In Written on the Heart, Part 3, we understand that there is a call to follow God’s track through Scripture and pause to find quiet places. God’s Word will bring us to quiet places of reflection, so we must attend to those quiet places in order for God to be able to write His Word on our hearts.
But just what kinds of things does God wish to write on our hearts?
A word I detested for years is “lifestyle.” I always found it to be such a convenient way of saying “I will do whatever I want to do and there is no law or any authority that has the right to interfere with me. I am king of my own castle and make my own rules.”
Only now have I found the real meaning of what lifestyle is truly about and why it is so important. It really is a wonderful discovery so please let me share it with you to put it in perspective for its true meaning.
Please consider this question: If you could choose, what would your lifestyle be? Let your mind wander, let it consider the impossible, place yourself in a world you would choose if you had free choice.
My own imagination worked overtime and I was in a world where there was no suffering, where the weather was perfectly comfortable, where there was plenty of good food, no squabbling, no harsh landscape. All was green; colour and fragrance were in every plant; streams of clear water rippled across a gentle landscape and creatures of every type got on with their lives in harmony and without fear.
It was not a lonely world. We were a couple who walked together, talked together, and shared our discoveries as well as our questions about how it all came together, every question you could think of that would lead to further exploration, further reasoning and discussion.
At the close of the day, the Maker of it all joined us, walked and talked with us and He opened our thoughts to cultivating a place of residence, extending our family, of seeing others cultivate their own space, and even to the possibilities of other worlds and space travel.
Then He pointed out that when we were made, He had written Himself into our very being and fashioned our hearts like His so that we would want nothing more than perfect harmony in every aspect of our lives.
So I imagined my – and there is that word again – “lifestyle.” What is imprinted on my heart decides my lifestyle and will stand forever because it came from the hand of God. Listen: “The councel of the Lord standeth for ever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations…He fashioned their hearts alike…” (Psalms 33:11,15 KJV).
God’s lifestyle was written on the hearts of those who were “made in his image.” (Gen 1:26 KJV) Today, living within the “counsel of the Lord” means living within His plan or purpose through His thoughts, in His written Word. The more we read His thoughts, the more we long for Him to write them on our hearts too so that we can walk together in His lifestyle. It is by getting into God’s Word that God’s lifestyle for us can be learned!
Elizabeth Price
Please join us next week for Written on the Heart, Part 5 for clues as to how we can most easily learn to reflect that lifestyle.
(To access the entire “Written on the Heart” mini-series, please click here.)