At church yesterday we sang the song “Create in me a clean heart”. I love every line of it but the line that had me thinking the most was this one: ‘resore unto me, the joy of thy salvation, and renew a right spirit within me’.
The Exodus Scripture I popped on here a few days ago was still rumbling around in my head. Its such a beautiful response and of course exactly the right one, when we first understand that He has seen and cared about our lives.
And when they heard that The Lord was concerned about them and had seen their misery, they bowed down and worshipped…
Exodus 4:31
We also talk about ‘returning to our first love’ – so I saw this example of the Hebrew leaders who, having felt alone and bereft, now with heart and body, bowed and worshipped – as a picture to us of ‘the joy of salvation’ and ‘first love’. That moment when the penny first drops and we ‘get it’.
HOWEVER, this response didn’t last… as the Hebrews went through their cycles of rebellion/sin to judgement/consequence and back to restoration, we also can do the same thing. Sometimes after that first rush of joy, we begin to ‘put on Him’ our own expectations and ideas of Who He is and what He’ll do. It’s a process to discover Who He really is without all the baggage of our own ideas. It takes some time to get to know Him, to work through our disappointments where we’ve held wrong ideas and to see Him as He is… which never ever was something of our own making.