“And this is the confidence that we have before him, that, if we ask anything according to his will, he surely hears us. And if we know that he hears us regarding doing his will, we know that he will give us what we ask of him.” - 1 John 5:14-15
It might seem obvious to you, but Yeshua wants us to believe in him; he wants us to trust in him, he wants us to know his heart - and to respond to him “with all our heart.” This is breathtakingly amazing and wonderful news, is it not? Not that God demands that you obey him (or else), but that he profoundly wants your love? That he desires your attention? Your communion? And the Scripture promises us that if we sincerely ask him for this very thing, that is, to fulfill his desire for us to know his heart and to be in love with him, then we have confidence that he will enable us to truly do so...
It’s not about our will to believe or to love him, for we cannot find the heart to do so apart from his grace. “The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because of your greatness, but because the Lord loves you” (Deut. 7:7-8). God loves you with an “everlasting love,” and it is by means of this love that he draws you to know him. “Come to me, all you who are heavy of heart, and I will give you rest...”
We are able to love God because of his great love for us; our love is “teshuvah” to his call to be his beloved. We love him because he first loved us, which is to say that our love must first come from him.
“Lord, I ask you to let me know your love by the grace of your heart. Your love is the agency and means to be able to love, for apart from you I can do nothing... And because it is your will - it is your desire - that I love you and trust you, I ask that you would enable my heart to do these very things, for how else can I know the depths of your heart and to love you as you have called me so to do? How can I know you apart from you?
But something holds me back, a sense that you are too high and exalted for me to draw close to you... Are you not, O Lord, high and lifted up? Who can approach the blinding light of your glorious presence? Can I take fire from the altar and bring in to my breast without being burned? It’s ironic that the more I imagine your unapproachable glory, the more I realize my need for your intimacy and simplicity within my heart. O Lord, you have your own language that is beyond anything I can conceive; your thoughts transcend everything I might imagine. Yet you also speak the language of men; your words make contact with our frailty and finitude; you have made yourself know the language of our lament.
I praise you that your love and your exaltation come together in the person of Yeshua, who emptied himself of all regal power and glories to reach out to touch the lowliest of lepers.... Though you are so high and lifted up, you deign stoop so low, to the utter depths, the very dust of death itself, to deliver the outcast from the hell of their exile.
And so I find comfort that it is your good will, O Lord, to seek and to save the lost, to heal the broken of heart, and to draw even the uttermost into the warm embrace of your love. It is your heart that says to all who know the pain of their hunger for love, “Come unto me...”
Yea, it is your will, O Lord, for us to know you and the beauty of your love, and therefore to surrender ourselves to your presence and receive your blessing, as it is written: “I am my beloved’s and his desire is for me.” And since it is your will and desire, O precious Lord, for us to belong to you, please assure us to know ourselves as your very own. Amen.”
Jeremiah 31:3b
וְאַהֲבַת עוֹלָם אֲהַבְתִּיךְ
עַל־כֵּן מְשַׁכְתִּיךְ חָסֶד
“I have loved you with an everlasting love;
therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you.”
Jer. 31:3b Hebrew page (pdf)