After God's own heart

When you read the title, do you read it the way I do? I have always thought of the "after" in the same way that you think of being made in God's image. One came first...the other came "after".

I was listening to KCBI 90.9 (originally started as one of the extended ministries of First Baptist Church of Dallas...W.A. Criswell was the senior pastor at that time and the CBI stands for Criswell Bible Institute.) The on-air announcer made a comment that changed my view of that phrase.

As an aside: when I was a toddler, my parents were members of FBC Dallas and I was a regular attender. I have vague memories of those days. One of the constant themes of my life has been the continual return to the Dallas/Fort Worth area every few years:

• My parents moved to Dallas from my birthplace in Brownwood, Texas after my dad graduated from Howard Payne in 1962. We lived in both Dallas and Fort Worth from then until my parents' graduation from Southwestern in 1968.
• We returned to Ft. Worth as we awaited visas to go to Indonesia in 1973. That stay was about 8 weeks.
• After leaving the field in 1977 on medical leave, we stayed in a mission house in the northeast Ft. Worth suburb of Haltom City for a little over a year.
• After graduating from both high school and college, I matriculated at Southwestern and took 26 hours towards a Master's degree. When I ran out of money, I took a job with a company in Irving and eventually bought my great-grandmother's house when she moved to Bowie. That stay lasted from 1985-1988
• In 1998, six years into our marriage, Jennifer and I (and our two oldest) moved to the Dallas area so I could take a job with Fiserv. Our younger daughter was born in Lewisville.
  
• This January, I returned to work with my current company. Jennifer and the children followed this June.

My point in bringing this up is that my memories of Dallas are very layered. Each trip brought a different perspective. Some things are very clear and easy for me to remember. Others are what you might called "sepia colored" like an ancient family photo (though I'm not THAT old!!)

The same is true for my memories of the Bible. There are things I learned very early--like John 3:16--that update themselves as my faith grows. Others relate to very specific times. I memorized Psalms 1 for Camp Miki (a camp for Indonesian missionary kids that we held every summer) and it was a Psalm memorized "just in time" for the onset of young adulthood.

The comment that David was a man "after God's own heart" has always been a favorite of mine and a goal of mine. But I always thought of it as I described above. The "after" being a reflection. Until the KCBI on-air announcer changed that completely for me yesterday.

After Chuck Swindoll's presentation about David yesterday on Insight for Living, the announcer said that David "chased God's own heart." I haven't looked at the Hebrew yet to confirm that reading. I did some quick checking online (I lack a useful commentary of any kind at the moment.) Several sites addressed this way of looking at that verse. One of the most interesting was a song by Andrew Peterson called "The Chasing Song." (I've linked the title to the lyrics page for your enjoyment!!)

The concept took my breath away. Whether it plays out hermeneutically (big word meaning "the interpretation is correct"), it has already started changing my thought process in relating to God.

YES, God chases me!! "While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." But do we chase HIM? The opening to the promise "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added to you" suggests calmness and diligence. But chasing "after God's own heart" suggests PASSION.

I am passionate for God, but I'll be honest with you. It isn't like David's passion for God. David wrote the Psalms TO God. They reflect his honest conversation WITH God. They are filled with passion FOR God. They lead US to worship OF God. David's chase for God's heart found favor with God. God sought a man after his own heart in order to replace Saul.

I hope I don't sound condescending as I draw conclusions from that:

I need to chase God's heart for all I'm worth. In doing so, God will add everything else I need. And I will be prepared for him to accomplish his will THROUGH me...in spite of my holes...because I am open to his leadership ABOUT those holes.

Won't you join me in the chase for God's own heart? Let's get PASSIONATE about him!! Let's put aside all those things that surround us that get in the way of that. Let's set aside our excuse making and start today making that the CENTRAL theme of our lives. I'm just getting started today. I don't have a head start. Come on...let's RUN after him!!

UPDATE: Hermenuetically speaking, replacing the word "after" with the word "chasing" is not supported by the original texts. A more accurate replacement would be "a man in accord with God's own heart".

Found an online Hebrew-English Interlinear at Scripture4All.org. This interlinear has the King James on the right, the Hebrew (in reversed, left-to-right word order) line-by-line, and an English transliteration in between each line of Hebrew. A transliteration attempts to directly render every word of the original language with exactly equivalent expressions in the target language (English in this case.)

There is no attempt to resolve idiomatic components of the original, but we have the wealth of English translations and paraphrases that provide resolution of idioms. The dashes in the words hold together phrases that transliterate single Hebrew 'memes' that are more complex than equivalent English words. For example, the verb 'meme' carries action, a sense of gender of the subject, and may include a pronoun for the object...all in what looks like a single "word". All of these are fairly technical concepts that you don't have to understand in depth, but that will help you tear apart the interlinears that I'm linking to.

The transliteration from the interlinear of 1 Samuel 13:14 reads like this:

1 Samuel 13:14: "And-now kingdom-of-you not she-shall-be-confirmed he-sought Yahweh for-him as-heart-of-him and-he-shall-instruct-him Yahweh for-governor over people-of-him that not you-observed which he-instructed-you Yahweh."

The KJV reads:

1 Samuel 13:14: "But now thy kingdom shall not continue: the LORD hath sought him a man after his own heart, and the LORD hath commanded him [to be] captain over his people, because thou hast not kept [that] which the LORD commanded thee."

Another prominent use of this phrase is in Acts 13:22. This is in Greek and I also looked up Acts 13 in Scripture4All.org's Greek interlinear. The Greek preposition "kata" (not a verb like "chasing") conveys the relationship from David to God's heart. The transliteration of the verse is:

Acts 13:22: "And after-standing (deposing) him He-ROUSES THE DAVID to-them INTO KING to-WHOM AND (als) He-said witnessing (testifying) I-FOUND DAVID THE OF-THE JESSE MAN according-to THE HEART OF-ME WHO SHALL-BE-DOING ALL THE WILLS (will) OF-ME."

And the KJV:

Acts 13:22: "And when he had removed him, he raised up unto them David to be their king; to whom also he gave testimony and said, I have found David the [son] of Jesse, a man after mine own heart shall fulfil all my will."

Sorry for the update adding so much to the length of the post, but I thought the readers of the Salt Mill would appreciate a more in-depth look into the Truth.

Even though the insight is not based on a strict, literal interpretation of the Hebrew and Greek, I find the concept of "chasing God's own heart" to be very uplifting for my spirit. I believe in the passion for God that it suggests...a passion that is indeed a reflection of God's original and preceding love for us. I still intend to chase him!!