Teach Me to War | Part 2
< Part 1 | What We Hide Keeps Us Bound
When I Began to Understand God’s Heart
Some time ago, my wife and I were going through a course by Francis Frangipane called In Christ’s Image Training. This was where I first heard of this profound truth. It was something I had never heard before. When I first realized this incredible truth that I’m about to share with you, I was completely blown away. I didn’t realize this about God’s character, and it’s something that went deep into my heart and made me understand how great my sin was.
Before I get into this, I want to talk a little about God’s character. We all know that God is Lord God Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, who spoke the universe into existence by the power of His word. In Genesis 1, the Bible tells us that darkness covered the face of the deep, and God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. Even in the beginning, when God saw darkness, He brought light into it. And wherever there is darkness, God wants to bring light, including those places of darkness that may be in our own hearts.
This is the God who created all things, who oversees the galaxies in the universe and gives life to everything. He tells the oceans where to stop, as He spoke to Job. By His breath, the frost is on the trees, and He hangs the earth upon nothing. When I consider how great and mighty God is, I have to ask myself, who am I that I could possibly do anything to hurt Him or bring any kind of reproach to His name? He’s too great, too mighty, and too powerful. What could someone like me possibly do that would hurt God Almighty?
Our Sin Grieves the Heart of God
When we sin and refuse to come to repentance, we are grieving the Spirit of God. We are grieving the Holy Spirit, and this is something that I had never really understood in the way that I began to understand it when I heard a first heard this in the course I mentioned earlier, In Christ’s Image training. BUt it wouldn’t be until some time later that I heard this truth again and it completely floored me!
I had always known that God was holy and that sin was wrong, but I hadn’t understood that my own sin could hurt the heart of God. Here was the Almighty God, who created the heavens and the earth by the power of His word, speaking about how the unfaithfulness of His people had grieved Him. I began to understand something about God’s character that I had never really considered before, and it was something that would change my understanding of the things I had allowed into my own life.
The Day I Heard Ezekiel 6:9
In this passage, God speaks about the adulterous hearts of His people who had departed from Him and whose eyes had gone after their idols. He speaks of being broken because of their unfaithfulness, and when I began to understand what God was saying, it changed the way I looked at my own sin.
I was in my work truck one particular day, and I couldn’t listen to my own music because they had given me another truck. Normally, I had a USB cord or something that I could connect to the sound system, but that day I didn’t have anything that would work, so I had to listen to the radio. As I was listening, a teaching came on about Ezekiel 6:9 and how our sin can hurt God, and I began to see all the times that I had committed adultery with my eyes, according to the Scripture.
“…because I am broken with their whorish heart, which hath departed from me, and with their eyes, which go a whoring after their idols” (Ezekiel 6:9 KJV)
Ezekiel 6:9 speaks about those whose hearts had departed from God and whose eyes had gone after their idols. As I considered those words, I began to see what I had been doing in my own life. With my eyes, I had lusted, and with my heart, I had sought other things. I did not understand, and I did not know, that I was hurting the Lord by doing this. When I realized that I could hurt the Lord, it really changed my outlook on things, because I began to understand that my sin was not simply something that I was doing wrong, but something that was grieving the heart of God Himself.
Not Only Was I Hurting the Lord, but I Was Hurting My Wife
When I began to realize that I was hurting the Lord, I took it a step further and began to understand that not only was I hurting Him, but I was hurting my wife. As I began to understand how big and incredible the heart of God is, I also began to understand how gentle, compassionate, and loving He is. He’s the One who has loved me the most, even more than my own wife has loved me, and yet I had been hurting Him through the things that I had allowed into my heart.
His heart is the one heart that we should most want to understand. His heart should be the one that we care about the most, the one that we never want to hurt, and yet we hurt Him when we look somewhere else and when our hearts pursue something other than Him. And our wives feel this too. Our wives love us, and yet when our eyes and our hearts pursue other things, we are hurting them. I began to understand that the lust I had allowed into my life was not something that was affecting only me, because it was hurting my wife, and more importantly, it was grieving the heart of the Lord.
Against Thee, Thee Only, Have I Sinned
In Psalm 51, David said,
“Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight” (Psalm 51:4, KJV).
David had sinned with Bathsheba, and there were others who had been hurt by what he had done, but David understood that his sin was ultimately against God Himself. When David realized how great his sin was and that he had hurt God Almighty, he began to understand the seriousness of what he had done, and this was something that really began to speak to my own heart.
I had sinned against my wife, and that was true, but I began to understand that my sin went much further than the hurt I had caused in my marriage. If my sin could hurt God Almighty, how many other people had I hurt through the things that I had done? That’s what really began to move in my heart, my understanding that God, being so powerful and mighty, is also so loving and compassionate. And yet I had hurt Him with my sin. I had hurt the One who loved me more than anyone else, and when I began to understand that, I could no longer look at my sin in the same way.
My Sins Nailed Him to the Cross
My sins nailed Him to the cross. My sins caused Him to come down from heaven and take my place at Calvary because He loved me so much. When I began to understand how my sin had grieved the heart of God, I also began to understand something about the love that caused Jesus Christ to give Himself for us. Here was the Almighty God, the Creator of heaven and earth, who loved us so much that He was willing to take our place at the cross of Calvary.
We have to come to this understanding that your sin, my sin, our sin, is what has caused the Holy Spirit to be grieved. We cannot continue looking at sin as though it is something that affects only ourselves, because our sin hurts others, and it grieves the heart of a holy and loving God. When we begin to understand how much He loves us, and how our sin has grieved Him, it should cause us to examine our own hearts and consider the things that we have allowed to remain there.
We Have to Come to Repentance
If we’re going to go any further in our walk with the Lord, we have to come to repentance. That’s the first thing we need to understand, that your sin, my sin, our sin, has hurt a holy, loving, compassionate, and merciful Heavenly God who loves us so much. He is grieved by our rejection of Him and by our unbelief, and we need to understand that when we refuse to acknowledge our sin and turn away from it, we are refusing the very light that He wants to bring into our lives.
We need to come out of darkness and into His light. This is what the Lord desires for us, that we would come before Him with our whole hearts, acknowledging our sin and bringing everything into the light. I want to encourage you to keep going to the Lord, giving Him all of your heart and bringing everything before Him, because He loves you and wants to deliver you from those things that have kept you in darkness.
God bless you.
Continue the Teach Me to War Series
Part 1 — What We Hide Keeps Us Bound
In the first article, I shared about our desire for deliverance, why we sometimes resist the light, and the importance of acknowledging our sin before the Lord.
Part 3 — Freedom Begins in the Light
In the next article, we’ll continue looking at darkness and what it means to come into the light of Jesus Christ.
Watch the Original Teaching
This article is adapted from my Teach Me to War teaching series.