2 Chronicles 16:9a - For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him.
In the book of Jonah, the prophet that the book is named after is told by God to go to the city of Nineveh and declare what God wanted them to hear. Nineveh was a terrible city, where the people who lived there were so corrupt that they did not even know their right hand from their left. You would think that Jonah, being a prophet of God, would jump at the chance to declare God’s words to these people, and yet he did the opposite. Jonah ran.
Jonah tried to go as far from Nineveh as he could, thinking along the way that he may even somehow escape the calling of God, and perhaps thought he could escape God himself. This wasn’t the case. As the story goes, a great storm caused the ship that Jonah was sailing on to be on the verge of sinking. Jonah was to blame for all of this, and so he, and those who were on the ship with him, were going to pay the price. Jonah was cast into the sea, but as he was sinking he prayed a prayer of repentance towards the Lord. It was then that a great fish swallowed Jonah up and a few days later spit him up onto dry land. He then made his way to Nineveh to say what God called him to say.
This message was simple. “Nineveh will be destroyed”. As far as we know, that was all there was. Amazingly, the people of Nineveh repented of their evil ways and turned to the God of Jonah. Now, why share this story when the passage in 2 Chronicles is about a different circumstance altogether? Because the fact of the matter is, you cannot run from God. Whether you are like Jonah, one of God’s chosen people, or you are a wicked Ninevite, there is no escaping God’s hand and plan.
He sees everything, knows everything there is to know, from the farthest stretches of the galaxy to the still small intentions of your heart. Jonah forgot this, and he made decisions that placed blame upon himself, and hurt those he came in contact with. The same can be said of us. God sees you, and he knows you. What then does he want to see in us? A blameless heart. Now, we know that we cannot be blameless in our hearts on our own effort, so what do we do? We cling to the promise that if we have faith in Jesus, the son of God, that his blamelessness becomes ours. What a tremendous exchange! Jesus gets our sin placed on him in his death, and we receive his blameless heart.
What then does that mean? It means that if we have been made blameless in our hearts we should pursue blamelessness in our deeds. Our hearts can still be affected negatively by the world, the flesh and the devil, so watch over yours diligently and keep it blameless before the Lord. This is the pursuit of righteousness, and incredibly, we see here that God strongly supports those whose hearts are blameless before him. He is supporting you, helping you to walk in the blamelessness that you have been given. There is no greater strength you can hope in for today than the strength of the Lord, and there is no greater support for this life than the support he alone offers you.
