God's Big Heart

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  God's Big Heart           When my youngest daughter (Lanah) was around 4 years old she went shopping with her mom for a Christmas present for me. They had gone to a Hallmark (craft shop) looking at inexpensive gifts. Almost immediately upon entering the store my 4 year old ran over to a display that had different stuffed male dolls that looked like vegetables sitting on it. (lol). There sitting on the display, they had a “corn-man”, a “green bean man” a “carrot man” and finally the one that she REALLY liked—“pea man”. Pea man was approximately 10 inches tall and looked like a miniature green robin hood type doll with a pea pod as his torso. My daughter begged her mom to purchase that for me—which she did. 
  

  

     On Christmas that year, I opened an assortment of gifts from my family. I received socks, a couple of shirts from my mom, gift cards, tools—all things I had asked for. Then I opened my final present. I’m sure I had a perplexed look on my face when I opened the box and pulled out “pea man”. As soon as I held it up—my youngest daughter’s eyes beamed as she squealed in excitement and she said, “His name is pea man daddy—I saw him at the store and I knew you would LOVE him”. That year (and to this day) that is the favorite Christmas present I have ever received. NOT because of what the gift was—but because of the joyful heart that my beloved daughter had when giving it to me.    So many times in the past I have felt so inadequate when approaching God. As I've said in a previous post—I would always compare myself to others around me in church and felt like I didn't meet up. I didn't know the Bible as well as a lot of people. I wasn't the best singer, so I stopped singing worship songs when I was by myself because there were a lot of better voices out there worshiping God. I didn't spend as much time in prayer as others I knew—so I felt inadequate around God. I had multiple areas in my life that were far from what (I felt) God demanded of me—so I simply began avoiding Him. When hardships would take place in my life, I would wrongly assume God had either abandoned me OR was punishing me somehow. So my heart shut down even more. But I've recently found out a wonderful secret—God is not angry with us. God’s heart is simply to spend time with us. Even if our lives are “messy” and our hearts are hard —He still pursues us. Just like when Lanah gave me “pea man” that Christmas. I loved that gift more than any gift I could have ever received—because I love her. And God’s love for us is FAR greater than my love for my children (even on my best day).    Our Heavenly Father loves us even more than I could ever begin to fathom and His biggest heart’s desire is simply for us to be able to experience that love in our lives and allow it to change us from the inside out. His desire is for us to cry out to Him in our pain and loneliness and ask Him to speak to our hearts. That gift is one that warms your Heavenly Father’s heart and is the thing he desires the most—even more than 'Pea Man'. 
  

  
  

       Eph. 4:2-7 “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in       mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in   transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”

  
  

        1 John 4:16 “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.”
  

  
  

  Daneille Snowden [Blog Editor]: Brian and I are friends from our high school youth group and had recently reconnected on facebook. Also, I was there when he first accepted Christ in 1982 at a Keith Green concert. I have been following his Facebook posts on his journey back into intimacy with God and offered to share them on a blog.  Check out my blog:   http://snowdenwiththefam-daneille.blogspot.com/