Judges 5:16 – …For the divisions of Reuben there were great searchings of the heart.
What a powerful statement and such a great truth is found here! We always seem to stop and really think about things when we are going through a trial or right after we have gone through a trial. We want to know why it happened so that we can avoid the need to go through it again.
I looked up the word searchings in the concordance, and it simply means “to search out, examination, enumeration, deliberation, finding out.” That in itself is enough to ponder for a while, but I just knew there must be more. I looked up the word searching in the dictionary, and I was right! This word entails so much more. I will get to that in a minute.
First, what were the children of Israel examining? Over what were they deliberating? What were they searching out? It is the heart! However, what about the heart were they searching out exactly? In this verse, they were searching out the feelings, the will, the wisdom or the mind of the heart. That is what the word heart means in this verse. There was great examination and deliberation of the inner feelings and the will of the heart occurring BECAUSE or as a result of the divisions of Reuben.
Remember that I said there was more to the word searching? Let me share a little more of that now. When we examine or deliberate over our feelings or the will of our hearts, we should take the following into consideration.
- To look into – I picture here someone using a magnifying glass to get a really good look at something up close. Remember science class in school? Remember using the microscope to look at slides containing blood drops or other liquids? The microscope magnified that liquid so that we could see every fiber! Why am I so reluctant to look just as closely at the intentions of my heart?
- To look over carefully or thoroughly in an effort to find or discover something – I do this with many things in life, but not so much with my heart. I am so careful to select just the right tomatoes at the store, looking them over in my hand and making sure they are not too soft or too hard. Even in my business, I am so careful to choose just the right paint or wood so that my products are of good quality. Why am I not just as careful with the intentions of my heart?
- To penetrate in order to find intention – This one really hit me hard! When something is not working right in our homes or with our vehicles, we will do whatever it takes to fix the problem. Sometimes we spend an enormous amount of time and money to get to the bottom of the situation and get it fixed. We need our appliances and vehicles to run smoothly so we can run our errands, get to church, etc. If we let the problem continue without correction, it only gets worse. Why am I so unwilling to do the same when it comes to the intentions of my heart?
- To make painstaking investigation or examination – Sometimes it hurts to find out what went wrong. When the air conditioner, dishwasher, and refrigerator in my house all stopped working at the same time and needed to be replaced, it hurt financially, but they needed to be repaired. Why are we so hesitant to perform a close examination of our hearts? Many times, it is because we will not like what we find there. We might bring to light that the intentions of our hearts were not as Christian-centered as we thought.
God tells us that we should be careful with what we allow in our hearts, so we should take the time to search and examine the intentions of our hearts on a regular basis to keep them clean and right before God.
by April Hernandez
