Reflections On My Journey with Jesus in 2016 –The Father’s Heart

“We know that we live in Him and He in us, because He has given us His Spirit” (1 John 4: 13 NIV).

“We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know Him who is true, and we are in Him who is true – even in His Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life” (1John 5: 20 NIV).

“No one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us” (1 Corinthians 2: 11, 12 NIV).

“Call to Me and I will answer you and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know” (Jeremiah 33: 3 NKJV).

Introduction

As 2016 comes to a close I have been reviewing what God has been shown me through the posts I have written this year (FYI, I have published about 100 posts in 2016, and the blog has had 4849 views from 73 nations). As I look back on what God has taught me through the writing, I discovered that I have been exploring the heart of God. Here are three amazing thoughts He has shown me about journeying into God’s heart:

 First, it is possible for each of us, if we believe and have faith, to enter into God’s heart! After all, Paul tells us that we have the mind of Christ. The ‘riches’ of God are available to us. Isn’t that part of what it means to be an ‘heir’? “The riches of His glorious inheritance” are for us. And that is who we are. But God? Me, exploring His heart? Yes!

 Growing up, my Grandmother’s attic was a place of adventure, mystery, and excitement for me. She kept everything – clothes, an old model sailboat, a wind-up Victrola with thick 78 rpm records (I can still hear the scratchy song playing on the Victrola, “I am dreaming now of Fanny, sweet Fanny, sweet Fanny. I am dreaming now of Fanny, and the Mockingbird is singing o’er her grave. Yikes!!). I never tired of going up those steep steps into the attic at the top of the house, opening up boxes to find ‘treasures’ from 50 and even 100 years before I was born. As her grandson, I had the right to be there, to discover those antiques, and to ask her about them.

 Second, my journey into the heart of God is really an exploration of God’s Kingdom. My journey into God’s heart – God’s Kingdom or God’s castle in His Kingdom – is like my exploration of Grandmother’s attic, only on a cosmic scale; learning about God’s inviolable truths led by the Holy Spirit. So exciting. Jesus told us that if we do not receive the Kingdom of God like a little child, we will never enter it.

 Finally, while I am invited to explore the heart of God, I cannot journey into those hallowed spaces alone. The Holy Spirit leads me. It is not only a journey in a supernatural spatial dimension. It is also a temporal journey – getting glimpses through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit into an eternal dimension.

 My life has many facets today – most of them bless me. Some of them are hard, for example when I watch friends struggle with pain and fear and grief. But one facet that gives meaning to every other part of my life is this journey into the heart of my Father. And it is not a journey into ‘the heart of darkness’, but a journey into the heart of ineffable light. As I learn more about Him, I learn more about me – really more about who I am in Him. As He shows me His love and tells me again and again “I am with you”, I can love this life and the people in it with more grace, more power, and more compassion. Part of this is because I am learning I belong and I am loved – no matter what! Isn’t it remarkable that you and I can get to know God – the Creator of the universe – in such an intimate and personal way? The door into His heart is open to us. It is the door into the Kingdom of God, opened through the way of the cross, the broken body of Jesus, for all who repent and believe.

 Sounds crazy, and for many people it is foolishness. But there is a real world all around us that is undetectable with our 5 senses. It is a world of unimaginable beauty and power – it is the Father’s heart. As believers we have the right and privilege to enter – and He wants us to share these things with the world.

 This journey has not just been for my spiritual and emotional growth. It is a journey that teaches and equips me to release the Kingdom of God into the kingdom of the world to push back the darkness and take back the territory from an enemy whose mission is to steal, kill, and destroy.

 This post is a glimpse into this journey over the last year and why this journey has been important to me.

