HWS: A Secure Heart
Posted by Sandy in Blessed Life, Christian Living, Faith, Fear, Freedom, God's Love, Gospel Message, Trusting God, worship, tags: 1 John, Job, Psalms, RomansLast week in this “Heart of a Worshipper” series (HWS). I wrote about how our willing heart leads to having a free heart. Freedom! What a concept worth rejoicing over. This article takes the concept one step further…A worshipping heart is a secure heart. Read on. If you missed any of the articles in this series, you can find them all listed here.
A Secure Heart
We’ve looked at many characteristics of the heart of a worshipper. We began by saying that the heart of a worshipper is a hungry heart – one that wants to know God more intimately. We’ve seen that being vulnerable to God and willing to follow Him leads to a heart that is free from condemnation and fear. I’d like to take that progression one step further: The heart of a worshipper is secure. It stands firm. It is established. As the worshipper comes face to face with the God who loves him beyond anything he can imagine, his heart becomes rooted and established in that love. Recognizing the depth of that love fills us with a certainty, a knowing, that God is on our side. Paul writes this to the Romans in one of the most significant chapters of the Bible:
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?…No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:35, 37-39
Obviously, Paul is fully, completely and utterly convinced of his security in Christ. He knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he cannot be separated from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.
In 1 John, the apostle John wrote:
God is love.
1 John 4:8b
Notice that he didn’t write that God has love, but that God is love. His very essence is love. John continues to describe the heart that is established in and by God’s love.
…God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins… And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
1 John 4:8b-10, 16-18
David also had this certainty. In Psalm 62 he writes:
My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will never be shaken.
Psalm 62:1-2
Never is a very strong word!
Job’s heart was secure. In the midst of his terrible loss and pain, He cries out in one of my favorite passages in scripture:
I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes – I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!
Job 19:25-27
As a very young Christian, I read this passage, and I was blown away. Job lost everything. His wife told him to curse God and die. His friends told him that his sin must be exceedingly great for God to be treating him so badly. And surely God seemed far away to Job because his situation wasn’t getting any better. Yet, his heart was ultimately secure. He knew He would see God.
A few weeks ago, we looked at the first quality of a worshipping heart – having a heart that is hungry for God. Job’s heart yearned within him to see God. And in the midst of his greatest trial, he was able to say “I know that my Redeemer lives and that in the end He will stand upon the earth.” That is an established heart.
It makes me want to stand and shout praises to my God. Hallujah! If God could make a man in Job’s circumstances be such a worshipper and have such faith, there’s hope for me! My heart also yearns to see God with my own eyes.
Lord, establish my heart as you established Job’s that I might be able to say in times of distress and disappointment and confusion, “I know my Redeemer lives and that in the end He will stand upon the earth and I will see Him with my own eyes.”
It’s all about being transformed by the One who loves us and desires good things for us; the one who says He has plans for us – plans to prosper us and to give us a hope and a future (Jeremiah 29:11). Part of that transformation is becoming so dependent on the One that is supremely dependable that your security is forever in the Omniscient, Omnipotent, Loving One. And when your trust is in the One who knows all things, is all powerful, and is love, where is there any potential for being insecure?
I’m not there yet! I still have fears. I still forget to depend on God and depend on my own efforts. But I’ve learned that when I am consistent in worshipping God, pursuing to know Him intimately, I develop a greater understanding of His surpassing love for me. Then my heart becomes firmly established regardless of the circumstances that surround me. As you get to know Jesus more intimately, you can develop that same sense of security.
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