Hostage Situation

If you go to the Old Testament, specifically the book of Judges, you watch God's people, the Israelites, repeatedly turn from God. In fact, the whole pattern of that book is this.

Israel is following God. Israel turns from God. God judges Israel. Israel is taken hostage by one of their surrounding countries. Israel repents. A judge shows up and leads them. Israel is following God, and the cycle starts again!

I don't know about you, but when I look at this, I tend to find myself laughing at Israel a little bit. God has done so much for them, but they keep turning away from Him. They turn away from God to worthless idols over and over and over and over again.

It's easy to think about how dumb they are for doing that. However, don't we do the same thing?

Every day, we fight a continual battle to keep God as the highest priority in our lives. We can replace Him with money. Making our paychecks the biggest priority in our life. We can replace Him with status, giving everything that we have to get that next promotion. We can replace God with virtually anything.

I think that this is because God has designed our hearts to worship. God has created us in such a way that our hearts are easily captivated.

God's intention in this is for us to be entirely consumed with Him, but we so quickly get lost amidst the cares of this world. The words of Jesus ring true, "seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added unto you."

It's not bad to make money, or have nice things. It isn't bad to get promoted, but when those things take precedence over our relationship with God, they become idols, and they make us hostages. If God isn't the one thing captivating us, everything else will be out of sync.

The question remains, how do we keep God on the throne of our hearts? How do we keep ourselves captivated by Christ?

The answer to this is rather simple in understanding, but more difficult in application.
The way that we keep our hearts captivated by Jesus is by spending time with Him. We need to invest in our relationship with our Creator.

A car won't run properly if it doesn't have gasoline, oil, or coolant in it. It needs to be filled up properly if you want it to be used properly.

Our hearts work the same way. Not that we should put gasoline into them, but if they aren't being fueled, they won't operate in the way that they have been intended to.

Where we invest our time and energy most will show what our hearts are being captivated by.

If you continually invest in your walk with Christ, your heart will continually be captivated by Him. 

God's Favorite Instrument

Have you ever heard a guitar that is super out of tune? Nobody likes that sound. It clashes with itself. I think one reason that it bugs us is because we expect the guitar to sound good. We expect it to produce a melody that is sweet to our ears.

In a way, our hearts are just like guitars, or any other stringed instrument. Our hearts have been created with the intention of producing a sweet and pleasing melody. We see all over the Bible that God created us with intention, that He knit us together, and that He has made us to give praise to Him. When our hearts are right before God, it is like an instrument giving glory to the King. When we join together, our hearts can become like an orchestra of praise. We see in Scripture that God desires our obedience from the heart, not just outward action. With this knowledge, I think we can safely say that properly tuned hearts are God’s favorite instrument.

However, just like other instruments, our hearts can get out of tune. Our hearts can become flat or sharp through various means. Whether it is from sin in our lives, or just constant use, our hearts need to be tuned regularly. This tuning is something that only God can do. We have not been given the ability to tune our own hearts. We have however been given the ability to go to the Father and be tuned. We get tuned by God whenever we spend time with Him in worship, in the Word, or in prayer. Fellowship with our Creator is the means by which our hearts are tuned.

This should cause us to act. We should find desire to seek God more and more, as we will be used by Him and require more frequent tuning. Empty glasses don’t quench anyone’s thirst, and out of tune instruments don’t make pleasing sounds. Our hearts don’t bring joy to God when they aren’t right before Him, when they aren’t in tune. Also, this should change our outlook on the people around us. Rather than judging people, seeing that they have things wrong, we can notice that they are out of tune. When we make these observations, we can’t do anything to fix them. We can’t tune ourselves, and even more importantly, we cannot tune others. We can pray for them, and lift them up to God asking Him to tune them, but God is the only one with the power to do that, through intimate, individual fellowship.

Let our prayer become as the line from Come Thou Fount…

“tune my heart to sing Thy grace.”