“Gentle and lowly. This, according to his own testimony, is Christ’s very heart. This is who he is. Tender. Open. Welcoming. Accommodating. Understanding. Willing.”

– Dane Ortlund

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Book Review

If you were asked to describe the heart of God, what would you say? In a world with many voices shouting at us, telling us who our God is, do we pause to ponder what Christ actually says about His own heart? Christianity is a remarkably unique faith in that we have a God who desires a relationship with us, despite our brokenness. But even more than that, He wants to reveal Himself to us. He wants us to know Him as intimately as we know ourselves, and this includes knowing the depths of His very own heart.

“The message of this book is that we tend to project our natural expectations about who God is onto him instead of fighting to let the Bible surprise us into what God himself says” (p155).

So, what does the Bible surprise us with? Who is Christ, and what is His heart for us? “If Jesus hosted his own personal website, the most prominent line of the ‘About Me’ dropdown would read: GENTLE AND LOWLY IN HEART” (p21).

The beauty of the heart of Jesus is simply indescribable. Ortlund, as he builds upon Puritan teachings, has done a spectacular job of drawing us into the knowledge of the heart of our Saviour. The heart of our Lord Jesus Christ is so gloriously unexpected, we need not wonder, “who could have ever thought up such a Saviour?” (p19); we simply understand no man ever could.

Join me friends, as we discover more about the heart of our Saviour, who deeply wants to be known, and who finds the opportunity of undoing our fallenness irresistibly attractive. This poetic and theologically based study truly does endeavour to seek after the Lord wholeheartedly and, in the process, exposes His very heart for us.