Have you ever been misunderstood? You said something and the person listening took you to mean something completely different. It happened tonight with a friend. She was talking about “playing music” meaning playing it on an ipod where as my mind instantly thought she meant PLAYING music, like on a guitar or piano.
As funny as that was, many misunderstandings go much deeper than a slight different use of a word. Have you ever said something and it just came across to the person in a completely different way. Perhaps it was the tone of voice, or poor word choice, but you didn’t MEAN for them to be hurt by something or you didn’t MEAN for it to come out that way. The thoughts in your mind and the words of your mouth somehow don’t line up with your motives.
That’s one (OF MANY) things that I love about this verse from Scripture, that actually talks about SCRIPTURE. Look in close at the end… to what it says about thoughts and intentions…
For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12)
Sometimes I don’t even think WE know the intentions of our hearts. We’re in one of those conversations, perhaps a misunderstanding has already occurred and the question appears, “Well what do you mean?” And as we stumble around, “well… umm…. I…” we realize WE don’t even know what we mean. Yet, we see here that God’s Word has the ability to discern between the thoughts and our intentions… between what we say and what we mean. It gets to the heart of the matter and sheds some much needed light.
I can act like an awesome Christian on the outside, but do the intentions of my heart line up? Or the opposite, is my heart in the right place but for some reason I just can’t get it together on the outside. God knows. And in either case, He loves.
And that’s what’s so beautiful about grace… even when my motives are crappy or my thoughts incoherent (perhaps like this blog post???) … God knows all that and yet, loves me anyway. And not only does he love me, he uses me.
Truly baffles my mind. Motives… intentions…
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