Heart

Romans 12:9 “Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good.”

What is good?
God called his creation good several times. “He saw that it was good”
Why? I believe it is because everything before the fall was the way God intended it to be. I think clinging onto good then means when we are clinging onto and living in the way God intended things to be.

How can we know God’s intent and his heart? When we read the word, we see that God’s heart is for his kingdom where brokenness of humanity is restored and healed to the way he intends things to be. I believe that is why God has such a heart for humanity, the lost, the broken, the hurting, the hungry, the orphans, the widows. We are living in a world that isn’t the way God intends things to be, and although it was entirely due to mankind’s choices, God doesn’t want to leave us like this.
Anyways, back to the verse…so “hold on to dear life to good” I believe that in order to even do this we need to bear God’s heart. The same heart that breaks and cries and mourns for the things that God cries for. The same heart that leaps with joy when the lost are found, and when the hungry are fed. Like Mark Buchanan says in his book ‘Your God is too safe’, “He (Jesus) knows our drowsy indifference to matters of highest importance, our rabid passion for matters that are trivial. He knows we get angrier at missing a bus or being delayed on a runway than we do at crimes of genocide. He knows we rejoice more in winning a game of pinochle than we do in the news that the hungry are fed, the lost are found. So Jesus doesn’t entrust Himself to us.” (Read John 2:25) This is truly how far our heart is from God’s.

As the church we are to be God’s hands and feet. But how can we be the church/the body of Christ if we don’t bear God’s heart. If our gifts, talents, and lives aren't used for God's kingdom then it truly amounts to nothing.

This New year, I pray that God would stretch and break my heart. I pray for a heart of compassion and for a heart that beats for the same things God’s heart beats for. I don’t want to ask for forgiveness because I did something wrong but I want to cry for breaking God’s heart and ask that He would change my heart, transform me, refine me, and mold me into the way he created me to be.