Part One

People ask me, now that I am retired, “how are you doing?”, thinking, I guess, that once you retire you just sit around waiting for something to happen. It is true – I am not as busy as I was when I was working for a company. Maybe more importantly, I am not carrying around the stress that made relaxing away from work difficult. But still I live in a culture that is oriented toward ‘doing’, and ‘doing’ is ingrained in my mind. I can still fill almost every minute of every waking hour with some type of external activity that requires me to do something, even if it is just ‘relaxing’ in front of the television. And as I grow older, the waking hours in my day are increasing.

True, we all have work to do. For many of us this work is as God-honoring as times of prayer. Work, whatever it is, can be part of God’s call on our life; it can be how we accomplish our essential, ultimate purpose in life – releasing the Kingdom of God into the kingdom of the world, using the unique gifts God has given each one of us. Still, to grow closer to God, to explore His heart, we need time alone with Him. It is not one or the other. It is both.

I have come to see through this blog that living the Kingdom life He calls me to live in Christ, and walking out His purposes for my life, requires that I grasp with my spirit, my heart, and my mind the deeper meaning of who He is: His love, His wrath, His holiness, His Kingdom, grace, faith, repentance, resurrection, the cross, and how these impact me in deeper ways.

It is not enough for me to hear about these things: I have needed to wrestle with them, bring them to life for myself. I want to live, to make decisions, to think and to speak within the context of who God is, of who I am in Him, and what it means to live in a relationship with a Holy God, as best I can. That requires time away from the distractions of the world, away from my striving and doing; time to be still, to rest in His presence, time to listen to His voice, and to ask for more wonder. And to reflect on how He is calling me to live hour-by-hour in fellowship with Him, which is the greatest miracle of all!

What I have really been writing about over these last 12 months is my journey into the heart of God. It is in His heart that I have found the true meaning of words like repentance, grace, faith, sin, love, and evil. It is out of His heart that true love, grace, mercy, and goodness flows through me into the world. I have been invited to enter His heart, and led by the Holy Spirit, search out these deeper things of God. And then, I am called to release them into the world. That is amazing to me.

The great interrelated themes of God’s character and His heart are written in Scripture: God is love, God’s holiness, God’s wrath, judgment, the atoning death of Jesus on the cross where the love of God and the wrath of God meet; God’s grace; the power of God manifested in the world and my life through signs, wonders, and miracles; the healing of broken hearts and diseased bodies; His Kingdom, not just after we die, but today; His redemptive plan of restoration for all creation, the necessity and power of repentance, and His plan for our role in bringing His restoration to completion as His rulers and priests. Each of these essential elements of who God is, what God is doing, and our place in His plan of restoration are woven together in God’s Word, which is the expression of God’s heart.

All of this is underlain and wrapped up in the essential nature and character of the heart of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit – love flowing out of His holiness into me, His adopted son and heir. I am family.

How can I grow deeper in my faith, how can I grasp the deeper meaning of all of these aspects of God and my relationship with Him unless I think about them, struggle with them, and make them my own? These are Kingdom struggles. It is impossible to wrestle with these parts of God’s nature apart from the Holy Spirit, who illuminates and is the context within which the struggles take place – but I have work to do also. I suppose some of us think we should leave these struggles to the theologians. Some churches think that also. I don’t. God wants each of us to dive deep into His heart – of course, guided by Scripture and His Spirit.

All of this requires me to separate myself from the busyness around me. It is necessary but not sufficient to be fed on Sunday morning (or not, depending upon the preaching and teaching). I have work to do as I journey deeper into God’s heart. I have had to learn that much of this work is listening. I encounter God’s heart in the silence of my own.

And the most important point: while I have to do these things, I cannot do them in my own power. I need to make an effort to study, pray, and learn but it is God through His Holy Spirit who brings all this to life and helps me grow in Christ as He leads. In the famous words of Paul describing our ‘work’ and God’s role in this sanctifying process: “Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose” (Philippians 2: 12, 13 NIV).

