Knowing God's Heartbeat

Opening illustration: While ministering in the Middle East, my wife, Maureena, and I experienced the heartbeat of God almost every day. We were so blessed to have heard Him speak and guide us along life’s path. As we followed after His heart and heeded His voice, He would bring about many blessings and confirmations by His Spirit. Even in the toughest situations, where we were unsure of the outcome, we listened to His heartbeat and His voice. In allowing Him to lead us, we saw that things would work out for our benefit and God’s purposes.

Introduction: Just as a father thinks good of his children, so God always thinks good of us. His Word says, “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11). But lest we’re mistaken, this does not come without us properly playing our role. What is our role and how do we play it properly? you may be wondering. We simply know God’s heartbeat and walk in accordance with it always without straying from the path or getting out of step.

How can we know God’s heartbeat?

1. Knowing God’s Desire (v. 11)

One of God’s greatest desires is to have fellowship with His people, which He expressed to Adam and Eve. He visited them, communed with them, and walked alongside them—each and every day. Adam knew God’s heartbeat but rebelled and did not want to hear Him any longer. He and his wife Eve were therefore separated from God once they disobeyed. Like Adam and Eve, God desires to have an intimate walk of fellowship and oneness with each of us. Throughout the ages, God has never given up on humanity. He has always found faithful people in every generation to have intimacy with Him.

The Bible says that Enoch walked with God, pleased God, and evangelized His generation. Therefore, God took him unto Himself (Genesis 5:24; Hebrews 11:5; Jude 14). Abraham intently knew the heartbeat of God—he made every effort to walk righteously before Him. Because of his perseverance, God called him faithful and His friend. He was given the title of being the father of many nations. At the age of eighty, God poured out His heart to Moses, who contended and argued with Him. But at the end of the day, Moses submitted to the will and plan of God for his life and that of the nation of Israel. After hearing from God, knowing His heart and yielding to it, Moses stirred the entire nation of Egypt and ushered an exodus of more than a million Israelites. It took forty years for the Israelites to travel from Egypt to the Promised Land. And after a long spell of silence, God spoke His heart to a young boy named Samuel, whom He raised as His prophet to speak to Israel on His behalf. He moved not only the heart of Israel but the kings who reigned during his era.

Why are believers so passionate about their faith and why is it so precious to them? We are far too privileged in the West when it comes to our faith and its testing. Those in other parts of the world experience a persecution that is far greater than ours. For them, they have found freedom in Christ that they have not experienced in this world. They have known God on an intimate level because they had nowhere else to turn. They are so passionate in their love for God because they have spent time seeking Him and serving Him.

To have constant fellowship with God means we will immerse ourselves in His Word, spend time with Him in prayer, saturate ourselves in worship, and commune and interact with others in the body of Christ. He doesn’t desire a certain percentage of our being—God desires everything from us. He is a jealous God and cannot have any other person or thing taking His rightful place in our lives. The reason for God’s jealousy is that “God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). We should all be encouraged, for “what then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31). When God cares so much for us and desires to stand by us, how much more should we pursue Him and seek to know His heartbeat.

When we know God’s heartbeat without even articulating it, we bring a heart of worship to Him, which then develops into a lifestyle of worship. Jesus revealed this secret to the woman at the well in John 4:21–24: Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”