Knowing Him By Heart

One of the priorities of the school in which I grew up (and one for which I am very grateful) was their focus on having students memorize Scripture. I began attending that school in the first grade, and I remember finding Genesis 1:1 in the brand new red-cover copy of the NIV Bible we'd bought as textbook material and repeating the verse with my class each day: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." 

Our teacher Mrs. Sulc (pronounced Schultz) would ask each time we were done: "Do you know it? Do you know it by heart?"

In other words, the first sentence in the Bible might have been repeated in our heads over and over again until we knew their structure and order and pattern, but did we understand that God truly did create both the heavens and the earth? Did we take that nugget of knowledge and bury it in our hearts until we believed it?

One of the most powerful books I've ever read other than the Bible is a novel by Francine Rivers called Redeeming Love. The novel is loosely based on the book of Hosea in the Bible, so those influences are still present.

I'll tell you, it's not a fun read. It's not a fluff-book. I wouldn't pick up this book to lose myself in on vacation. But it's a book that rocked me to the core the first time I read it, and I've read it many times over. Every time I opened it up, it laid out my heart before the Lord and forced me to take inventory of what was in it. I can't recommend the book highly enough.

It follows the story of Angel, a prostitute in the days of the California Gold Rush and who practices her trade in a western-style town called Pair-A-Dice. The book also tells the story of Michael, a farmer who lives not far away from the town . As in the story of Hosea and Gomer, Michael takes Angel out of the lifestyle where he finds her, marries her, and loves her. And she keeps trying to leave him over and over. 

Rivers gives an in-depth look into Angel's sordid history, the hurt and the pain that shapes her existence from when she was a little girl named Sarah to the circumstances that led to her becoming Angel. Once  she meets her husband Michael -- she can't understand this man who shows her such undeserved grace, over and over again. 

That is, she sees it, but she doesn't know it. She doesn't know it by heart. 

In the story, we get to live in Michael's pain, too. We see his agonized cries to the Lord to walk him through the times Angel runs away and is unfaithful. We see his relentless search for her until he finds her and brings her back home. 

As I say, it's one of the most powerful books ever written. It's the exact picture of Israel's fractured and broken relationship with the God of the old covenant, and it's the same picture of our own wandering, unfaithful hearts that -- over and over and over again -- betray Him Who loves us.

James writes a harsh rebuke in 4:1-6 to his audience. He addresses the wanderlust, the propensity to run away from God. "What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you?"

Here's a question: Who is sitting right now on the throne of your life? 

I submit this: When I am on the throne of my own life, I'm going to clash with everyone else, because I want what I want. When I place God on the throne of my life, and God is on the throne of your life, you and I are able to come together in unity, because the same Person is sitting in seat #1. 

Psalm 133 says: "How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity!... For there the Lord bestows His blessing, even life forevermore." But we can't get there if we each insist on sitting on our own thrones.

Out of this idea, James says: "You do not have, because you do not ask God."

Who do we ask instead? Ourselves? Tell me, do these sound familiar?

"You deserve to be happy."
"You do you."
"You can do anything you set your mind to."

I'm not discounting the power of ambition and goal-setting; that's important. But a significant person who strolls into this mindset and seats himself or herself on the throne is Self. I deserve happiness. I'll do me. I can do anything I set my mind to. This mindset says: "I can do better all by myself, all because I deserve it."

James goes on: "You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with the wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures."

Motives? What motives?

That throne. Who's sitting on it? If you are, then your motives are geared toward what you can achieve out of your circumstances. If God is, then your motives are geared toward His ultimate plans and purposes for your life.

Did you know God has a plan specifically for you? That He has thought out responsibilities and jobs and intentions with our names on each one of them? "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance [a well-thought-out plan] for us to do" (Ephesians 2:10).

So: James points back at the throne, and the big question mark he's got just above it. Who's sitting on it? Who is the king here?

"You adulterous people--" he says.

I don't know about you, but being called an adulterer would pull me up short really fast. It's not the equivalent of "silly," or even "foolish" or "stupid" or "blind." It's adulterous. You've forsaken your sacred vows and united in the most intimate way possible with someone else.

You've abandoned your first love.

"You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses--" That is, deliberately decides; this isn't an accidental slip-up, a mistake. It's a choice -- "to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scriptures says without reason that the spirit He caused to live in us envies intensely? But He gives us more grace" (James 4:4-5).

In the book Redeeming Love, Michael brought Angel back home repeatedly when she left him, overcome with the feeling that she wasn't good enough for him. She didn't understand him, because he didn't react like a jilted lover should react. She couldn't comprehend this idea of unmerited favor, undeserved grace.

Jeremiah 31:31-32 says: "'The time is coming,' declares the Lord, 'when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke My covenant, though I was a Husband to them,' declares the Lord."

The Israelites trampled their half of the covenant beneath their feet; they ran away, they became adulterous people, because they left their Husband -- the One Who loved them and desired them and sought them out.

I have a few friends who have done a "renewal of vows" ceremony for a significant wedding anniversary, such as the 30th anniversary or the 40th. The renewal of vows is when this couple stands in front of their friends and declare together that they still see each other. That their love, though different perhaps from when they were first together, is stronger for the testing. They plant their feet more firmly on the covenant, and they refuse to budge from that commitment.

Here's the Lord's "renewal of vows" in Jeremiah 31:33-34: "'This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,' declares the Lord. 'I will put My law in their minds and write it on their hearts [they will know Me by heart]. I will be their God" -- That throne? He's going to sit in it -- "and they will be My people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' because they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest,' declares the Lord. 'For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.'"

When you allow God to sit on the throne and you take yourself off of it, you know Him. You don't just know of Him -- you know Him by heart. 

What else do you know by heart? Some of us know the multiplication tables up to 12 (another thing I had to memorize in school). Some of us know poetry. Some of us know the Declaration of Independence or the Gettysburg Address or other famous speeches.

I know my children's faces by heart. I know my husband's thoughtful acts by heart. I know many things by heart, but the single most important thing that I know by heart is Jesus and His unmerited favor for me. I hope and pray it's the same for you.

Comments

Popular Posts