HEARING JESUS' HEARTBEAT IN OUR LIVES

     I am currently attending a class at the church I attend, that deals with how God wants to walk in intimacy with his children. While at the class a few weeks ago the speaker that evening (Elaine) focused on a portion of a verse from the book of John that I have never noticed before. In John 13:21 it says; “There was reclining on Jesus’ bosom one of His disciples, whom Jesus loved. So Simon Peter gestured to him, and said to him, “Tell us who it is of whom He is speaking.” He (John), leaning back thus on Jesus’ bosom, said to Him, “Lord, who is it?”

The background for this passage takes place during the last supper (a Jewish Passover Seder in Jerusalem) where Jesus is spending his last hours before his crucifixion. When Elaine (the speaker for the class) read this verse-- it impacted me to think John the disciple was SO physically close to Jesus at the time, he could probably have heard Jesus’ heart beat. I then had an overwhelming desire filling my entire being to experience that kind of relationship with my Savior. It pierced me so deeply that I stayed after class that evening to receive prayer from Elaine and her husband.

The immense desire in my heart currently is to be intimately close in my walk with Jesus that I can (figuratively) hear and feel what’s on His heart. Jesus came so we can experience a relationship with God that is much more intimate than simply attending a church service on Sunday. Jesus demonstrated that same intimacy with His Father in heaven and it was demonstrated in the life he lived. Jesus said in John 5:19, “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed.” Jesus is so close to God’s heart, that He was (and continues to be) able to see what God was doing all around him.

My big struggle had always been the fact that I am not the apostle John, and I’m definitely not the Messiah. I often use to struggle with how I could pursue God’s heart and experience this intimacy with God despite all my brokenness? In 1 Samuel, it refers to King David as a “man after God’s own heart.” Although David was a pretty broken guy with a lot more issues in his life than many of us will ever experience (i.e. he was an adulterer and a liar who after getting someone else’s wife pregnant, had her husband killed). Despite David’s pretty major character flaws and moral defects--he is still referred to as a man after God’s heart. That is because of how David zealously pursued God’s heart. David acknowledged his own complete brokenness and need, then pursued “knowing” God with all his energy and strength. And David, that broken, flawed guy, was still described by his Creator as a “Man after My heart.”

My biggest prayer is that I will be able to pursue God’s heart with all my energy and strength. And that I will get to develop such intimacy with Jesus that I can hear His heart beat in my own life.