Category: PASSION Reflections

People after God’s Heart

On By BrianIn Heart

The Bible’s description of the human heart is not flattering.  It is evil and stubborn (Jeremiah 3:17, 18:12), with evil intentions (Genesis 6:5, 8:21), sick and deceitful (Jeremiah 17:9), and goes after detestable things (Ezekiel 11:21).  Or as Ephesians 2:1-3 tells us – we are dead in our sins.

But Ephesians 2 goes on to say that God mercifully makes us, who were dead, alive together with Christ through faith (v4-5, 8).  That is, God gives us new hearts (Jeremiah 24:7, 31:33, 32:38-39, Ezekiel 11:19-20, 36:26-27).  No longer stubborn evil hearts, but hearts that seek to do God’s will.

And why does God do this?  Because of his mercy and love and grace (Ephesians 2:4-5) – this is God’s heart for us.  And Ephesians 5:2 says we should walk in love as Christ loved us.  That is, we should have the same heart God has – a heart of love.

So we might sum it up this way: with a new heart we respond to God’s heart with the same heart.  We become a people after God’s heart.

But what exactly does it look like to be a people after God’s heart, to have a heart for God?  And how can we grow to have more of a heart for God?  This is what I want to write (and preach) about for the next several weeks.  Basically, I looked up every passage using the word heart in the Bible.  There are 766 occurrences in my translation for those who like statistics.  After weeding out passages that don’t really apply (like Jonah being thrown into the HEART of the sea), I have grouped passages into themes that spell out what it means to have a heart for God.  Each week we’ll look at some of these themes.  Hope you’ll join me on the journey and add to the conversation!

Oceans Drained Dry

On By BrianIn God & His Glory1 Comment

A good way to conclude this week’s discussion about God’s amazing heart for us might be to reflect again on these wonderful words from F. M. Lehman:

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry.
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.
O love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure
The saints’ and angels’ song.

Drain the oceans and fill the sky – and you still have not grasped the depths of God’s love!  A great thought to prepare us to gather tomorrow to worship this great God of love!

Grasping the Ungraspable

On By BrianIn God & His Glory1 Comment

God’s heart for us is one of mercy, love, and grace.  Our great need is to grasp this with our hearts and minds.  So Paul prays that you:

“May have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.” – Ephesians 3:18-19a

We need strength to comprehend his love.  A few verses earlier, Paul makes clear that this strength comes from the Spirit – so we need God’s help to grasp his love.

We need to comprehend his love – how broad and long and high and deep God’s love for us is.  We need to know this love…which surpasses knowledge.  To know what is unknowable.  To grasp what is ungraspable.  The point is that God’s love is too deep to fathom.  We can always go deeper.  We can always reach higher.  We can always move further.  We can always grasp more and more because there always is more.

And so we pray that we might each day know his love a little more.  Grasp a little more.  Comprehend a little more.

May this be our prayer…and our experience!

Amazing Grace

On By BrianIn God & His Glory1 Comment

As I mentioned in my last post, God takes us who were dead in our sins and makes us alive in Christ because of his mercy, love, and grace (Ephesians 2:4-5).  Verse 7 adds a wonderful description to God’s grace.  Paul refers to God’s grace as the “immeasurable riches of his grace.”  Ponder that phrase.

Immeasurable – too big, too vast, and too immense to measure or consider or fathom.  Were you to spend your entire life investigating the riches of God’s grace to us, you would never reach the end, never fully grasp it or comprehend it.

Riches – Here, in his grace, is true riches.  With his grace that makes us alive, we are truly wealthy.  The richest person on the earth (financially) is a pauper without God’s grace.  And the poorest person on the planet (financially) who has received God’s grace is wealthy beyond measure. True riches are found, not in material things, but in God’s grace.

Immeasurable riches.  Do we believe this?  Are we living like it?

God’s Heart For Us

On By BrianIn God & His Glory, Heart2 Comments

This past Sunday I preached about God’s heart for us.  We looked at Ephesians 2:4-5 which says, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved.”  Three words describe God’s heart for us:

Mercy – We deserve judgment and wrath and condemnation because of our sins, but God gives us mercy.  We who were dead, helpless, unworthy rebels have received mercy from almighty God.  And his mercy isn’t stingy or small, but overflowing – God is “rich in mercy.”

Love – How do we account for his mercy?  The answer is his great love.  And how did God show his love?  He showed it by sending his Son for our salvation (John 3:16).  Jesus showed his love for us in that while we were still sinners, he suffered and died for us (Romans 5:8).  We didn’t deserve it, but Jesus did it.  He died that we who were dead might have a new life.  That is great love!

Grace – God saves us by his grace – his free undeserved favor.  It is free – you can’t buy it or work for it.  It is undeserved – you can never earn it or do enough good things to merit it.  And it is this  grace alone that saves us. Without his grace we are dead.  By his grace we are made alive.

Mercy.  Love.  Grace.  This is God’s heart for us.  And this is our salvation!

Why Don’t We Talk About Jesus?

On By BrianIn Heart, Revival2 Comments

In my last two posts, I wrote about using every context of our lives to talk about Jesus – to encourage other believers and to share the good news with those who are dead in their sins.  My question here is – why don’t we do this more?

Why is it that we talk about Jesus in Sunday School and the Worship Service, but before, between, and after we talk about everything else but Jesus.  Why don’t we talk about what we heard from God’s Word just minutes before.  Why is my Facebook account filled with “friends” who are Christians but who rarely if ever mention Christ?  Why is it that we don’t talk more about Jesus?

