Hunger for God

I just returned from a few days in Vancouver (Canada) where I was with a group of dear Korean brothers and sisters who are in missionary training.

This is the fifth year I have visited this group to teach and share the life and love of Jesus with them. More than ever before I encountered hearts deeply hungering for the Lord Jesus and wanting to know Him intimately.

I'm finding this true everywhere I go - that desire and hunger for God among His people is intensifying more and more. In his book, The Normal Christian Life, Watchman Nee says the following in reference to the fragrance of Mary of Bethany's anointing of Jesus (John 12:3):

>"God does not set us here first of all to preach or to do work for him. The first thing for which he sets us here is to create in others a hunger for himself. That is, after all, what prepares the soil for the preaching...We cannot inject spiritual appetite by force into others; we cannot compel others to be hungry. Hunger has to be created, and it can be created in others only by those who carry with them the impressions of God...

"What are people sensing about us? We may leave many kinds of impressions:...the impression that we are clever, that we are gifted, that we are this or that or the other. But...the impression Elisha left was an impression of God himself (II Kings 4:9).

"This matter of our impact upon others...demands that I seek his pleasure, that I seek to satisfy him only, and I do not mind how much it costs me to do so."

The Lord bless you this week and cause hunger for Him to grow in all of our hearts until we cannot live without knowing Him in the fullest meaning of the word. Holy Spirit, come and do Your good work in our hearts!

Enjoying God - Week #10

The email that went out last week posted a distant past posting of our book club because of problems that we have had with the blog site, but the correct entry is online at the site now and can be read there. Thanks for your patience!

(Before completing the book Enjoying God in this posting, I’ll remind you again that from now till September we will be taking a break from reading a book, but I will post some short words of encouragement periodically until then. The book we will read in September is by Dana Candler, Deep Unto Deep. After that we will read Tozer’s Pursuit of God.)


Chapter Seven (final part): Persevering in our Quest for Intimacy

The Dark Night of the Soul
In this portion of the final chapter, S.J. Hill speaks at length about the pursuer’s “dark night” as a time when the Lord withholds the “sense” of His presence for the purpose of awakening greater hunger and longing and trust in us. He is a jealous Lover and will woo us into a place of desire for Him and Him alone. He wants us to desire Him most of all, not simply our feelings about Him.

This has been a common experience of all great men and women of God. Speaking of the story in the Song of Songs, Hill says, “The bride’s greatest desire had been to experience the presence of the Lord. Yet He hid His face from her. He didn’t leave her…Would she fervently pursue Him without feeling His presence? Would she faithfully obey Him regardless of how difficult the circumstances became? Was she seeking the Lord primarily for her own spiritual pleasure, or would she love Him for His own sake?...the ‘silence of the Lord’ was a part of His training to cause the bride to become more lovesick.”

Just like the saints of the Bible and saints since then, we don’t like going through the fire of not knowing and touching the presence of God, but if we can endure in trust, it is what creates hunger and a desperation in us to encounter Him.

Experiencing God is not for spiritual “heavyweights”, as though it’s something we win by being so deserving…”Drawing near to God is simply yearning to know Him out of your own barrenness. It’s worshipping, praying, and meditating on the Word, even when we feel little or no inspiration. It’s saying to the Father, ‘I’m struggling but I really want You.’”

One of the best things to do when in a spiritual desert is to be real with God, expressing openly what you are going through. It helps to write it out and to ask the Lord to give you Scripture that speaks truth to you about God and His ways and thoughts. Write those down and confess them to others when you have the opportunity.

He is very close to you even when He seems so far…we have many, many promises in the Word of His presence with us always. Trust what He says and hang in there. He is not offended with your struggle nor with your questions. Don’t make your love for God the primary focus but rather, His love for you. C.S.Lewis said, “On the whole, God’s love for us is a much safer subject to think about than our love for Him. Nobody can always have devout feelings…But the great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, his love for us does not.”

Another reason the Lord allows us to pass through darkness of the soul is so that we can more readily relate with others who are in need. Our dumping correct information on a person alone won’t touch his/her heart of confusion and hurt.

