Day 28: Becoming One After God’s Own Heart
of The Heart of God: Through David’s Eyes
Below is Day Twenty-Eight of the study, but there is an introduction to check out which gives context and sets the tone, and previous weeks to look at below. If you would like the full content all in one place, this book is now available for purchase on Amazon. Week 1 - He Longs for Us to Know Who We Are
Week 2 - He Longs for Us to Respond
Week 3 - He Longs for Us to Know Him
Week 4 - He Longs for Us to Reflect His Heart
Day 22: How Despair & Community Impact We Reflect God’s Heart
Day 23: Benefits of Noticing and Experiencing God’s Righteous Anger
Day 24: Why Extending Mercy Increases Compassion
Day 25: The Gift of Practicing Grief with a Broken Heart
Day 26: Notice the Amazement of Others to Experience a Contagious Awe
Day 27: It is Time to Embrace Anticipation and Hope
Day 28: Becoming One After God’s Own Heart
Hopefully this week you have been able to find time to go through and truly experience emotions you don’t always allow yourself to feel. If not, circle back and do the reflection activities you missed before you keep reading.
I hope in these lessons you have discovered the incredible power of being emotionally vulnerable in God’s presence. Even if you simply dipped your toe into this process, that is a huge dip! My hope is that you took the time to experience a deep connection with God by feeling the healthy feelings of righteous anger, compassion, grief, awe, and hope. God also experiences these same emotions without shame, a desire to hide, or even guilt. These emotions were given to us by God as a way to connect with Him.
Consider the birds, the land creatures, and the fish God has made. Do you see any of them feeling the depth of the emotions we feel? Of course not, because the other creations of God were not made in His image.
When He made us like Himself, God gave us complex emotions that help us navigate our relationship with Him so we could try to imagine the depth of our value to Him. Despite our incapability to comprehend the vastness of God’s love, we can try to feel what He feels and love in similar ways He loves. Only then can we rely on Him so He can cover our insecurities and failures.
Our God wants to sit with us in our fears, failures, joy, peace, excitement, and grief. He wants us to be so engaged with the world and with Him that we are aware that we were not made for this place of brokenness, sin, and distraction. We were created for another intention.
We were created for a life that is submissive to our God who cares deeply for us, His people, so much that He is holistically invested in us. He desires so much more than this world can offer us.
The life God offers us is one David sought. A life of peace, seeking what God desires and understanding His plans are more incredible than anything we could ever come up with. Yes, it involves grief, empathy, and allowing your heart to break for this world, but not alone: alongside a God whose heart breaks for each of His precious creations.
Before David was even anointed as king, God had declared that He would provide a king for Israel that would not be self-seeking as Saul had been. He noticed the way Saul acted out of his own desires and made a unique distinction between David and Saul before David’s name was even mentioned.
“…But now (Saul’s) kingdom will not endure; the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him ruler of his people, because you have not kept the Lord’s command.” (1 Samuel 13:14)
The heart of David, which we found to be imperfect, humble, and remorseful, separated him from Saul. The king lost God’s favor because he was full of rage, apathetic towards his sin, and power-hungry. He wanted the victory of the Lord without the relationship with Him. David was focused on God’s will, God’s power, and being right with God. This separated the man of the world from the man after God’s heart.
📸: lilarts (pexels)
God doesn’t choose people who are perfect. He invites those who desire to know Him to join Him in what He is already doing. We are invited to participate in the story He’s writing.
Perhaps our choice is more simple than we imagine. Like Saul, we can pursue the world and its pleasures or, like David, we can pursue the heart of God. Either way we are broken, we respond to God’s love, we develop a perception of God’s heart, and we feel.
We won’t become less broken, God will just restore our brokenness into something new. He can use us despite the fact that we are in pieces. Our sin no longer needs to separate us from God. The choice to develop our connection with God is in our decision to give all of ourselves to Him, not just our knowledge, our behavior, and our view of Him, but also our emotional selves.
May you envelop the heart of God by accepting your brokenness.
When you allow God to transform your body, mind, and behavior,
may you also let him into your fears, confusion,
and despair so He can be the One to lift you out.
1. Describe what separated the two kings of Israel: Saul and David. How did their hearts differ?
2. How did David seek God’s heart throughout his life?
3. If someone was to compare you to David, what would they notice you have in common?
4. What would need to shift in your life to seek God’s heart more intentionally?
Reflection
Write a prayer listing the ways you want God to shift your perspective towards Him. Be sure to leave room for God to guide you to think of things you hadn’t considered.
Share what you desire with a trusted friend; someone who you clearly know is seeking God’s heart. When you reach out to them, tell them why you chose them. Explain what you’ve learned about how you need to shift and change, and ask them to remind you of what you said you wanted. Invite them to support you and remind you to keep seeking God’s heart.
An excerpt of The Heart of God: Through David’s Eyes by Jill Ng