When God Invites us into His Heart
Most Christians would say that to know God is the deepest desire of their hearts. Jesus Himself defined eternal life in these terms: “Now this is eternal life: that they know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” (John 17:3 NIV) But what does it really mean to know God?
When I first began my walk with the Lord, I assumed that knowing God meant understanding His nature and character through Scripture and study. I thought it meant learning truths about Him. I did not yet understand that to truly know God is something far more personal.
To know God is not merely to observe Him from a safe distance. It is to share in His heart—to experience Him. We do not know Him as spectators but as those who are drawn into His life. He forms His heart within us. He teaches us to respond as He responds. And sometimes, in both joyful and painful ways, He allows us to taste what He Himself tastes.
The prophets of the Old Testament understood this. They were not simply messengers delivering information from God or about Him. Often, they themselves became the message. They discovered that to know God meant, in some measure, to live His heart.
One of the most striking examples is the prophet Hosea. The Lord said to him: "Go, marry a promiscuous woman..., for like an adulterous wife this land is guilty of unfaithfulness to the Lord." (Hosea 1:2 NIV) The command is unsettling. It almost seems out of character for God. Why would He ask such a thing?
Yet through Hosea's life, the Lord revealed a profound and powerful picture of His own heart toward an unfaithful people. Hosea did not simply proclaim God's grief over Israel's idolatry—he lived it. He experienced betrayal. He endured humiliation. Yet at God's command, he redeemed the very wife who had wronged him: "Go show your love to your wife again, though she...is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites...." (Hosea 3:1 NIV)
Hosea was not observing the heart of God from a distance. He was participating in it. Through great pain, he came to embody the deep and merciful love of God—a love willing to forgive and redeem the one who had been unfaithful. He came to know the Lord in a way that cannot be learned through study alone.
There was a season in my own life when Hosea's story ceased to be merely a narrative on a page and became deeply personal. My husband, with whom I had been in full-time ministry, fell into sin. He left our home, divorced me, and married another woman. My world collapsed. I felt betrayed—not only by him, but also by the Lord. Had I not served faithfully? Why had the Lord allowed this to happen? Like Naomi, I found myself lamenting, "The Almighty has brought misfortune upon me." (Ruth 1:21 NIV)
In my anguish, I could not see clearly enough to distinguish between human failure and divine faithfulness. I was seeing God through the lens of my husband's actions. Though God had not abandoned me, I accused Him of abandonment. Though He had not been unfaithful, I charged Him with unfaithfulness. I was measuring Christ by the failure of my marriage, rather than measuring my marriage by the standard of Christ's unfailing love for me.
The Lord met me in that darkness with extraordinary gentleness. He did not rebuke me for my accusations. Instead, He began drawing me closer. Like the words He spoke through Hosea, He spoke tenderly to my heart: "I am now going to allure her...and speak tenderly to her." (Hosea 2:14 NIV)
Early in that painful season, I sensed the Lord impress upon my heart a promise of an eventual restoration of my marriage. This is not a guarantee for every story like mine. God's purposes are not identical in every situation—but His heart is.
Before that restoration, however, the Lord had something of greater importance in mind. He was inviting me on an unexpected journey. The greater work would not be the restoration of my marriage, but the transformation of my heart.
Over the years that followed, the Lord began to share His heart with me. An intimacy grew between us that I would not trade for anything. Scripture came to life. His faithful love reshaped my understanding of covenant. I began to see that love is not a sentimental feeling, but a commitment that often involves sacrifice. The Lord’s words to Hosea became living words for my situation, “Love him as the Lord loves the Israelites.” (Hosea 3:1 NIV) My life, like Hosea's, was going to become a message.
Then, almost three decades later—after not seeing or speaking to my husband during that entire time, I received a letter from him. In it he confessed his sin, expressed genuine repentance, and asked for forgiveness.
By then, the Lord had already performed the deeper miracle. He had set my heart free. I was able to forgive—not because time had erased the wound, but because I had come to know the One Who forgives.
What God had cultivated in me during those hidden years was more precious than the restoration itself. Like Joseph said to his brothers, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good...,” (Genesis 50:20 NIV) I found myself saying to my husband, “How can I be angry with the one person in my life who pushed me into the arms of God?”
My husband's return swept into my life like a whirlwind of joy. The height of gladness that I felt was as great as the depth of sorrow I had known when he left. The Lord had kept His promise.
We remarried, and the second time was altogether different from the first. There was a gentle and quiet peace between us and a love that was richer and deeper than before. I no longer looked to my husband to meet the deepest needs of my heart. He was free simply to be the man I loved, because what my soul truly needed I had found in Christ.
The greatest gift by far was not the restoration of my marriage; it was knowing God more fully —sharing not only in the joy that is in His heart but also, in some small measure, in His pain. It was “for the joy set before Him” that Jesus “endured the cross.” (Hebrews 12:2 NIV) The apostle Paul expressed the same longing when he wrote, “I want to know Christ—yes to know the power of His resurrection and participation in His sufferings….” (Philippians 3:10 NIV).
Hosea was not asked to walk a difficult road because God delights in hardship. Rather, through that road he was invited into deeper communion with the heart of God. Sometimes the Lord permits us to walk through what He hates in order to teach us what He loves. To know God is not merely to learn about Him, but to share His heart.
That is eternal life.
For more from Julia Kamleiter: https://juliakamleiter.substack.com/