Hill concludes this portion of the chapter by saying that real and honest cries of the heart, though usually not very eloquent nor religious sounding, will “get the Father’s attention quicker than ten good deeds or a dozen relgious formulas…It’s not the accuracy of your seeking but the yearning of your heart that moves the Father. It’s not about how much time you think you have to spend with Him…It’s your yearning for Him that He loves and honors.”

Cultivating Intimacy

In this section of the chapter, the author assures us that although it will take desire and effort on our part to cultivate intimacy with God, it will be well worth it, and I agree wholeheartedly. There’s nothing to compare with encountering God, and so the cultivating of the garden of my heart may be hard work (especially in terms of fighting for the time) but He is more than worth it.

Hill says, “We’ve been culturally conditioned to live with constant busyness, noise, and activity. Transitioning into a time of intimacy (with God) is often difficult. The mind races. The to-do list grows. And often a little demonic voice whispers, ‘You’re wasting your time.’ But waiting on God is essential…worth the effort.”

Practically speaking, here are a few thoughts on how to begin:
1. Find a place that you and God can call your own. Doing this, if possible, helps remind you of why you’re there.
2. Find some means of calming your mind and emotions, such as:
+ Keeping a pen and notepad handy to jot down distracting thoughts that come when you try to get quiet
+ Playing worship music or playing the guitar or piano, whatever helps you.
+ Ask the Father to help you
3. Express words of love and adoration to the Father. Simple and few words repeated can be a wonderful way to bring your heart and mind into focus. There’s a beautiful statement that David makes in Psa. 119 that I love to repeat sometimes: “I am Yours, Lord; save me.” Be patient with yourself; God is patient with us, and always remember that He loves our reaching for Him, so it’s not a certain level of attaining that determines His delight in us but simply our reach for Him. As you continue to reach, you’ll find your inner being aligning bit by bit with His heart and inner restructuring is happening.
4. Look for little moments in the day to “steal away” with Him and express your love and praise to Him. This is what the Church has come to know as the “practice of the presence of God,” and this practice eventually leads one to a lifestyle of prayer and worship throughout the day and night.
5. Learn to meditate and contemplate the Word (both written and Living Word). There’s a time for studying the Scripture but it’s important to develop the ability to slow way down and really experience the Word, eating it and digesting it and letting it change your heart and mind. A natural outcome of this is that you begin to pray the Word, and that is a powerful way to pray.
6. Learn to journal, writing down both negative and positive. Getting your thoughts and emotions and doubts and fears out on paper is a first step to bringing them into the light where they lose their power to dominate you. When writing out lies that you are believing, ask the Holy Spirit to give you truth from the Word to replace those lies and begin speaking truth.
7. Practice the discipline of silence. I have done this over the years, and it is a powerful means of developing inner quiet and of becoming more sensitive to the voice of the Father Who has a lot to share. I’m still growing in this, but the little I’ve done has convinced me of its value. Hill says of practicing silence, “…He wants to speak to you. Open your heart to Him. Begin with short periods of time. Don’t say anything. Just focus on the One who lives in you. Reflect on the beauty of His heart. Contemplate His greatness. Occasionally, whisper some words of love and devotion to Him. But the purpose of silence is to allow Him to settle on you and bathe you in His peace and love. Your heart was made for this.”

In closing, keep in mind that you are unique. These suggestions by the author aren’t rules, but rather more like “scaffolding” to help hold you as you develop and build your own “house” (your heart which is God’s dwellingplace). Using suggestions from other saints helps get us started, but along the way, you will shape your time with Him uniquely, and He wants it that way because there is no one like you.

I agree with S.J. Hill that we are living in a generation unlike any before, and I believe the Holy Spirit is wooing His people and stirring up stronger desire to know God intimately. More and more believers will take radical steps to be able to know Him. As we approach the end of the age, Jesus the jealous Bridegroom will fight for His Bride. He will not relent until He has our whole heart! It will be costly but true love is costly. It cost Him His life; to know Him intimately will cost the Bride her life in the end times.

May the Spirit of Jesus, the One who loves Him radically, rest on us and continue to stir desire in our hearts for this God-Man!

Enjoying God - Week #9

Chapter Seven (to p. 132): Persevering in our Quest for Intimacy
“I didn’t send My Son in an emotional vacuum.” This paraphrase of God’s reality as said by a teacher of the Word that I heard recently really struck me. Oh Lord, how little we, Your bride, know of Your unrelenting passion and desire for us! (The book of Hosea is a powerful portrayal of God’s unending love and desire for His people Israel and the Church.)

