GOD’S LARGE HEART (2)

“That Your way may be known on earth, Your salvation among all nations” – Psalm 67:2

The essence of knowing GOD’S LARGE HEART is to enlarge our hearts for His Global Mission of Redemption: “That Your way may be known on earth, Your salvation among all nations….Oh, let the nations be glad and sing for joy! For You shall judge the people righteously, and govern the nations on earth” (Psa.67:2-4). Other psalms buttress this global agenda: “All the ends of the world shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before You. For the Kingdom is the Lord’s, and He rules over the nations” (Psa.22:27-28). Sometime in the aeons of time, the Father had given His Son carte blanche: “Ask of Me, and I will give You the nations for Your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for Your possession” (Psa.2:8). Meanwhile, God had promised Abraham: “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen.12:3b). These, our Lord Jesus came to fulfil!

In Jesus, God put His whole Heart on display for the world to see. In Jesus, God’s large-heartedness is fully revealed. The revelation of Jesus steadies our lives. His words breathe life. His actions impart hope. His life inspires action. It’s not just His selflessness that is amazing – dying to redeem others. The very act of coming to this world as one of us – His Incarnation – is so compelling. Jesus gave up the comforts, pleasures, and beauty of heaven to take on human form in a rundown stable in an obscure community. He was literally born into the stench of this world, and He embraced those in it. He went after the untouchable, the unapproachable, and the questionable. That’s how amazingly great the Father’s Love for us is! Not just for His Church; but for the entirety of humanity!

God’s Large Heart is a Heart on mission “to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). His Heart embraces the vastness and variety of humankind. God’s Heart is not like that of an angry tyrant, but that of a shepherd in search of the lost sheep, or the parent who cares deeply for a wayward child. The generous Love of the God who “did not withold His own Son” needs to be reflected by large-hearted believers and an equally large-hearted church. The Father’s ultimate desire is for His large Heart to impact our hearts and our actions, thus provoking us into fresh adventures of Faith. Now, our Lord has given us the Great Commission: “…All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations…” (Mt.28: 18-20).

For us as Disciples of Christ, to be large-hearted is to live and share the Christian faith in its full colour – not in monochrome or black-and-white, but in full 3D! Our Lord has empowered and sent us out as ambassadors of His Grace and missionaries of His Mercy, to care, share, involve, and live the good news of His Kingdom. He is calling His Church to be the large-hearted Church in which barriers of bigotry, discrimination, and prejudice have no place; one in which we – not buildings – are the Church, everywhere we are and in everthing we do! God is doing His work through all of His people: seemingly ordinary lives doing extraordinary feats!

We’re called to make God’s Love real to our world, living daily with the heart-gripping conviction that our large-hearted God has provided us with a large-hearted gospel and expects us to carry a large-hearted compassion. Through meditation in His Word and communion with the Holy Spirit, we can develop a creative and passionate partnership with God as large-hearted witnesses wherever we are. Currently, many good and faithful believers spend all their energy servicing the institution, with no time left to connect with the rest of the world. When we allow God to do His work through us according to His pattern: “Then the earth shall yield her increase; God, our own God, shall bless us. God shall shall bless us, and all the ends of the earth shall fear Him” (vv.6-7).