Greater Than Our Hearts

Prodigal: I am looking for the perfect strawberry.

Me: There is no perfect strawberry’s but a lot of good ones.

This is from the book Reaching for the Invisible God by Philip Yancey

God makes clear that he accepts us-more, delights in us–as individual bearers of his image. We do not always sense that divine love, of course. Self-doubt and despair may steal in, as had happened among those the apostle John was addressing. Sometimes “our hearts condemns us,” John acknowledges, but “God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.” When the New Testament translator J.B. Philips came across that passage from 1 John, it seemed to leap off the page. Phillips explains, “Like many others, I find myself something of a perfectionist, and if we don’t watch ourselves this obsession for the perfect can make us arrogantly critical of other people, and in certain moods, desperately critical of ourselves.” Phillips suffered from clinical depression, and when the dark moods descended he would wallow in condemnation and feel no mercy. Ever after, he clung to the words of that verse. “It is almost as if John is saying, “if God loves us, who are we to be so high and mighty as to refuse to love ourselves?”

Luke 11:35

Be careful therefore that the light which is in thee be not darkness.

Jennifer Van Allen

www.theprodigalpig.com

www.faithincounseling.org

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