Experiencing God's Affections

1 Samuel 13:14

God is seeking for a man after his own heart. The Holy Spirit is searching for a people after His heart. Look at Saul. He paid the price for his halfhearted obedience and lost the kingdom to a wholehearted guy. See, it's a commitment to obey the commands of God's heart, i.e.,  dedication to God's will. And we have to cultivate insight into the emotions of God's heart.. have a revelation to the passions of God's heart. We will never be a people after God's heart if we don't have insight into His emotions. 

It's sad to think that so many of us think that our god is a god that in just merely tolerant of us. He's some distant creator. But that is a lie. Look at 1 john 4:19. He loves us. 

This passage is a good example of the beholding and becoming principle. What is that? you ask... We love Him because He first loved us. You want to love Him more? You gotta experience His love first. Behold the lover, then become the lover. We love by looking at the one we love. We love Him because we experienced that He first loved us.

We enjoy Him because He first enjoyed us. We pursue Him because He first pursued us. We are devoted to Him because He first devoted Himself to us. But look, we have to search the doctrine, the word of god. We have to search the passages about Him enjoying us in our weakness. And when we behold something that is in God's heart, it forms our own heart response. Search that subject! Become a scholar of the things in God's heart. 

When we do that, we get experiential understanding. We begin to understand what God looks like emotionally and spiritually. And that, my friends, is the only way to know what we look like to God. You can only know your true self by gazing into His heart. We can only know who we are and what we really look like in truth by gazing into His heart. Look into the heart of the creator and the redeemer! Only then can you function in the way you were ordained to function. 

All right, I'm going to break this down into seven .. not steps. More like dimensions- since they overlap, go hand-in-hand.

Seven Dimensions of Progressing in the Love of God:

1. The adoring gaze of the heart. The gazing heart is where it begins. Spend time at His feet! (How many times have I mentioned this?!) Luke 10:42 
2. Discoveries of the knowledge of God. First we understand His gladness. He is a god of pleasure, a god of gladness, in his emotions. Then we understand His affection and burning desire. Lastly, His transcending beauty.  
3. The assurance of being enjoyed by God, even in our weakness. A lie so many of us believe is that immaturity is rebellion. We mix up immaturity with rebellion. They are not the same thing! Another lie: God will not enjoy you until he 100% approves of you. Yet again, another: when God corrects you, He rejects you. LIES!! He disciplines me, corrects me, because He enjoys me! See, God knows the way of the heart of man. We can be be confident in love. When we stumble, we should run to God not from God! In that confidence of love, you will see that you cannot stop a believer who runs into the heart of the father every time they discover their weakness.
   How do you view yourself? Are you a slave of sin that struggles to love God or are you a lover of God that struggles with sin? Your identity isn't determined by your struggles. It's by your burning desire by the one who wants you!
   What happens when we feel enjoyed by god? It restores a buoyancy in our spirit so that we have the strength to fight against the struggles of our sins. Look: you are mostly loved and a lover. Only part of you is a struggler of sin. 
4. When you acquire no.3, you have the ability to enjoy God back, i.e., love god. Our love is genuine even if it is weak and immature. Matt. 22:37
5. After you enjoy and love God because He did so first, you begin to enjoy and love yourself with God's love. You begin to see yourself in the way God sees you! I'd rather be me than anyone else in the world! I like myself because God is lovesick over me. In all my brokenness, with all my imperfections, God still likes me. LOVES* me. You are stunning, in Christ Jesus. You just don't know it yet. 
6. Yet again, when you acquire no. 5, you gain the ability to enjoy and love others. Matt. 22:39 
7. Gal 5:6 The only thing that matters is faith expressing itself through love. When we touch the realm of love, then the power of god begins to break forth. We get faith and power that is activated, or operated, by love. 

Let's work backwards: 

You can't get faith that is activated by love without first gaining the ability to love/enjoy others. Similarly: you can't love/enjoy others without first doing so to yourself! And you can't love/enjoy yourself without first loving/enjoying God! Alas, you cannot love/enjoy God without attaining the assurance of being enjoyed by God. You can't be assured unless you discover all of this! But, fellow reader, you can not discover all of this if you do not gaze at the heart of God, or sit at His feet. It all starts with that. I encourage you to really take time to gaze at the heart of god.