Let me be clear – I’m not judging anyone – because I am guilty of this too.  I’m just wondering why we are so slow to talk about Jesus.  Could it be that we don’t talk about Jesus much because we don’t think about him much?  Or maybe we are afraid to mention his name?  Or are we so distracted by the things of this world that other things take our focus and hence we talk about those things?

If Jesus is most important in our lives, wouldn’t we be talking about him?

Christian Encouragement In New Contexts

On By BrianIn Revival

In my last post, I talked about using new contexts like Facebook – and indeed all contexts – as opportunities to share Christ with others.  Here I want to suggest that we should also use new contexts – indeed all contexts – as opportunities to encourage one another in our faith – to spur each other on to love and good deeds.

This of course is the purpose of this blog.  And Facebook gives us another wonderful opportunity to encourage other Christians.  Rather than writing mindless comments on our “walls”, we can write things designed to encourage other Christians.  We can apply Paul’s words about our speech to our writing –

“Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.” – Ephesians 4:29

Most recently, I have been writing a verse on my “wall” each day.  Our church is reading through the Old Testament, so I put a verse on my “wall” that is part of the daily reading.  Of course all my other “friends” see the verse too.  Other ideas are to just write about what Christ is doing in your life, something Christ is teaching you, something you have been thinking about related to Christ, a meaningful point from Sunday’s sermon, an answered prayer request, something you want to praise God for….  The possibilities are as endless.

Of course as we write these things, we can not only encourage other Christians, but we are sharing Christ – and what he means to us – with any non-Christian “friends” we have.  We just need to write about Christ in our lives and we will be encouraging Christians and telling non-Christians about Jesus at the same time.

And then let’s take this idea into the other contexts of our lives.  Talk, write, and e-mail about Jesus.  Use every opportunity to build up our brothers and sisters in Christ – and share Christ with others – for the glory of God!

Old-fashioned Commitment in New Contexts

On By BrianIn Revival

John Piper’s last chapter in his book Finally Alive begins this way:

“We’re ending this book on the ground.  On the street.  In the car.  At Starbucks.  In the back yard.  In school.  At work.  Over lunch.  On the phone.  On Facebook and MySpace.  And text messaging.  And Skyping.  And blogging.  And airplanes.  And a hundred ordinary conversations.  We’re ending with personal evangelism – an old-fashioned commitment in new contexts for the sake of the new birth in thousands of spiritually dead people for the glory of Jesus Christ.”

That phrase – “old-fashioned commitment in new contexts” caught my eye,  as did some of his examples – like blogging and Facebook.  It is a call to use today’s social and technological contexts for sharing the gospel.

I just started using Facebook about a month ago.  It is a great way to connect with people…and a great way to waste your life.  Many of the comments are trivial, even mindless.  Words, words, and more words with little significance.  But couldn’t we use it to share important thoughts and ideas?  To share what Christ means to us?  To fill the “walls” of our “friends” with Jesus?  Lovingly – not in your face.  Naturally – flowing out of who we are in Christ. Facebook is all about sharing what we are doing and thinking – so let’s share about what we are thinking and doing that relates to Christ.

And that is only one context.  How might we use every context we have as an opportunity to share about Christ?  I don’t usually think this way, but I need to!  I need to think about how I might use every situation to share Christ with others.

What if we filled our conversations and blogs and e-mails and phone calls and “walls” and towns with Jesus – “for the sake of the new birth in thousands of spiritually dead people for the glory of Jesus Christ”?

Fill your town with Jesus

On By BrianIn Revival2 Comments

I just finished reading John Piper’s solid book about being born again called Finally Alive.  In his last chapter, he applies the doctrine by calling us to do our part to lead people to Jesus that they might be born again.  He writes:

When the apostles were put on trial in Jerusalem, the hight priest said, “You have filled Jerusalem with your teaching” (Acts 5:28).  That is what I dream for the churchs of my city.  If all the Christians were talking about Christ, and giving out literature about Christ, and sending e-mails about Christ, and inviting people to church for Christ, and being lavishly generous to others for Christ, then someone might say, “Those Christians have filled the city with their teaching.”  May it be so.

Do we dream of filling our towns with Jesus?  How might we do it?  What are we waiting for?

New Heart

On By BrianIn Heart

How can we have a heart for God?  On our own we can’t.  Everyone is born apart from God, dead in their sins, with cold, hard, rebellious, unresponsive hearts.  We follow the sinful ways of our world, the temptations of the devil, and our own sinful desires.  We stand under the judgment of a holy God.  That is the conclusion of Ephesians 2:1-3.  We are dead.

But v4 begins with two glorious words – “But God.”  On our own we are dead…but God!  God, rich in mercy, with great love, and immeasurable grace, makes us alive in Christ.  He does for us what we can’t do for ourselves. As God powerfully raised Jesus physically from the dead, so God powerfully raised us spiritually from the dead.  Other pictures in Scripture for this miracle of being made alive are: born again, new creation, new heart.  God makes us alive and new by giving us a new heart.  And all of it comes by faith alone apart from works.

And yet the works follow.  Once we are made alive with new hearts, we no longer want to live as we did before in sin.  We have new hearts.  Now we want to live for God, doing the good works he gives us opportunities to do.

Have you received this new life?

If so, let us live the new life he has given us!