When God sent Samuel to Jesse’s house to anoint the next king of Israel, Samuel looked for a man that appeared the most royal, he looked for a man that fulfilled his expectations of what a king should be. David’s oldest brother Eliab walked by and Samuel said, “Surely the LORD’s anointed stands here” but then God spoke to Samuel’s heart, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” This verse gets quoted most often when there are questions about some form of outward appearance. Can a man have long hair? God looks at the heart. Should a woman wear pants? God looks at the heart? Are tattoos acceptable for Christians? God looks at the heart. Is it OK to wear shorts to church? God looks at the heart. You get my point. In all these examples, it’s true, God looks at the heart, but the problem is that God was not speaking to free us from dress codes or restrictions of personal expression, He was teaching Samuel and us something about His character and ours. We all make assumptions, but God knows the truth. We assume our way is the right way, our experience qualifies us to know what others should do, we understand what the world needs, we know what God expects and we are qualified to speak to every possible movement that strays from our expectations. God wants us to know that our assumptions are often less than reliable because our expectations are limited. Remember, we see through the glass darkly, we don’t know as much as we think we do, we must resist the urge to think that what we know everyone should know, or even worse, that what we know is all there is to know. Can I tell you how this most often reveals itself? We often express that the thing that God has highlighted to us is the issue that matters most to God. What if Barb, in her calling to children around the world stood up and told us “Child sponsorship is the most important issue to the heart of God?” What if Amanda stood up and said, “Youth ministry is the most important issue to the heart of God?” What if Pam came in on a Sunday and announced, “Children’s ministry matters more to God than anything else?” Those announcements would divide us and to be honest, they would diminish God, because if anything is “most important” to God, then that means that everything else is secondary to God and that is not at all who God is. God wills that none would perish, in that no one is primary or secondary. Every issue of salvation, of redemption, of restoration, of healing and of justice is equal to God, since He values no one above another He also values none of our issues, plights or problems lower than another. The heart of God is so enormous that each of us only carry a piece of it, but when we come together we get to see more of God’s heart than we could ever see alone. No single one of us knows the “full counsel” of God’s heart, He designed us to need each other to see Him more clearly, more fully, more rightly. Today, in John 7, we will see how assumptions made about God caused much of Israel to reject Jesus. We will see how stubbornness of belief killed opportunities for faith and how knowing God as He truly is always requires letting go of how we have assumed or believed God would be. My prayer today is that we will give up our assumptions about God and expectations for others and let Jesus lead the way into seeing God as He truly is and seeing each other as God sees us.