This final chapter of Enjoying God wraps the theme of the book up and gives encouragement for persevering in seeking after Him until we find what our heart longs for – He Himself! The author says at the beginning of the chapter: “…serving God is not the ultimate reason you were born. You were born for intimacy with the Father. The nearness of God to your heart is the crowning glory of your life on the earth!”

While no one can tell you how to seek God (because you are unique, unlike any other person), there are general patterns and experiences that the saints of God have had throughout history that can encourage us along the way so that we don’t grow faint and give up; this is what S.J. Hill attempts to do in this chapter.

He says, “Although I’ve mentioned several times that it takes God to pursue God – it takes the Father’s initiative to stir one’s heart to holy passion – you also have a part to play. There will be times in your Christian walk when you will have to persevere in your quest for intimacy with God. This is when you will need to understand the value of stirring yourself up to seek the Lord.”

God is always seeking us…deep calls to deep; but unless we respond, then it is a one-sided relationship, not what He has designed us for. Our part can be summed up in the words of James 4:8, “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.”

Jacob is an example of someone we tend to degrade because of his crafty ways of getting the birthright, but the author makes a point of showing that his desire for the birthright pleased God in spite of the devious way he went about getting it; whereas Esau, who was the stronger of the two in the natural, incurred God’s disfavor because of his lack of appreciation and desire for what was rightfully his. This is an encouragement to us in our weakness. Each of us has taken things into our own hands in order to bring about God’s purposes; this delays the process but it doesn’t keep God from fulfilling His purposes for us when He see strong desire in us for Him and all that He has for us. He loves our feeble reaching for Him! It’s like a small child reaching for the mom or dad – his reaching won’t get him to the parent, but the reaching arms moves the loving parent toward him.

Our seeking/reaching for Him moves the Father’s heart, and He comes to us. It is we who determine how close we will be to God; He is always eager and wanting us and only waits and looks for our longing and yearning for Him. Jesus was surrounded by various groups of people: the multitudes who saw and heard Him at a distance, the seventy who He commissioned to go out and minister for Him, the twelve who were with Him constantly, the three who hung out even more with Him, and finally John, who dared to lean on His breast and called himself, “the disciple whom Jesus loved.”

We know from Scripture that Jesus, the God-Man, is not partial, so John’s boldness in naming himself in this way doesn’t reflect on favoritism in God but on desire in John to be as near Him as he could. I dare say this was costly to John, simply because intimacy with God is always costly. But the reward is well worth any loss! (Genesis 15:1)

Throughout human history there have always been those who have refused to be satisfied with anything less than God Himself. I believe that in the final days of the Church on earth, this will be characteristic of the Bride as a whole. There won’t be “outstanding” believers because all who truly love God and are cleansed and forgiven in Christ will be lovesick for Him and ruined for any reward less than Him.

Unlearning a Lifestyle

This section of the chapter is so important. From my own experience, I know how critical unlearning former mindsets is for the expanding into fuller understanding of who God is and what He is about these days. I’ll quote the author:

“Finding God in greater intimacy doesn’t just come in what we learn but in what we have to unlearn. Experiencing God in greater intimacy often means changing our lifestyle… Encountering God isn’t hard; it’s simply foreign to us. In Western society especially, we are continually tempted to try to squeeze the Father into the busyness of our lives…God becomes Someone who is allowed to stop in rather than abide. He’s permitted to make an appearance but not steal the show.

Unlearning busyness is one of the most difficult things to deal with, because the quest for intimacy with God goes against all of our cultural conditioning. Something in the human makeup feeds off busyness. It allows us to feel good about ourselves. This is due in part to the fact that we believe we’re successful only if we’ve accomplished something…”

My response to this is that I have discovered this to be true. One thing that cannot be rushed is intimacy, and while cultivating nearness to God will look differently in each person’s life, it will require a dedication of time, and this is a mindset shift for a busy Christian culture. This requires a constant re-focusing and reshaping of our lifestyles along the way.

I find it very helpful to see my relating with God in terms of close human relationships that have their ebb and flow to them. So it’s not a matter of condemnation and false guilt but of learning to relate with a real Person and realizing that any good relationship has its ups and downs and good days as well as not-so-good days, etc. It’s very dynamic!

