Wrote this earlier while on the bus... thought I should post it despite maybe the way I've been feeling lately.

Friday, February 26, 2010

Here I sit on a GO Bus, heading east towards Mississauga. Having just come from CCF, my thoughts still linger a bit on the Bible study. Perhaps not exactly what the actual study was about, but my thoughts have recently been concerned with knowing God. It sounds like such a simple thing, in some ways. We always sing it. We always pray it. God we want to know you.

Recently I've been trying to read some of the old testament. And in the Bible study at CCF today, the name David came up in the passage. And of course, the ever quoted phrase was also brought up: "a man after God's own heart."

But what exactly does this mean? And why was David such a great king? Take it a step further, and I wonder, what exactly is it about some of the old testament characters that had them find so much favour or so much peace in their God?

After finishing the book of Joshua, I had began reading the book of 1 Samuel this week. And I read a couple more chapters on the bus just now. And it came to Hannah's song. And reading her song, the thought that crossed my mind was: she knew God. She knew God's heart. And this made me think. You know, all these old testament characters that had so much faith, or did great things for God, or who really walked in the favour of God, the thing they all had in common was they more or less understood God's heart.

In reading Hannah's song, what really struck me was the theme of God's paradoxical nature. For example, note 1 Sam 2:5, "Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread, but those who were hungry have ceased to hunger. The barren has borne seven, but she who has many children is forlorn."

This kind of backwards contradiction is one of the themes in some of Jesus' teachings hundreds of years later in the new testament. Yet, what struck me is that out of the song of Hannah's heart, she seemed to understand this kind of paradox. She seemed to understand the Kingdom.

Take David now. You find strewn throughout the book of Psalms his songs of worship to the God he served. And in so many of these Psalms in his crying out, he too seemed to understand God's heart. Even in his sin, after committing adultery with Bathsheba, we find his cries in Psalm 51: "For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise."

David, remember, is in the old testament. Under old testament law, animal sacrifice was the de facto form of atonement. Yet David is somehow prophetically realizing that it's not about the sacrifice. It's not about the physical ceremony. It's about the heart. David knew this. David knew God. This is maybe why he was counted as a man after God's heart. Not because he was a great king. No. He was a great king because he understood God's heart.

Hannah and David are just two examples that come to mind, who to me, appear to exemplify knowing God, knowing his heart, and understanding Kingdom principles. I am almost certain now that if you study other old testament characters who were highly favoured by God, whether blessed socially, economically and/or spiritually, you will see that they each knew God. They had an understanding of being driven by eternity. They had an understanding of faith. They had an understanding that God's ways were higher than theirs. And with this understanding, they submitted their lives, wills and everything they had to God.

So where do I sit? Where do I invest my time and my energies? Is my faith important to me such that I would invest in knowing and understanding the God that I claim to worship? I sure hope so.

I had recently been quite challenged by Ally's blog posts. In particular, Transformation and Reality. Well worth a read since you've already reached the end of my post for today.