Trusting His Great Heart

It was in the depths of his personal tragedies that Job uttered the ruling sentence of his heart: “What I feared has come upon me” (3:25). In other words, “I knew it! I knew I couldn’t really trust God—not with the things that matter most.” Job’s idol was control through religion and God was determined to save him from it. When the nits and dragons come, we ask God to remove them and when he doesn’t, we take charge of our own well-being since it appears no one else will. The dragons and nits reveal to us (and to our community) where our attachments and addictions lie. In other words, they reveal where our heart is, other than captured by the love of God.

But there is more. Life on the road takes us into our heart, for only when we are present in the deep sentences can God speak to them. That’s why the story is a journey; it has to be lived, it cannot simply be talked about. When we face trials, our most common reaction is to ask God, “Why won’t you relieve us?” And when he doesn’t, we resignedly ask, “What do you want me to do?” Now we have a new question: “Where is the Romance headed?”

There is another great “revealing” in our life on the road. We run our race, we travel our journey, in the words of Hebrews, before “a great cloud of witnesses” (12:1). When we face a decision to fall back or press on, the whole universe holds its breath—angels, demons, our friends and foes, and the Trinity itself—watching with bated breath to see what we will do. We are still in the drama of Act III and the heart of God is still on trial. The question that lingers from the fall of Satan and the fall of man remains: Will anyone trust the great heart of the Father, or will we shrink back in faithless fear?

As we grow into the love of God and the freedom of our own hearts, we grow in our ability to cast our vote on behalf of God. Our acts of love and sacrifice, the little decisions to leave our false loves behind and the great struggles of our heart reveal to the world our true identity: We really are the sons and daughters of God.

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