How well does your soul know the love of God? Let me show you what I mean when I ask this question.
Our Western culture is head-centered. As a child, I grew up learning a lot of information: what year was the Norman conquest of England (1066); what was Abraham Lincoln’s most famous speech (the Gettysburg Address); What is a square root? (God knows!) Most of us have picked up quite a bit of information through the years—useful knowledge, but knowledge that rarely has to sink to the level of the heart.
The Bible, on the other hand, focuses on the depths of the human soul. The Hebrew word kherev, probably best translated as “inmost being,” captures this concept. In its earliest uses, kherev refers to the physical inner parts of sacrificial animals. Literally, it means “entrails.” But, eventually, for the Old Testament, kherev evolves to mean the center and seat of inward thought and emotion (Brown, Driver, Briggs Hebrew Dictionary), our soul’s entrails, if you will.
In the famous Jeremiah verse, God promises His people that He will put His law in their kherev and write it on their hearts (Jeremiah 31:33). The Psalmist tells us, “When anxiety was great in my kherev, Your consolation brought joy to my soul” (Ps. 94:19). In Proverbs, we read that wisdom reposes in the kherev of the discerning (Prov. 14:33).
The Law of God. Wisdom. Anxiety. This is the stuff of life, both good and bad, and it doesn’t reside in our heads. It dwells in our inmost being. Kherev is the center of life (Brown, Driver, Briggs Hebrew Dictionary), the repository of our life experiences and our deepest being; it is our inmost parts, in a spiritual sense. It governs thought and emotion. It houses our bedrock beliefs. It responds to God. It can lead us astray. It can root us into God. Kherev is one of the words used by the Bible to capture the part of us that dictates our most genuine and meaningful responses. We don’t live only from the knowledge that rests between our ears and the emotions that sweep across the screen of our awareness. We live out of that deeper place that has been shaped by our history and our experiences. We live out of our kherev.
Most of us Christians know God reasonably well in our heads. We know the facts. We know the rules. We know the stories. We know the claims and assertions. But deep down inside, we haven’t quite caught up to that knowledge yet. We haven’t grasped in our core being that God is for us; He is on our side, and because of who He is, this is enough to make even a fallen world safe. We are unable to truly rest in the love of God. We struggle to live out of trust in the Father’s faithfulness. We slip, we strive, we wrestle with fear and control because at the level of the kherev we are not yet wholly God’s.
That’s why as a writer I feel that a central part of my calling is to continuously remind the inmost being of the reader of the truth of God’s love. We have to learn far deeper than our Sunday school knowledge. We have to internalize the truth that God’s love is so majestic, so profound, so powerful, that everything melts before it. And that makes my day. Hope it makes yours too.
When I was studying this passage of scripture and Hebrew word I discovered the mind-heart-gut connection. Scientists have found that the brain, the heart and the gut all have similar neurons and in fact, the gut has a little brain (the size of a cat’s brain!).
There are many sites on the internet about this but here are two: http://www.ibsgroup.org/other/usnews000403.htm
“Scientists studying this relationship have discovered that the gut-brain connection is at the heart of some of the most visceral human emotions. A “gut feeling,” for example, isn’t just a poetic conceit used to convey intuition. It arises from the biological interplay between these two intimately connected brains, says Emeran Mayer, a gastroenterologist and professor of physiology at the University of California-Los Angeles”.
http://www.nariphaltan.org/gut.pdf
Tessa ,That’s what I love about your books. You have so thoroughly woven Gods word, and his love and forgiveness into the very fabric of each story. It is impossible for the reader to miss these truths.
When his word is taken in and makes it way to the inner most places of my being, it has a way of bringing me to my knees in worship..Thank you for giving us a glimpse
of his glorious face and his awesome love.
I want to forever be a woman after Gods own heart.
So good! Thanks for this. We love God from the pit of our stomach… a gut-wrenching experience of the hesed (grace) of Christ. Amen!
Head knowledge vs. gut knowledge. Good! Thank you.Peace and joy in your innermost being. RSB
I love, Love, LOVE this post, Tessa! Studying the Bibles’s original languages is a passion of mine and essential to the studies I write. Our American equivalent of kherev is, ” I feel it in my gut.” Thank you for this great reminder. I need to stop by your wonderful blog MUCH more often blessings!
I sat down at the computer today to blog on “He restoreth my soul” (which He’s had me meditating on for several days) and managed to end up on this blog 🙂
Thank you for being a blessing… and thank you for your goal of having your writing remind my kherev of the truth of God’s love – you succeed wildly, which is why I love your books!
Bless you and may Father continue to bless the work of your hands and prosper it!!!
[…] now. Today He confirmed it was what He wnted me to pause and blog on by leading me to one of my favorite author’s blog where she had written about our soul/inner most parts as well. This left me wondering what does it mean that He restores my soul, how does He do so, […]
Very insightful and how true! Thank you for making us a little more aware of our understanding of God.
Hi Tessa…thank you for another wonderful blog. i always look forward to reading them. and grateful for the encouragement. My Dad passed away when i was 17. he was 45. and he struggled with alcohol. so there wasn’t the intimacy that a daughter would like to have with her Dad. i have struggled off and on with the unconditional love of a heavenly Father. like you said…we can know it in our heads, but not in our heart of hearts. so your reminder was a wonderful blessing to me. thank you. have a great week.
~jayne