Because I am retired I do have more time than before to sit with God, to pray, to study, and to write – although my grand children are taking up more and more of my time, which is fine with me. That is probably my most important ministry right now anyway. I am a work in progress and my understanding of these essential things of God’s heart is evolving. I have found, for me, to understand (at some deeper level) I have to write. As I write I can see more clearly how God’s principles are all interrelated.

Over this last year, as I have written, a network of thoughts has taken shape and out of this growing whole my spirit, heart, and mind have been transformed. As I said, this understanding is accomplished in the partnership with His Holy Spirit, which has grown as I committed to knowing Him more deeply. As I struggled (and there were times of struggling and wrestling) to learn and to know, God’s Presence in my heart has grown also – or maybe I should say my recognition of His Presence. His Presence, power, and purpose have been made clearer to me in the last 12 months than in the previous 10 years.

While this has benefited me, I know that it is not for me alone – maybe not even primarily for me. I have been shown these things to share them with the world – even if most of the world always knows or, more likely, knows them better than I. I have learned that God wants to be known – spiritually, emotionally, and even intellectually through our spirits, hearts, and minds. God transmits this knowledge through His love as our spirits connect with His. And He expects us to share His heart.

Part Two

I think I know what some of you are thinking.

How can we know about the deeper things of God’s heart? Isn’t that a waste of time or worse, arrogant? Where is the line between a healthy desire to know more about God and hubris?

We can learn a lot about God – we have His Word (Logos and Rhema), He tells us that we have the mind of Christ, and Scripture tells us God is in us, and we are in Him. Yes, there is a limit to what we can know or are allowed to know; there will always be mystery. This is no excuse to stop learning about God and drawing closer to Him. That is His desire and it is our nature – God has given us a passion for comprehension.

Some dismiss this type of knowing as irrelevant. “Just move in the power of God and let His Spirit flow out of us into the world. Don’t worry about ‘knowing’, especially with your mind”. But, there is no power and no indwelling Spirit apart from life in His Kingdom, there is no Kingdom life apart from true repentance, and there can be no repentance if I don’t know that there is someplace to repent to (the Kingdom of God). What is the Kingdom of God anyway – isn’t that something I will live in when I die? If I don’t understand how the wrath of God and the love of God meet at the cross how can I fully live as a Christian, not completely understanding the love of God for me? What is the source of my hope? Spiritual gifts like healing and prophecy do not flow out of us apart from our decision to “deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Jesus”, which means to choose the Kingdom of God – and not when I die, but today. Follow Jesus? What does that really mean? Are you trying to tell me that today, right now I am a ‘ruler’ and a ‘priest’? Huh? Do I have a purpose? What is it? These are critical questions that need answers rooted in an understanding and knowledge of Scripture, guided by God’s Spirit. These are discipleship questions. We need to know, not just with our hearts, but with our minds as well. The two are connected – emotion and function work together in the person who is ‘whole-hearted’.

Third, you might say, “sounds like you are promoting a works righteousness”. Well yes, we do have to work to understand the great things of God. But not righteousness. That comes only through the cross by faith to those who believe. We can’t earn our way into the Kingdom of God. But when Jesus calls us, we must walk through the door He has opened and be willing to take off our old garments in order to receive the ‘new clothes’ He has prepared for us. How else can you interpret “Seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness”; “Ask, seek, and knock and the door will be opened to you”, Work out your salvation with fear and trembling”; and “Don’t let sin reign in your mortal bodies”. What about this one: “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self . . . and to put on the new self” (Ephesians 4: 22 – 24 NIV). I am invited into the heart of God, but these passages and many more show me that I have to ‘work’ to go deeper. At the very least, I have to receive the gifts of God. Worse, I can reject His Kingdom offer.

If it is possible to reject God’s offer of life in the Kingdom of God, and Scripture says it is possible to reject salvation (think Rich Young Ruler in Mark 10), then it is possible to reject God’s Kingdom gifts of the Spirit – one of which is faith. When God offers me this gift of faith I have the freedom to say “No thanks God, I’ll do it my way”. The rejection of God and His way is one of the major narratives in the Bible.

