Pursuing God’s Heart
About this series
As we return to Sunday meetings we realise that people may have become weary and lost some focus. So in our next series we hope to help people deal well with their internal space as well as grasp opportunities and return to ‘action.’ Of course, these two things are very closely connected as people always live out what is happening internally. By ‘heart’ the Bible means the core of a person’s being; the seat of emotion, desire, thought and decision. The biblical term ‘heart’ relates most closely to the modern idea of ‘mind’.
About this talk
1 Samuel 13:14; Acts 13:22
Saul, the first king of Israel, was impressive externally but, after a successful start, his flaws came pouring out. God then rejects Saul as king and looks for one with a heart that is tender towards God. After being presented with Jesse’s firstborn son, Samuel is told, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
David’s heart had been prepared in secret, while tending and protecting his father’s sheep, through spending time with God and through patiently awaiting God’s time to appoint him as king.
In a world obsessed with image and crippled by comparison, we need to be constantly remind that God is not interested in externals; he sees within and it is from a healthy inner life that we please him.
Being someone after God’s own heart must mean that God’s concerns have become our concerns, including things like: his glory, love for people, the quality of our inner life.
How do we cultivate a heart after God’s own heart? And how do we keep doing that over the long haul?
Though David was such a man, he fell spectacularly - even he was not immune from his heart wandering away from devotion to God.
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