All in a bride's heart

"You found his heart faithful to you, and you made a covenant with him."

 (Nehemiah 9:8)

 A couple of days ago, whilst chatting to someone, I said something that I should rather not have said. It was not something nasty, it was just touching on something that could put the other person in a difficult position. Driving back home I acknowledged to myself that I did not get it right. I made a mistake. I didn't wake up that morning with an intention of doing anything 'wrong' or bringing any harm to anyone but then the day just threw me an unexpected situation and I got it all wrong. 

Thinking of my own mistake, my thoughts drifted to that great patriarch - Abraham. God called Abraham to leave his country, his people and his father's house to go to a land that God would show to him.

"Through Abraham God was calling a people who would leave behind their old ways of living and start a new life of love and devotion to Him...God was calling a bride unto Him!" (from 'Bride Adorned')

Abraham obeyed the call of God and according to Romans 4:11, he became the father of all who believe. Though Abraham was the 'father of faith' so to speak, he did not always get it right! Still on the way to the Promised Land, he found himself lying to the Pharaoh, saying that Sarai was his sister instead of his wife. When Sarai suggested to him that he should sleep with her maidservant because God was not giving her any children, he agreed to it. Having waited so long for a son with no results, they both assumed that maybe the covenant promise would be fulfilled through Hagar and not Sarai. When God confirmed to him that the promise would indeed come through a son born to Sarai, Abraham's first reaction was to fall facedown and laugh and say to himself "Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?" (Gen 17:17)

Abraham, like myself, made mistakes.

The thing to ask ourselves is this: Did God count these mistakes? Did He hold it against Abraham? Did He disqualify Abraham as the heir to the covenant promise?

No, but God did see something and He did count something...

"Abraham believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness."(Gen 15:6)

God saw Abraham's heart and it was a heart that loved God, believed God and belonged to God forever more no matter what.

No, Abraham did not always get it right - in Egypt he was overcome with the possible threat of the Pharaoh killing him for his wife and, in his panic, he didn't fathom that God would and could protect him and Sarai, so he lied about Sarai being his wife; when time went by and no son was born to Sarai it seems that, like her, he too started to think they might have misunderstood God's plan...that maybe God was going to work through Abraham but not through Sarai; and when God did confirm that the promise would come through Sarai, Abraham was momentarily sinical. But the One who knows everyone's heart knew that though Abraham had his moments of weakness, confusion and doubt, his heart was not rebelling against God, not rejecting God and not adulterous and disrespectful of God.

God searched Abraham's heart and found it faithful to Him.

Dear friend, as the bride of Christ, you and I also sometimes get it wrong. There are times when in the heat of the moment we make a wrong decision, we say the wrong thing, we act in the wrong way or we misunderstand God's will and plan for us in a specific circumstance...yet we love God and with our hearts we believe God.

This is not the same as the heart that ignores, rejects and scorns God and His commands! No, this is a heart that is sensitive to God's correction, a heart that can repent, a heart that can be molded by the love of God...a heart that can grow in the knowledge of God...a heart of faith.

Indeed Abraham showed that he was continually growing in the knowledge and love of God. By the time that God commanded him to sacrifice Isaac as a burnt offering, Abraham did not get it wrong. When they came close to the place of sacrifice, Abraham told his servants, "Stay here...while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you." Note that he did not say, "I will come back to you" but "we will come back to you". By this time Abraham knew that God could not be anything else but faithful to His promises. He knew that somehow God would save Isaac because He had said that He would fulfill the covenant promise through Isaac. Hebrews 11:19 tells us that "Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death." This is knowing God. This is loving God. This is the heart of faith that God counted and credited...not all the mistakes Abraham made on the way.

My word of encouragement to all of us today is that God does not count our mistakes but counts what is in our hearts. Therefore let each of us regularly search our hearts to ensure that it still belongs to God through our love for His Son, Jesus Christ.

Until next week,
God bless
Lize

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