Is a heart response enough?
I remember watching David Beckham filming an appeal in Africa. As part of UNICEF he was promoting a football project in some of the poorest countries in the world. As the program came to a close David turned to the camera. With tears in his eyes he made an appeal to all those watching to give a small sum of money to help these children, many of whom had lost their parents, were desperately sick or scarred both physically and mentally by war.
It was heart-wrenching. The combination of the children, Mr Beckham’s seemingly genuine reaction, and of course the cleverly placed emotional music in the background brought tears to my eyes. I was in pieces, deeply moved, humbled and heart-broken.
How do you think Mr Beckham and the makers of that program would have reacted if I told them that I then wiped the tears from my eyes, turned off the TV and went about my everyday business without giving any money? Would they be pleased that I had be ‘moved’ by the program?
I think not.
You see the whole point of making that program is to stir you to action, to do something that will help these children, in this case to give a small sum of money. It is not enough just to have an emotional heart response, it must lead to action.
As we return to the story of Josiah this Sunday we will see how Josiah’s journey towards whole-hearted devotion doesn’t stop with him simply having a ‘heart’ response to finding the Word of the Lord. In fact the heart response stirs him to begin a process of repentance.
But what do we mean by repentance? And what does repentance look like in our lives?
This Sunday we’ll take some time to look at how Josiah demonstrates for us what it means to go through repentance, and through this we will learn how we too can make the step from an emotional heart response to a journey through repentance to whole-hearted devotion.
“Or do you presume on the riches of His kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?” Romans 2 v 4
Tim Barton