Deep unto Deep - Week #10

Chapter 7 – Longing

In this chapter the author gives us a beautiful view of the God Who longs for humans. In John 17:24 Jesus expresses the longing in His heart for His Bride when He says, “Father I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am…” Also in John 14:3 He says that He’s preparing a place for us because He wants us with Him forever.

I think it’s important to realize that when Jesus expresses desire, it’s not casual but very intense; in fact, so intense that He was willing to suffer indescribable pain in order to have this desire fulfilled for a Bride to be with Him eternally. We’ve grown so accustomed to the weak “I wants” of our natural and fleshly lives that we don’t understand how intense desire is when it comes from God.

Desire that comes from God becomes all-consuming and is also empowering for the one who possesses it. All other desires take second place in the face of desire in the human heart that comes from God for God.

And so as I read this chapter, I was struck afresh with my need for God-given desire to continue to increase in me. I’ve tasted a bit of His desire and have experienced the empowering that comes with that, but I want much more!

The chapter starts out with this truth: longing for God comes straight from the heart of a God who longs! Just as we love Him because He first loved us, so we long for Him because He first longed for us…I’ll personalize it: I long for Him because He first longed for me.

“We find ourselves desiring to desire Him and pained by the present shallowness of our hearts…We begin to hunger for the capacity to hunger. We begin to thirst for the ability to thirst. The longing to long is the escort into longing itself…To long for God is to give witness to the Transcendent One. Longing is the echo of eternity within our souls. It is that which sets us apart and makes us pilgrims on the journey. This world is not our home…”

For our encouragement, Dana says: “The longing prior to the felt-experience is just as much a part of loving Him as the experience itself…both the craving and the satisfaction are equal parts of the gift of intimacy.”

Love’s Delay

So once we catch a glimpse of the reality that we are made for His love and that nothing is as wonderful as His love (Psa. 63:3; Song of Songs 1:7), why is the actual fulfillment of the experience of that love so often delayed?

The author takes time to unfold the purpose in love’s delay, which is basically in order to cultivate greater longing in the heart of the beloved so that we become lovesick for Him. As I read this and pondered it a bit, I realized that in other areas of life, if we satisfy our hunger too quickly, we don’t experience the full enjoyment of that satisfaction. For example, if I begin to feel a little physical hunger and I immediately run to grab the easiest thing at hand to satisfy the beginning hunger pangs, I ruin my appetite for a delicious meal a little while later.

We humans tend toward “quick and easy fixes” to satisfy our hunger for God and therein we quell the hunger that, if allowed to grow, would give us the capacity to enjoy the only One Who truly and fully satisfies us. The quick solutions to our hunger for God (in the forms of relationships, addictions, positions, work, ministry, etc.) dull our hunger, and we walk out our days in half-heartedness and numbness related to God, unable to enjoy His presence.


Desire: the Prelude to Satisfaction Realized

And so the author points out how important it is to realize that the delay in having our initial hunger satisfied is for a good purpose coming from the heart of a God who longs for us. If we don’t understand that the delay is motivated by the passion of God for us, then we can easily be offended with the time gap between the longing and the fulfillment or assume that we are meant to fill that gap with lesser loves, rather than wait and allow the hunger to mature and expand.

“Understanding God’s own longing keeps us from hurt and offense at the Lord when He does not immediately answer the pain of our heartache…He knows that without longing we cannot enter into the fullness of His love, and therefore, in His absolute kindness and jealousy over us, he places within us the dagger of desire for Himself.”

These times of unfulfilled longing are necessary in order to expand our inner capacity for Him:
“Behind these periods of dryness is the flaming heart of the God-Man who refuses to have a bride not stricken with lovesick desire.”

The dryness and lack of emotion that is characteristic of such periods of our life should not necessarily be interpreted as hardness of heart. “One of longing’s most common faces is emptiness. It is the dry side of desire and the empty side of love.” Yet we have the assurance that desire for God (whether in a dry season or in a season of tears and sweet tenderness) will always be answered eventually because the one Who placed desire within me did so for the very purpose of filling that desire, and He Himself is the fulfillment of desire. “A divinely implanted desire is nothing short of a Divine promise of the very thing we yearn for…If we are not careful, we will misinterpret these times and possibly deny some of the greatest fruits to be born in the realm of intimacy. These seasons make a way for the seasons that we crave most.”

(I want to point out that the acceptance of dryness in our lives should not be confused with deadness of emotions that is the result of either unconfessed sin or unhealed woundedness in us…)

This chapter ends with a wonderful section on fasting in answer to the question about the proper response to these dry seasons in our lives. Dana says there are basically two parts to our response to dryness:
1. Having a correct theology and view of God and His emotions and intentions in allowing delayed satisfaction.
2. Fasting as a form of mourning the absent Bridegroom.

I want to add my hearty amen to her teaching on the power of fasting to expose and increase hunger for God, particularly as it relates to the Bridegroom God. Matthew and Mark both quote Jesus’ presenting of a new paradigm for fasting: it is the way to mourn the absence of the Bridegroom.

Though I had practiced fasting for many years simply out of obedience to the Word, it was when I understood this paradigm for fasting that my heart was truly motivated to give up food as a regular part of my life. Jesus presents it as the means for drawing near to Him during this time when He is not physically present with His people.

Dana says, “The sleeping mourning must be awakened in the heart of the lover. We fast to remind our hearts that He has been taken away, for we have grown used to His absence…” We as believers have unfortunately “grown used to His absence” and fasting is a way to keep ourselves in touch with His absence and to cultivate desire for Him to be present.

My personal testimony is that fasting is perhaps the spiritual discipline that has most awakened desire in me for Jesus when I have fasted for the sake of drawing near to Him.

So I close this chapter with a challenge to you to begin a lifestyle of fasting, if it’s not part of your regular life in Him, but to do it with this motivation: to draw near to the absent Bridegroom. Two very helpful books on this are:
1. The Rewards of Fasting (Mike Bickle and Dana Perkins)
2. The Fasting Key (Mark Nysewander)

Lord Jesus, I ask for the grace to fast to rest upon us, Your Bride, in these critical days. May we be sick with love and longing for You until we finally agree with the Holy Spirit and cry out to you, “Come, Lord Jesus…we can’t live without You!” (Rev. 22:17,20)

Blessings on you…next week we will cover chapter 8: Communion with the Beloved.