February 11

“Obedience without love is legalism.  Obedience for its own sake can be nothing more than perfectionism, which leads to pride.....God looks beyond godly habits, beyond your moral lifestyle, and beyond your church involvement and focuses His penetrating gaze upon your heart.”  H. Blackaby, Experiencing God Day-by-Day, 2/11

I’ve always put those “gazing balls” you see in many gardens in the same category as pink flamingos:  gauche.  In recent years, however, they’ve become quite popular and therefore totally mainstream. Blackaby’s word picture of God gazing into my heart puts me into His Garden.  I can see myself amongst all the flowers and shrubbery, happily enjoying all the delightful fragrances and beautiful colors and enchanting textures.  I can only imagine what it was like for Adam and Eve in God’s first garden.  Everything was natural and flowed from God’s heart directly to his Creation.  But God knew that in order to purify our hearts He would need to give us the freedom to love Him back. He did not want us to obey him just for the sake of obedience.  He knew the dangers of this and we have proven Him right when we lose sight of His love and attempt to make up for our lack of love with obedience.  We are told time and again that God wants a love relationship with us.  Perhaps I’ll get one of those gazing balls for my garden this Spring and place it amongst my flowers and shrubbery.  It’ll be my reminder that God is constantly gazing into my heart to see if it belongs to Him because He loves me and wants me to love Him back.

“We love, because He first loved us.”  1 John 4:19