Review: Technicolor

The size of God’s heart…. And how often do we subtly shrink it?

His heart cries out—all nations! All nations!

And we think, “Too big for me. Too big for us. Too distant.”

“Jonah tried to escape God’s heart for all nations” (19) Mark Hearn reminds us in Technicolor: Inspiring Your Church to Embrace Multicultural Ministry (well worth reading, read my full review here). It wasn’t just God’s law Jonah tried to escape. It wasn’t just a mere command. But the very heart of God (Jonah 4). His heart! Hearn also poignantly spotlights another familiar passage: Babel—a way to create community the way we want, homogeneous unity around comfortable commonality. How often do we try to grow our churches, community, reach our neighborhoods with the same Babel mentality? Instead, God said, “Fill the earth.” Babel was a rejection of God’s witness, God’s heart, for the familiar.

We might argue that is precisely why we are a universal body of Christ—all nations will be reached by each one reaching around us. Yet, yet—is that narrowing our heart? Will we let God’s big heart expand our heart? Will we let his vision swell our vision? Will we let God’s Spirit enlarge our spirit? With the very God within us, oh, let us love God with a God-sized love, let us love others with a God-sized love, let us work with a God-sized energy, let us dream with a God-sized dream! Let us search deeper into God’s heart and see his heart for all nations, and not try to shrink his heart into doabilities and possibilities and withinmyreachabilities.

Diversity in local churches and the span to all nations show the heart of God:

A God who is worthy to be praised by every square inch of creation, by every tribe and language and people and nation (Rev. 5:9).

A God who loves all of his creation and wills that none should perish (2 Pet. 3:9).

A God who has the power to unify, just as he is Three-in-One, against all economic, religious, social, educational, etc. barriers—for he is our peace having by his death destroyed the dividing wall and made us one in union with him (Eph. 2).

A God whose nature is love, and love requires the other, another, the different to truly love (and not just love ourselves mirrored in the other).  

Let our love be defined by God. Let our love be inspired by the very Spirit of God. Mark Hearn’s words struck: Every church claims to be a loving church and busy going about doing loving things. He writes, “I am not labeling the modern church as loveless, but perhaps our modern notion of love is not enough to accomplish the task” of obedience to God’s mandate for all nations (23). Christians can be doing loving things to those right around us and rightly so, yet as he urges, “Love is needed to initiate work. However, love is not adequate to move to a new field of influence. Many times, the enormity of the task colors decision-making. Love is insufficient because the only real incentive has to be from the Lord” (24). It is the beauty of the Lord’s heart, the zeal of the Lord’s heart, that will move us.

Lord, grant us that heart! Mark Hearn’s book, Technicolor, helps breathe new life into flagging hearts, helps inspire, and helps to practically undergird this call. Well worth picking up, and lifted my heart to God again. 

"I received this copy from the publisher in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review."