The Heart of the Matter
As we finish Pastor Davis’s study on the book of Jonah, I have come away understanding that God was just as concerned with Jonah’s soul as the prophecy He wanted to be delivered to Ninevah. For Jonah, the task was simply a tool to address the heart issue that hindered him from loving God fully. For Ninevah, it was a life-and-death confrontation. God’s ability to play a multi-dimensional chess game that uses one event to affect many faceted changes in people’s lives is astounding to me.
The heart issue God was interested in was Jonah’s offense to God over His plan to redeem Ninevah. Deuteronomy 6:5-6 records God’s command to Moses about how to love Him: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.” God goes on to describe how this command needed to constantly be at the forefront of their minds and the focus of life. In John 14:15, Jesus said to His disciples: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” These commandments Jesus spoke of are the new law He spent three years teaching, the law that built on the Ten Commandments and Jewish sacrificial law to one that governed inner life in addition to external behavior. I love how God includes our hearts, souls, and might in these commands. Our love for Him is shown in our motives, reasoning, inner reflections, appetites, emotions, and actions.
As I’ve reflected on this study, I’ve noticed, like Jonah, that the big issues I’ve faced during my life have come from a root of offense at God. Even when I could point blame at a particular circumstance or person who caused hurt, when things didn’t go the way I hoped, when I thought God had forgotten me, and when bad things happened to people I love. What I needed to resolve these was a revelation of truth that disrupted my flawed thinking and emotions. I had disbelieved God was good, especially when bad things happened. I believed the lie that He was able to do anything on my behalf, but chose not to because He was more interested in other things. I believed He could be capricious. I didn’t know Him. The truth is, He had a bigger and better plan than I could think of and was doing something far better than I thought I wanted. Everything He does is out of perfect love for His own. Many times, this revelation came in a trickle as I studied the Word and had input from other Christians more mature than me. Other times it came in a flash, like a smack to my head. When I apprehended truth, it was time to choose it to inform how I responded to God and others. This intersection involves our heart, soul, and might, and is the hardest thing we humans ever face; to choose God’s will over ours. But it is also where the greatest joy and reward is gained. There is nothing in our experience on earth that compares to the peace and deep abiding joy God gives us after we submit our will to His.
Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3 captures this: “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of His glory He may grant to you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 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, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at world within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever, Amen.”
Friends, we need one another! Can we spur one another on to attain the glory God has planned for those who overcome?