Popular songs and persuasive preachers have created a buzzword (phrase) – God’s heart.

I love the songs and can appreciate the preachers for trying to direct us into doing the right thing. When I did a word search on Bible Gateway the results were confusing.  There was no listing for “God’s heart”, I tried several translations and still found nothing!  The simple reason for this is there are none, that phrase is not there!  My Strong’s Concordance did come through under the Hebrew word #3820 Lebwhich is translated heart. There were two listing – Genesis 6:6 and Jeremiah 32:41. In Matthew 11: 5 I found Jesus stating that Hisheart was gentle and humble and we learn from Him.  That, is it (all I could find) for direct references to God’s heart.  A very closely related word is soul and there are references to God’s soul.  Frequently the words are used together for added emphases.   I will look at soul in another post.  

Feelings, will, intellect, center of everything, and inner most organare the ideas that leband lebab(Strong’s #3820, 3824) convey.  So, based on the Hebrew ideas, God has a heart that we understand.  Certainly, Matthew 11: 5 says Jesus’ heartis gentle and humble and we need to learn from Him.  Let’s look at Genesis 6: 5 + 6, it is in the story of Noah.  Verse five refers to man’s heart – it thought of only evil.  Verse six refers to God’s heart – it was filled with pain because of us!  Okay, that is a little rough.  The story in Jeremiah 32 does not start out any better, God is about to hand Jerusalem over to the Babylonians (vs. 26) because of their evil behavior.  But by the time He gets to verse 40 His tone has changed and He is promising to replant the people in Jerusalem and do good for them.

RECAP– God has a heart, humanity has caused it pain, because of our evil.  He has offered to do us good and He wants us to learn from Him!

FURTHER STUDY:  Can you find another reference to God’s heart!  What is the context you see now in the term “Heart of God”?