Word of Encouragement (7/21/2021)
We are continuing our reflection on Paul’s short benediction in 2 Thess. 3:5: “May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ.” Yesterday, we talked about the Lord being the Lord of our hearts and what it means for the Lord to direct our hearts. Today, let’s observe that Paul is asking the Lord to direct our hearts to the love of God.
Let us first acknowledge that our hearts need to be directed by God because they are distracted by so many things and pulled in so many directions throughout the day. Our hearts jump from one distraction to another, from one task to another on our to-do list , from one worry to another, etc. It takes only a little distraction to break our concentration, a little disturbance to trigger anger and resentment. Our hearts often feel like the game of musical chairs played by all kinds of thoughts and feelings and desires, constantly circling and shifting. Instead of a tree planted by streams of water, our hearts are like chaff that the wind drives in all directions. We need our Lord to direct our hearts.
Paul prays that the Lord would direct our hearts to two things: the love of God and the steadfastness of Christ. What Paul means by these is a bit ambivalent: is he talking about the love God has for us, or the love we should have toward God; the steadfastness we should have toward Christ, or the steadfastness with which Christ does His work? Sometimes, Paul is intentionally ambivalent in his expressions because he means both meanings. But in this case, it seems like he is speaking of God’s love and Christ’s steadfastness. I say so because of the verb he uses here: direct. It makes more sense that our hearts are directed to something outside of ourselves (to God’s love and Christ’s steadfastness) than to our own love and steadfastness.
This is indeed a prayer of blessing. What a wonderful blessing it is if our hearts are directed to the reminders of God’s love so we can experience it anew! There's a sense in which our hearts shouldn’t need God’s help to be directed to God’s love. What can be better than God’s infinite, abounding, never-ending, wise, all-powerful love for us? What can be more enjoyable for our hearts to ponder and cherish than the love of God? It should be the most natural thing for our hearts to reflect on the love of God. Yet, that’s not how it is, is it? Our hearts crave happiness but they get drawn to (familiar) misery like a moth to the fire. We are masters at finding things to complain about but inexperienced novices when it comes to resisting the temptation to grumble and finding solutions to our problems. We are surrounded by innumerable blessings but our hearts get fixated on a few problems we have and consider ourselves most miserable. Because we still live in the body of sin, the desires of the flesh still war against the Spirit (Gal. 5:17). That is why we need the blessing of God directing our hearts to His love.
When our hearts are directed to God’s love, we will find the security our hearts long for with the deepest desire--the security that comes when we are fully known and yet still loved. For His love is not conditional on our merit but in His sovereign, unchangeable, irrevocable, unconditional love: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). He didn’t love us because He had any illusions about our goodness; He loved us even though He knew by His omniscient knowledge all our flaws and faults.
When our hearts are directed to God’s love, we realize how blessed we are to receive His love: “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things” (Rom. 8:32)? “[He] has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (Eph. 1:3).
When our hearts are directed to God’s love, we can view everything that happens in our lives as the outworking of His love—originated from, and motivated by, His love for our understanding and enjoyment of His love. This is so because He, who loves us, is the sovereign Lord of all. “God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” (Rom. 8:28, NASB).
May the Lord direct your hearts to His love this morning and always!