God's Heart

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shad

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Acts 13:22 'And when he had removed him, he raised up unto them David to be their king; to whom also he gave their testimony, and said, I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after mine own heart, which shall fulfil all my will.'

Psalm 42:1,2 'As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.
2 My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?'

We tend to know and describe people according to the kind of heart they express and exhibit in life. Sometimes we overlook certain faults and mistakes that people make because of the kind of heart they have. A wife will overlook the indiscretions of her husband because she believes her husband means well. She has gotten to know a certain aspect of her husband's heart and that is how she likes to think of him. We have friendships with others based upon the kind of heart we think characterizes our friend. Sometimes that gets mixed up with personality rapport and when things don't go right we find out what the heart was really like.

What kind of heart does God have? If David was a man man after God's heart, what was he after? If we are after God's heart, what do we know about the heart of God that we are after? The greatest expression of the heart of God was revealed to man through Christ on a cross and through the light of that glorious gospel. The heart of God was the gift of His Son that was crucified for man's sin and wickedness. That is the heart that we should be after and pursue will all our heart, soul, mind and strength.

To love God and my neighbor as myself, is to reveal the greatest expression of that love through the cross of Christ, where Christ laid His life down as a sacrifice for sinners. Greater love has no man than this that He do the same for his friends, his neighbor and for the world. We are to be crucified to the world and the world crucified unto us / Gal 6:14. Think of that verse! The heart and spirit of the law was fulfilled in Christ when Jesus Christ was crucified and shed His blood for the remission of sins. That was done to satisfy the justice of the Father and make a way for sinners to approach the Father through the blood of Christ.

The blood of Christ reveals the heart of the Father and the Son and is shed abroad in our hearts when we believe / Rom 5:5. The law had no power to do what the Son did on the cross.

Rom 8:3 'For God has done what the Law could not do, [its power] being weakened by the flesh [the entire nature of man without the Holy Spirit]. Sending His own Son in the guise of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, [God] condemned sin in the flesh [subdued, overcame, deprived it of its power over all who accept that sacrifice].' (Amplified version)

The law can't love you nor can it lay it's life down for you either. The law has no power to even fulfill itself. The law can not obey its own demands or execute its own judgments. The law is holy, righteous and good but it has no power to reveal the heart of God in relationship to sinful man. The law can only condemn man as a guilty transgressor and that is the purpose of the law / Rom 3:19. The law is good because it makes all men guilty and points us to Christ who was condemned for our sin and transgressions. The law can not forgive or cleanse sin nor save and redeem us from sin. Only Christ can do these things because He fulfilled the righteous of the law and was made to be sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him / 2Cor 5:21.

Since we believed upon Christ, God the Father has never seen sin nor charged us with a single sin because all of our sin was placed on Christ, paid for and put away through death / 2Cor 5:19-21. The Father only sees the righteousness that we have been given and made to be through His Son. We have not only been given a gift of righteousness by grace, but we have been made to be the righteousness that we have been given. The same way that Jesus Christ said, 'If you have seen me you have seen the Father', is the same way that we are looked upon because, '...as He is so are we in this world' / 1Jn 4:17. Don't get weird about that statement but just see it in light of what God has made us to be.

We are perfect and without sin before the Father positionally / Col 2:10-14, because of a gift of righteousness, but we are not perfect in our experience because we still have our flesh and the old sin nature. The Father can never reject us based upon what we do in the flesh or through the old sin nature because He already condemned sin in the flesh of His Son on the cross. That work that took place on the cross is a finished work. Now He wants us to learn how to walk in the Spirit through every word of God so that we will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh / Gal 5:16, Mt 4:4. This is the heart of God that we are after, who have been born of the Spirit and the word through the cross and not through the law.
 
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