Touching the Heart of God
This week’s meditation on Psalm 51 has reminded me of the importance of placing God’s desires above my own.
For years I have heard Psalm 37:4, “Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” interpreted as a kind of quid pro quo… an “I give to get” arrangement. Let us praise, do church, and pay tithes, so God can answer my prayers and bless me, (‘aka’ give me what I want). Well, I would argue that this is a dangerous misread of the text. Too often people engage in eisegesis, (reading errant meaning into a text), rather than exegesis, (drawing right meaning from the text). What my lived experience has taught me is that God has desires and dreams that God wants to entrust to our hearts and fulfill through us. Those that God chooses are not perfect, but they are willing to be perfected. This, I believe, is what God saw in King David. Despite his sins and failings, his transgressions and acts of iniquity; God saw David’s willing heart. It is those with such hearts after whom the Lord seeks.
Psalm 51:16-17 reveal David’s epiphany… David’s “AHA moment” concerning what pleases God… touches the heart of God. David notes, God is not swayed by externals and grand gestures. Instead, the heart of God is touched when God sees that our hearts have been touched, impacted, changed, and softened. This is when the sacrifices of our hands are seen and accepted as pleasing to God.
Let Us not seek the hand of God merely to see what we can get. Instead, Let Us seek the heart of God, that we might touch it by giving… doing what the Lord finds most desirable… most pleasing in God’s sight.
Comments