heart

While preparing for a meeting, I was rereading all the emails from the few months before we left Zambia. There are always so many things you miss the first time.

In one of the encouraging emails, someone wrote: “God does not want (just) your obedience, He wants your heart.”

I am thinking more on that one. We’ve always hit on the need to obey; we answered the call to obey, etc. But what about this? What of our hearts? How has God gotten our hearts these past few years? He has my true confidence and true faith and all those things we associate with the “head” knowledge of God. Where is He in my heart? How do I judge/measure that? Not in an “emotional” way, but a real way.
{I have really enjoyed the Word Search software we got awhile back. It makes seeing different versions of the same verse so much easier! (The italics below are my emphasis) }

Hosea 6:6
(KJV)
For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.
(ASV)
For I desire goodness, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt-offerings.
(MSG)
I'm after love that lasts, not more religion. I want you to know God, not go to more prayer meetings.
(NLT)
I want you to show love, not offer sacrifices. I want you to know me more than I want burnt offerings.
(NASB)
For I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice, And in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

If you truly believe with all your heart what your head tells you (the knowledge), is that it? If so, He has my heart many times over. He has proved Himself as just about every one of His names in both the Old and New Testament, to us, personally. I am basically a melancholy type of person, so I don’t have the emotional “high”. It takes quite a bit for m
e to have a “mountain top experience” (unfortunately those walks through the valley seem more on the par-maybe ‘cuz you learn a lot more from them?!) We all know “love isn’t a feeling”. Brian has my love and my heart; but it has gone beyond the “crush-feeling” of love. That is the commitment. The kids have my love and my heart, even if I don’t “feel” like I love them sometimes. The commitment, the responsibility, the reality, yes-even the BURDEN, is that part of giving God your heart too?

How do we make the adjustment in thinking and processing even, of taking the obedience (doing what we were called to do and say), to the heart? How does that look different? Does it? Have we already done it?