God’s ways are not our ways. His love is often rough and easily seen as cruel. His love batters our hearts until our hearts are completely His. Even after I have committed to love Him, His love still batters my heart. And batter my heart He does, and that is because of His love, not in spite of it.
God’s Ways Are Not Our Ways
A booklet that has really helped me with the strange ways of God is Watchman Nee’s Worshipping the Ways of God. It has been most helpful in my acceptance of the strange ways of God’s sovereignty, those ways that are not our ways. It’s easy to say you accept the ways of God, at least the ways that have been approved of in our good Christian handbooks. But He doesn’t usually confine Himself to our accepted standards. Our God is wild in His love. Think about it, who sends “perfection” to die for “imperfection?” Who offers His Only Begotten Son to redeem those who don’t even acknowledge Him? And as for our three-foot personal space, who batters the hearts of those who do love Him? Our God!
Examples of Batter My Heart
In response to a question about my feelings of John Donne’s Batter My Heart poem, I think Donne met God. He was a man like Brother Lawrence who could say, “I shall never do otherwise, if You leave me to myself. It is You who must hinder my falling and mend what is amiss.” Brother Lawrence was aware of his sins and was not at all surprised by them. “That is my nature,” he would say, “the only thing I know how to do.” When he sinned, he confessed it to God with these words: “I can do nothing better without You. Please keep me from falling and correct the mistakes I make.” After that, he did not feel guilty about the sin. Lawrence and Donne knew their brutal being and the only Source who could keep them.
Another man who knew the rawness of his soul and his need for God to keep him was the Apostle Paul. “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing” (Romans 7:19). YET “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).
He Must Batter My Heart
Our only hope to reaching our destinies and loving our Beloved is through His very own life. He must come to get me and then keep me there. The good news is that He is up for the job. Donne’s poem is of the actionable efforts by our lovesick God towards us. HE MUST: Batter my heart, o’erthrow me, make me new, divorce me from your enemy, take me, imprison me, enthrall me, and ravish me. These are the most encouraging words for someone as powerless as me. He is the Force of Love to pursue, overtake, and make me His own. And this is no fairytale. It is my eternal reality!
If a man would offer all the riches of his house for love, it would be utterly scorned and despised.
Song of Songs 8:7 AMP
Batter my heart.. One of the deepest lessons of life…to establish & settle our hearts. How else would we come to His Life as our life? Left to myself I’ll live in the sway of my emotions & reasonings. Talk about dependence on Christ…here He answers the cry of our hearts. We can choose (& that we’re brought to), but only He can Live it in us. In Loves batter my heart, we know Him, with all of our heart. It’s not God pointing His finger in derision, it’s Him revealing Himself, & our hearts melted into His longing. We… Read more »
Thank you John for the love of God shared to all who may listen with the heart and spirit. You like Christ continue to point us to the Father to learn His mysteries. Having had a very violent earthly father it has taken me years to learn and yield to the Father of all. Christ has taught me to run to the Father and oh the mysteries that have been revealed. The love of God that will not let us go. Christ intercedes for us in our trembling and faulty ways of coming to Him, but He brings us. Thank… Read more »
Big kisses to you Nancy. Thank you for enjoying this series that so closely tugs at my heart. Your words are true encouragement! All we like sheep go astray but He is the perfect Shepherd who brings us in. Praise God for ever!
His ways are really strange indeed. How well you said it John ” who sends perfection to die for imperfection ? Who redeems the ones who don’t even acknowledge it. I’m also reminded how He continuously throws “the seed ” His word not on the good ground only, but on the stony one as well… Which farmer in the right mind does that? But how is it that we marvel at all this, we are amazed and in awe of this kind of generosity, but we are resistant to accept His own choices for us, we are so slow to… Read more »
Thank you Marsela! Yes truly thank you Lord, You are able!
“His love batters our hearts UNTIL our hearts are completely His.” Then this is what life is all about! And the battering should come as no surprise to me. But there is one thing that does… That love and death could be together as one!! What unimaginable miracle is this that He has done??! Only True Love could ever carry death in His hands…to bring me to Life!!!! “Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is strong as death, jealousy is fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire,… Read more »
Beautifully stated, as always! Love ya