Know My Heart

I’ve known of kids who had some amazing experiences before the exit their teens. If you’ve been sky-diving and scuba diving, and abseiling and mountain climbing and spelunking, there probably isn’t much left, in the way of excitement. If romantic excitement is the goal, there is no point in going beyond dating, because the thrill wears off quickly enough, after that.

There are certain thrills we run toward: falling in love, getting information (gossip and trivia-gathering are two popular forms of this), playing the stock market, watching scary movies, and roller-coaster rides are common. But thrills are like sugar: a little here and there is okay, but if you try to live off it, you’ll rapidly become as malnourished as anyone in the poorest third-world country.

The meat and vegetables of life is not, however, the humdrum of the daily grind. In fact, it’s that very humdrum that drives most of us to some form of thrill-seeking. God didn’t create us for all thrills (though if you look through Hebrews 11, you’ll see pretty quickly that life with God offers plenty of them) but He didn’t create us for boredom and monotony, either. There is something more, something deeper, that satisfies and energizes and brings life to the humdrum and purpose to the thrills.

There is knowing God. I’m almost positive that you can’t know God without getting very well acquainted with yourself, and, in the process, knowing others, as well. But I’m not talking about if he likes tomatoes, or if she doesn’t like to be touched, or if he’s annoyed by the ticking of a clock, or if she loves classical piano music. It’s even more than God loves justice and hates iniquity, although that is much nearer to what I’m talking about.

What I’m talking about is knowing the heart. Knowing God’s heart and your own heart, in fact, to the point of being able to live in confidence and freedom. Most of us spend our time hiding. Makeup isn’t primarily for enhancing beauty, it’s for hiding flaws. When we let the Lord into our lives, most of the time we’re hoping He’ll do the same for our souls. We don’t live to reveal His heart; we hope we’re hiding our own.

But what do you suppose would happen if we became well enough acquainted with God and with ourselves that we would be comfortable being exposed? What if we knew God’s love so thoroughly that we could be "naked and unashamed" (I’m not talking about our bodies, here) not out of the innocence of ignorance in which Adam and Eve must have lived, but out of a fuller knowledge of God? (A baby isn’t ashamed of its nakedness, but it’s an entirely different thing to be unashamed of your nakedness in the setting of adult intimacy.)

What would happen in this world if each one of us was convinced, as Jesus was, that the world would be a better place if it could know our heart?

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