David, a man after God's Heart: Part Two

As we talked about in our last post, we saw how David was a man after God's Heart because David had a heart for God. "I have found David, the son of Jesse, a man after My own heart, who will do all My will" (Acts13:16-22). We now want to look at two very interesting words in this verse; heart and after. In the Old Testament the Hebrews identified the 'heart' as the seat of the mind and the will, together with the whole range of physical emotions. It was the essence of the human personality. Today in psychology we tend to divide the emotion from the intellect and this would be foreign to the Hebrew vision of the wholeness of personality. So what is meant of God's heart? God's heart is basically his essential nature. God's divine intelligence, ultimate loving-kindness and his sovereign will equals His heart. What is so amazing is that we are made in God's image. He is spirit. God the Father has no body but we can think his thoughts after him, receive and express his love, and want to do his will. The capacities of our hearts correspond sublimely to God's heart. What an amazing thing this is. This is why I always stress that Christianity is about a Relationship and not a Religion.


The word after bonds God's heart and our heart together. As a sculptor who takes a lump of clay and sculpts a bust 'after' our likeness, so a heart after God's heart is one in portrait 'after' our likeness. When people see us they should see God's nature through us. As we pursue God, we become more like God in his nature.


"My brethren, let me say, be like Christ at all times. Imitate him in "public." Most of us live in some sort of public capacity—many of us are called to work before our fellow-men every day. We are watched; our words are caught; our lives are examined—taken to pieces. The eagle-eyed, argus-eyed world observes everything we do, and sharp critics are upon us. Let us live the life of Christ in public. Let us take care that we exhibit our Master, and not ourselves—so that we can say, "It is no longer I that live, but Christ that lives in me."

—Charles Spurgeon