Augustine wrote “He who made you without you does not want to save you without you”.

Since I have been teaching, both in the classroom and through this blog, my love for Jesus, my faith, and really my whole life have profoundly changed. These transformations would not have occurred without reading and meditating on the Word, prayer, study; writing, which brings things alive for me and forces me to think; and trying to live out in the world what I have learned. These are ‘works’. Not works to make myself righteous, but works to receive all God has for me – to ‘become’. But the transformation itself is completely the work of the Holy Spirit. And even the work that I do to grow deeper with Him is, in part, His work. But I have to show up, open my Bible, commit to prayer, sit down at the computer, and partner with Him in repentance. I have to choose Jesus every day.

This blog is the record of my journey deeper into these profound places in God’s heart. Think of it as journaling. Sometimes, as I sit and pray, this journey of discovery feels like God bringing me to another door in a vast subterranean cavern carved into rock – a labyrinthine cave illuminated by torches fixed on the walls. As God swings open the door, I look down as if from a balcony, into a huge room filled with hundreds of huge multicolored jewels, with bright light reflecting off of all the crystal facets filling the gallery with color and beauty. Oh, I say, “that is what repentance is”, or “that is what God’s love looks like”. And then God says, “These are for you – this is your inheritance. You are part of the family of God. You belong. Go, explore.” These are the same words God speaks to all believers – “you belong!” If I have learned anything over this last year, it is this – no matter what the world says, “I belong, I have value, I am loved.” Are you a believer? Then, this message is for you also. There is real freedom and real life in these words!

I do not have the skill to write about the love of God, the wrath of God, the Kingdom of God, or repentance, for example, in posts of 500 words or less. In one sense, I am writing for myself, as I said above. He gives me the themes and the words to write, in accordance with Scripture, and I try to listen. But I feel called by God to make these thoughts public as well. They are not just for my benefit. To me, this is Kingdom work. Not that they are all ‘correct’. Sometimes they do not fit with traditional religion. But, if the life of one person is drawn deeper into God’s heart because of these words and empowered by the Holy Spirit, then this effort will be worth my time. Anyway, I don’t have a choice. Not to think, pray, listen, write, and publish is to be disobedient. I constantly pray that I only write what God calls me to say, that I do this solely for His honor and glory, not my own; and that He uses these words for His purposes.

Anyway, I’ll keep writing and publishing until He tells me to stop. The rest is His.

Conclusion

Do you remember how David began Psalm 103? “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His Holy name” (NKNV)? I always wondered, “How can I bless God?” Well, here is one answer: I bless God when I commit to the life-long, day-by-day journey of discovering the beautiful and mysterious byways and pathways of His heart with passion, enthusiasm, and single-mindedness. I do this through studying Scripture, prayer, including listening to Him; writing, and (perhaps most of all) through simply spending time with Him all day long, no matter what I am doing. That takes discipline, but after a while you won’t want to live any other way.

And then to remember the Father’s heart is also within me! What a crazy and almost incomprehensible idea. God loves us so much that He not only lets us explore His heart, led by the Holy Spirit, but He has placed His heart into ours – yours and mine!

Intimacy with the Father and the Son through the Holy Spirit is a goal in itself. But that intimacy is sweeter and more joyful when we turn around and share the Father, really the Father’s love, with those whom God brings into our lives. If there is a Christmas message it it is this — today, share the greatest gift the world has ever known — the gift of the Kingdom of God, the gift of the Father’s love. All over the world Christians are dying and being persecuted. Do you want to help them? Then today, right where you are, love each other the way Jesus loved us. This is only possible when we are living in the Father’s heart.

Praying for you to receive the Father’s love today (and everyday!),

John

Part 2 of “God Spoke a Word at the Cross – “But . . .” is almost ready to post. Almost. Struggling some with ‘faith’ and ‘believe’.