Living God’s Heart – First Quarter Recap
Posted by Sandy in Christian Living, Experiencing God, holiness/sanctification, Obedience, Our Priorities, Spiritual Maturity, tags: Living God's Heart
Our Living God’s Heart series has one goal – allowing God to transform our hearts so that we are living from a heart that reflects His heart. Each week I’ve written a blog about a condition of our heart, encouraging us to develop a heart like God’s. Because it is out of our heart that we speak and act (Luke 6:45). And how we speak and act in this life has impact on those around us and those who come after us.
Before moving forward, I thought a recap of our first heart conditions might be helpful. I’m providing the highlights of the blogs in this series, but you’ll find links to each of them throughout this article.
A Seeking Heart looks for God – it watches for what He is doing because what He is doing reveals His nature, His plans and His purposes. It seeks Him in every situation because a seeking heart wants to know God – know ALL of Him. At the end of this
Developing a seeking heart is not about doing all the right things, it’s about connecting with God. It’s not about knowing things about God. It’s about knowing God. And to truly know God, you must have an experience with God – which means more than simply reading Scripture and praying. It means lingering with Him. It means not giving up until you have touched the hem of His garment.
As we seek Him, we must do so with a humble and obedient attitude. We don’t read and pray simply out of curiosity or hoping to get something. Rather, we read and pray in a more purposeful and intent manner – desiring to know Him and His ways and being willing to come under His authority – to change our actions to be consistent with what we learn about our Creator. The humble heart recognizes that He is the Creator and we are the created. It recognizes that we are but dust and He is all glory. It knows that He is King and we are His servants.
An Obedient Heart flows out of the heart that seeks God. We listen for His voice with the intent to obey. An obedient heart has a predisposition to obey. We see that attitude in the prophet Samuel and in Paul. The Apostle Paul wrote that when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ everything else is worthless, and as such, seeking Him wholeheartedly is the only appropriate response. Paul wrote that he discarded everything so that he might gain Christ – that he might become one with Him. (Philippians 3:8-9a) That’s living with the intent to obey Christ.
A Repentant Heart – When we seek God with our whole heart, it changes us. In many ways. One of those ways is that we begin to understand how deeply horrible our sin is to God. We become grieved in our hearts and spirits at the things we’ve done and the things we’ve thought. That’s the beginning of repentance.
The word “repent” literally means to “think differently” about your sins – as we become grieved at our sin, we are thinking differently about it. We are agreeing with God that it is an offense.
“Repent, for the Kingdom of God is near” was the call of both John the Baptist and Jesus.
“Live the way you are supposed to live,” was their message. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.”
Thus, the proof of our repentance is in how we live. We’re to live in love and holiness and obedience to God.
A Clean Heart is the result of regularly coming before the Lord to confess our sins. God promises that when we confess our sins, “He is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). God is so faithful. He forgives and He cleanses. He turns our sinful heart into a pure and clean heart.
That pure heart is one that can now see God in greater ways (Matthew 5:8), and when we see God, we will worship Him.Those with a pure heart will gaze upon the Lord in awe or amazement. We won’t just look at Him in passing. We won’t seriously inspect Him. We won’t watch Him from a distance. We will gaze at Him in awe – we will worship Him.
A Heart Filled with Outrageous Praise flows from the heart of worship. We’ll look at the heart of worship and praise in more depth later in the year, but we paused from our monthly focuses to look at the heart filled with outrageous praise during the week of Palm Sunday. How can we focus on anything but praise as we read the story of Jesus triumphal entry and hear the shouts of all around “Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.”
The praise of Jesus’ followers was quite fickle, however, because it soon turned to “Crucify Him.” It was for God’s purposes that Jesus died on the cross (Acts 2:23).
A Beating Heart – But God raised Jesus from the dead “because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him” (Acts 2:24). Hallelujah! “He is risen from the dead” the angel said (Matthew 28:6). Jesus is alive forever! His heart beats for you and for me. It is a heart of compassion and love, yet it also beats with the power that raised Jesus from the dead. That power is available to those who believe.
Wow! We’ve covered a lot of ground during the first quarter of 2013.And we have a lot more ground to cover, but I thought it was a good idea to pause for a week and remind ourselves of what we’ve been learning. Living God’s heart truly will transform us if we persevere in it. But if you’re anything like me, it’s easy to get sidetracked. So this is our “catch up” week – the week during which we review what we’ve learned and refresh ourselves in those areas where we might have been distracted. Here they are again:
- A Seeking Heart
- An Obedient Heart
- A Repentant Heart
- A Clean Heart
- A Heart Filled with Outrageous Praise
- A Beating Heart
Which “heart” did God highlight as you read today’s blog? That’s the heart condition for you and God to work on over the next few days.
Tell me how it’s going. I’d love to hear from you. Post a comment to the blog, on Facebook, or email me.
And if you’re finding our Living God’s Heart series helpful, I hope you’ll share it with a friend. Just click on any of the links below.
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