And it does require desire on our part and perseverance in pursuing God in response to His pursuit of us. It will begin to impact our lifestyle, and the pain in that is that it implies the unlearning of a former lifestyle.

Finding our Chief Joy

In speaking about God being our first joy and love, Hill says that the Father will begin to make us dissatisfied with other stuff so that we want Him more. Quoting A.W. Tozer, he says, “The man who has God for his treasure has all things in One. Many ordinary treasures may be dinied him, or if he is allowed to have them, the enjoyment of them will be so tempered that they will never be necessary to his happiness…”

The Lord says of His people in Hosea 2: “She shall pursue her loves but not overtake them, and she shall seek them but shall not find them. Then she shall say, ‘I will go and return to my first husband, for it was better for me then than now.’”

Later in Hosea 4, the Lord says of Israel: “They shall eat, but not be satisfied; they shall play the whore, but not multiply…”

The Lord has ways of drying up the satisfaction that we find in other gods/sources until we want to return to Him as our “first Husband/Love.”

Spiritual Hunger

In Born After Midnight, A.W. Tozer says, “Hunger and thirst are physical sensations which, in their acute stages, may become real pain. It has been the experience of countless seekers after God that when their desires became a pain they were suddenly and wonderfully filled. The problem is not to persuade God to fill us, but to want God sufficiently to permit Him to do so.”

Hill concludes this part of the chapter by saying, “The Father uses hunger born out of desperation to wean us from the world and make us addicted to Him…His real purpose is to make us so lovesick that we’ll want Him more than anything else…”

May the Spirit of the Bridegroom King come and wean us away from the pleasures that we derive from the world, the flesh and the devil, and make us lovesick for Him! Holy Spirit, come and increase hunger in us for the Father and for Jesus. Awaken in us a response to His wooings and strengthen us to not give up in our pursuit of God. Thank You that You love to do this and You have all power to affect this in us!

Next week we will complete the book by finishing this chapter, Persevering in our Quest for Intimacy. Blessings on you as you mature in His love along with others who love Him!

Enjoying God - Week #8

CHAPTER SIX (second half) – "LOVE-EMPOWERED HOLINESS"

The longer I live and walk with God, the more I understand how impossible it is to love Him in the flesh. Wholehearted love for God is only possible by the power and grace of His Spirit. The pursuit of wholeheartedness is ongoing and requires focus and intentionality – this doesn’t come naturally to us, and the enemy of our soul will fight this every inch of the way because he knows well how dangerous lovesick followers of Jesus are to his agenda. Even though such followers are weak, they can’t be manipulated nor intimidated by the world and the flesh and the devil.

So once again the issue of getting spiritual understanding of God’s enjoyment of me is imperative since I will never enjoy or love Him rightly without first knowing that He loves and enjoys me. Grasping His true nature and heart towards me is necessary for confidence to grow.

The second half of this chapter on love-empowered holiness continues the theme of desire for love and pleasure. The author addresses the matter of giving up all for the sake of the Kingdom of God, saying that this is the outcome of having caught a glimpse of the value of the Treasure, Jesus (Matt. 13 parable about giving all one has to buy a field in order to have the treasure discovered there). Discovering the beauty and attractiveness of the Lord will empower us to do things we could never do by sheer willpower and things that we never thought we’d be able to do. Hill gives the examples of Hudson Taylor, Mary of Bethany, Jim Elliot, etc., as people who gave all because they saw something (the ravished heart of Jesus) that empowered their hearts to give all for His sake.

I believe that the evil one knows what most empowers the human heart to give all, and for that reason one of his greatest strategies is to keep the believer in the dark about the nature of God and His emotional heart towards His children.

AFFECTION-BASED OBEDIENCE

“The more we enjoy Him, the easier it will be to obey Him. Obedience that is born out of the revelation of His deep affections for us always produces the strongest commitment.”

I recently heard a preacher say, “A heart won in tenderness is held in the tightest grip imaginable, and in the dark hour it won’t give way.”

