Seeing God with a Pure Heart

At church last Sunday, the priest talked about seeing God with a pure heart. An example he cited was John the Baptist. According to the priest, John the Baptist had a pure heart, for he was born without original sin (at least I think that's what the priest said). Consequently, while John at Jesus' baptism heard a divine voice that said "This is my beloved Son," the other people heard only thunder. The priest also commented on the innocence of children and how they are free from the corruption that adults have accumulated over the years. For the priest, that explains why kids have good and pure insights. The priest concluded that people can identify God's activity only when they are pure of heart.

There are plenty of areas in which I can nitpick. For example, the voice of God was not mistaken as thunder in the Gospel stories about Jesus' baptism, but rather in John 12:28-29. Also, people who lack a pure heart can see and identify God's activity. The Pharaoh of the Exodus got to the point where he believed that Moses' God was causing all the plagues, yet his heart was still hardened.

At the same time, one can make a Scriptural case for the priest's position. In many cases, those who identify and embrace a work of God do so because of the purity of their hearts. Jesus says in John 7:17, "Anyone who resolves to do the will of God will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own." Luke 8:15 states, "But as for that in the good soil, these are the ones who, when they hear the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patient endurance." A person with a pure heart will see and accept God's activity.

That doesn't mean that believers are perfect when they receive the Gospel. The disciples embraced God's activity, yet they were clearly flawed. Jesus affirmed, after all, that he did not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance (Matthew 9:13). I'm also not questioning the doctrine that humans are inherently sinful, for Calvinists and Arminians would both agree that purity of heart is necessary for saving faith. They just believe that God must play a role for the heart to become pure.

A pure heart is having a righteous motivation. The disciples had pride and a desire for status like other men, but they were willing to learn from God and become a part of what he was doing. The Pharisees of the Gospels, by contrast, made power their idol, so they rejected God's activity of healing and deliverance. Either they didn't believe that Jesus' ministry was God's work, or they knew that God was working through Jesus and chose to reject him anyway.

I often wonder what God is doing in my life and the world around me. There are many times when there doesn't appear to be any order or plan to what is going on. My life does not always fall into place, and I continually hear about problems in the world that make me wonder if there even is a God.

But maybe I could identify God's activity more if I had a pure heart, if I was less focused on myself and my own sinful desires and more focused on God and others. When I was in a Bible study group several years ago, I had a lot of issues. I often felt unappreciated in the group, and I was very bitter. The leader suggested that I try to identify God's activity wherever I am. And God is at work in all sorts of places. He can speak at a mainline Protestant church (and this leader was a staunch evangelical who didn't care much for mainline Protestantism!). He can communicate through a religion class (and this leader didn't really like the historical-critical method that Bible professors used). He can reveal himself through nature. Why not focus less on whether or not others are paying attention to me, and concentrate more on what God is doing?

Some of that's easier said than done. I often feel that I would be presumptuous to identify something as an act of God, since I don't really know. But perhaps such an identification is not as hard as I may think. God often calls attention to himself and his standard of love and righteousness, if my eyes are open enough to see it.

When I was at Harvard, I was required to be a part of a small group, and the leader recommended to us an exercise. He said that, at the end of each day, we should ask ourselves three questions. First, where was God present during that day? Second, where was he absent? And third, where do I go from there? It's been a while since I've done that exercise. Maybe I should make it a part of my daily quiet time. That may help to remove the blinders that hinder me from seeing God's activity, allowing me to seek and find what God is doing.