The Seven Longings of the Human Heart - Week #2

Chapter One – The Longing to be Enjoyed by God

In this chapter the author focuses on something that we covered in one of our previous books, Enjoying God by S.J. Hill, which is that “when we understand the truth of God’s enjoyment, our hearts become strong and bold in response.” And so we enjoy God when we know that He first enjoyed us.

This is a powerful revelation to the human heart; in my own experience, this reality has liberated me in a profound way and caused me to be able to follow Him into scary situations that I would not have dared walk into without knowing that I am His beloved and that He really does enjoy being with me! This is an ongoing and unfolding revelation, so I have a long way to go in this, but it’s wonderful to have tasted it and to be growing in it!

As with all God-given longings, this is placed in us by Him in our mother's womb, and we cannot get around it. We long to know that God enjoys us. And the reason we know that this is deep within the human makeup is that we look for this kind of enjoyment of us in others. We love it when we know that others enjoy being with us! If I sense that someone doesn’t enjoy being around me, that causes me to shrink back and want to avoid that person.

This reality shows how deeply embedded in us is the desire to know that we are enjoyed, and it reflects the fact that this longing is rooted in the fundamental longing to know that we are enjoyed by our Creator Father. We look for substitutes in humans, but the only Person whose enjoyment of us will satisfy is God. We were created to be enjoyed by Him; we want to sense His smile on us, His affection for us even in our worst moments.

The Cross of Jesus and His finished work goes beyond forgiveness of sins. “God certainly forgives us, but He also enjoys us. He truly desires our fellowship. This is remarkable…The extravagant emotions God feels for us fulfill our longing to be enjoyed and are expressed in two distinct ways: as a Father and as a Bridegroom. The Father has affection for us as His children, and Jesus has passion for us as His Bride…We feel enjoyed by God and exhilarated in God’s love and joy.”

“Our lives have value and importance specifically because God enjoys us…We are defined by the One who pursues us. We are not just the sum total of what we accomplish…Our success is measured solely by the fact that Jesus values and desires us.”

Our emotional chemistry gets changed as we receive fuller revelation of the affection and passion of God for us. Our culture doesn’t understand a God who enjoys humans – this is true of our Christian culture as well.

Much of our image of God is formed by our personal history, whether as a young child experiencing injustice at the hands of a parent or teacher, or a young person whose offer of affection to someone of the opposite sex was rejected. These experiences can cause a person to shut their heart down and never want to go through a hurt like that again; so even the thought of daring to believe that God could have genuine affection for me in my weaknesses and frailties is scary, because what if it’s not true??

The good news is that it is true! Once you begin to see this, you see it throughout the entire Bible. Why would God give Himself up to death for humans? Simply because He desires us, and desiring us means He enjoy us even though there are issues that need to be cleansed and corrected...

This desire of God for you is what gives you value. In Luke 15 Jesus speaks to some Pharisees and tells them of this reality through the stories of the lost sheep and the lost coin and the lost son. The loud (and offensive to religious people) message is that God so desires humans that He has gone way out of His way to pursue them. Extravagant emotion in God is expressed in these stories; and we can either hear them as a theological truth that hits our heads and we give religious assent to, or we can allow the tender and powerful reality of a personal God to penetrate our inner core and say “yes” to the fact that He enjoys ME.

Even when we find ourselves caught in sin, He’s longing to have us back, not to reprimand but to dress in the finest of clothes; in other words, if we’ll believe His affection and desire for us and return to Him in repentance (whether it be “large” or “small” sins), He’s so anxious to forgive and move forward in the fullness of His purposes for us. “Many people approach God tentatively, aching for a connection with Him, but secretly expecting a thrashing once they get close.”

I like what Bickle says about the difference between rebellion and spiritual immaturity. I’ve found this very freeing in my life, not only for me personally but for those I oversee in the Lord. Good parents recognize and expect immaturity in their children and don’t punish them for immature actions but rather they take advantage of the action of the young child and use it as a teaching moment. “Immaturity becomes a teaching moment, not a relational breakdown.”

If humans can recognize and have perspective in raising their children, how much more the heavenly Father who has absolute perspective and a far superior love for us than even the best human parents?! He knows us perfectly and knows how to “shepherd our development…when we make immature mistakes, He uses them as teaching opportunities without putting us on probation or sending us to some purgatory-style sin bin to mull over how wicked we have been.” So that even when He is correcting us, it’s totally motivated by love and not by impatience and anger and disgust. His correction of us is not His rejection of us. Because we have experienced this kind of correction from earthly authority, we transfer that onto God and take His correction as a form of rejection.

The chapter ends with a great section on being God’s favorite. The Gospel of John has always been special to me; and I love that John never names himself as John but as the “disciple whom Jesus loved.” That can sound arrogant, as though John was making himself more important than all others, but I agree with the author that John could call himself this because he had a revelation of the unique love and enjoyment of God for him. And I believe every believer can have the same revelation and see themselves as God’s favorite.

Rather than making himself better than others, John, in accepting himself as God’s favorite, was extolling the supreme and limitless love of God. In my personal experience, the bolder I have been in accepting God’s love and affection for me even with all my inconsistencies and weaknesses, the more I have been empowered to love others; so rather than this be an experience that turns me inward and selfish, it actually serves to cause me to love and desire God more and love and desire others more.

Holy Spirit, continue to unveil the love of the Father and of Jesus to us. I ask that You would give each of us a revelation of God’s particular affection and enjoyment of each one so that our hearts are bold and strong in love for God and for others. Thank You for hearing our prayer!

Next week we’ll cover chapter two, “The Longing for Fascination.”