The enemy’s desire is to make you fear that God will reject you, and the fear of judgment causes us to guard our hearts before Him rather than freely be who we are in His presence. “Loving and worshipping the Father without a guarded heart is vital for spiritual growth.” As long as we shrink before Him, love and affection for Him won’t flower. It’s like being in the presence of someone who you know doesn’t especially like you or is disappointed in you – none of us enjoys that very much and will avoid being with someone like that. If we feel that God looks at us that way, we will avoid being with Him as much as we can. Even in our prayer times with Him, we can dodge His look at us with religious ways of having our devotional time.

THE POWER OF GRACE

“…many of us try to serve Him solely on the basis of the strength of our wills…Legalism teaches us that our commitment to God motivates Him to be committed to us…the grace of God teaches us that His commitment to us is what enables us to be committed to Him. It’s the romance of the Gospel and the Father’s commitment to us that release us from religious pride and legalism.”

The author quotes from the book "Ministering to the Lord" by Roxanne Brandt, and I recommend that book to you as a great little book about true ministry to God. She writes: “How wrong the Church has been to teach new Christians that we are saved to serve God. No…We are saved primarily because He wants us for Himself…God isn’t in the business of saving people because He needs servants to win the world for Christ, or because He might lose the battle against the devil…The Bible never once tells us to do anything for God. It tells us that in His love and grace, God chose to involve us in what He is doing…”

God does the work and we get to be alongside Him in it! He has chosen not to do His work without human companionship. I love that!...and just this morning was asking Him to let me partner with Him in bringing about a particular reality in my little world. This is what prayer is about – partnering with Him in what He already wants to do but won’t do without a human partner alongside Him. This takes the strain out of work and ministry, because we aren’t called to make anything happen; rather, we are called to join Him and say yes to what He wants to do and simply obey anything He may ask of us along the way. When He has our agreement with Him, then He accomplishes the impossible and we get to enjoy it with Him! Isaiah 9:7 says, “The zeal of the Lord will accomplish it.”

So the slave mentality is replaced with a marriage mentality in which we belong to Him and gladly yield to His ways out of desire and love. “The radical call to holiness is really an invitation to let the beauty and sweetness of Jesus so fill our hearts and minds that the seductive pleasures of sin will be swallowed up in the holy satisfaction of His presence.”

CAPTURED BY A SWEETER SOUND

Hill finishes this chapter telling of the story of Ulysses in Greek mythology. He went to the city of Troy to rescue Helen, the wife of King Menelaus, who had been stolen from the king. The rescue of Helen was ingenious (you know the story), but it was the trip back to Greece and to the king that proved the most difficult part of the rescue. Part of that trip included having to pass by the island inhabited by the infamous Sirens whose outward beauty and seductive songs were irresistible to countless unwitting sailors who had passed that way. Once lured close to the shore, the boats would crash on hidden rocks, and the demonic cannibals (Sirens) could then savagely consume their flesh.

Ulysses had heard much about the Sirens and the destruction of many sailors. He ordered his men to put wax in their ears and to look straight ahead and row for their lives. As for himself, he ordered his men to strap him to the mast of the ship but to leave his ears unplugged because he was curious to hear their songs. It turned out that he was totally seduced by their songs and except for the ropes that tied him down, he would have easily succumbed to their invitation. “Although his hands were restrained, his heart was captivated by their beauty. Inwardly he said Yes…His No was not the fruit of spontaneous revulsion but the product of an external shackle.”

Another mythological character, Jason, faced the same journey, but he used a different solution. He took with him Orpheus, who was a musician of “incomparable talent.” When they were about to pass the island of the Sirens, Jason did not plug the ears of his crew nor tie himself down but ordered Orpheus to play his most beautiful and alluring songs…Jason and his men were not at all inclined to succumb because they were captured by a transcendent sound, music that was of a different order altogether!

The author closes the chapter with this line: “You must allow the sweeter sound of Jesus to capture your heart so you can say no to the seductive sounds of this world.”

Holy Spirit of Jesus, open my ears to the music of heaven and God’s passionate heart for me so that I am increasingly empowered to say no to the seductive voices that seek to lure me away from true holiness which is based in intimate relationship with God, receiving and giving love freely from and to my First Love. Thank You that You are delighted to do this!

(Next week we will cover the first part of the last chapter(up to page 132), Persevering in our Quest for Intimacy. The blessing and grace of the Lord Jesus rest on you this week!)