The Banquet Table
April 24, 2024
Where You got Your Heart
April 13, 2018
So My people are bent on turning from Me. Though they call them to the One on high, none at all exalts Him. How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I surrender you, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? My heart is turned over within Me, all my compassions are kindled. – HOSEA 11:7-8
Green slime cannot produce compassion. Where did we get “heart”? That’s a hard question for the naturalist. Whirling atoms can’t account for kindness. Primeval scum couldn’t produce love. The unfeeling void can’t come up with mercy. Where did we get our emotions? We are made in the Image of God. We got our heart from Him. You see it throughout the Bible. In Genesis, He looks on what He has made and says, “That’s good.” Such a statement is meaningless without a heart capable of emotion. Good means the object brings pleasure. No heart, no feeling - no feeling, no pleasure. The heart of God is His own heart.
Through Hosea, God shows us a picture of His heart. Literally, the intensity of His compassion has reversed the determination of His judgment. The human heart mutates under the distortion of sin. Emotions go awry, compassion is absent or twisted. But through Jesus Christ the old twisted heart is replaced by the new heart given by the same One Who gave us His heart at the beginning!
Today’s Focus
Thank God for the gift of your heart, and ask Him to conform your heart to His.
