together, God does more: and thereby more effective work is done through the body of Christ. Just as the physical heart is tuned into emotions and has instant reactions, we too need to listen and be on the lookout for who to pray for and how we ought to pray. Could it be that if even one cardiac muscle cell stops praying, the body of Christ could miss out on some potential message or energy from God?
The human heart and its vessel network in operation with other vital body systems all at peak performance effectively supplies oxygen and nutrients to every cell of the body and just as important, the blood supplied fights pathogens and blood pumping action helps remove wastes from our cells. All of these functions have spiritual correlations. But did you know that our physical hearts are designed with the ability to “manufacture chemicals to keep you happy, that affect all your organs”? And although the heart is physical in its constitution, researchers are recognizing the spiritual components that empower the heart: “The heart seems to feed on love, happiness, joy, optimism, hope, sharing, prayer and charity to stay healthy.” This to me sounds like the shofar of God calling us to pray because it is the spiritual power of God that gives us the quality of life that we earnestly long for. It is the spiritual work of God that we truly need.
A song we sing at Northview goes: “Sing like never before, oh my soul, worship his holy name.” I like to add another line: Pray like never before, o my soul, worship his holy name.