16 June 2005 Devotion for Today "Heart Seizure" Ezekiel 14:4-6

16 June 2005  Devotion for Today  “Heart Seizure”   Ezekiel 14:4-6

 

     I was about to conduct a worship service at a local nursing home last week when I noticed that one of the regular attenders was not present.  I missed seeing her.  She was not particularly old but had been stricken by a stroke and left in a wheelchair some years before.  When I inquired of her whereabouts I was crestfallen when someone said, “Miss Louise died two weeks ago- she had a heart seizure.”  I had not heard of a heart seizure before.  I wondered if it was the same as a heart attack.  I wondered what symptoms would bring something on like a heart seizure.  But I am certain to the victim the result is just the same.

            In this prophecy of Ezekiel, the prophet is greatly concerned with the symptoms of godlessness problematic to Israel.  Idolatry has seized the hearts of the people, particularly the leadership, and turned them away from actively following the Lord.  We think of idolatry as bowing down to idols and graven images.  But idolatry is more broadly defined than that.  Idolatry is the spirit that causes us to be focused on other things or where the concern for the things of God begin to diminish in importance.  The tension is found between doing what is popular versus doing what is right.  Before long, behavior and standards of personal morality begin to slide down the slippery slope of godless disinterest.  I don’t believe all people actually intend to live a godless life- although some do.  I think its just a matter of what or who they make themselves available to until the gods of this world seize their hearts.

            “Therefore speak to them, and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God: Everyone of the house of Israel who sets up his idols in his heart, and puts them before him what causes him to stumble into iniquity, and then comes to the prophet, I the Lord will answer him who comes, according to the multitude of his idols, that I may seize the house of Israel by their heart, because they are all estranged from Me by their idols.  Therefore say to the house of Israel, ‘Thus says the Lord God: ‘Repent, turn away from your idols, and turn your faces away from all your abominations.”  Ezekiel 14:4-6

            In this passage God speaks of seizing the hearts of Israel.  To seize means to capture.  Ask yourself today, “what has captured my heart?”  Have a blessed day.

 

 

Rev. Jeffery C. Russell
Salem Baptist Church
Elizabeth City, NC
jefferyrussell@earthlink.net

 

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