The Seven Longings of the Human Heart - Week #3

Chapter Two – The Longing for Fascination

Bickle starts this chapter by describing the scene from Rev. 4 and Isaiah 6 where the seraphim continually bow before the awesomeness of God’s beauty, fascinated with the holiness (transcendent beauty) of God.

He goes on to say,“The fascinating God created us with a need to be fascinated. In every human spirit there is a craving to marvel…God placed a sense of wondering in the core of our design…When we are not fascinated with Him we become bored, spiritually dull and spiritually passive. To a heart not living in fascination with God, the substitutes of money, drugs, alcohol and immorality are far more tempting, though ultimately they are completely unsatisfying.”

King David wrote in Psalm 27:4 that seeking the beauty of God became a life-long fascination for him. It was the one thing that He most wanted to give himself to. All else in his life paled in comparison to that.

I appreciate this statement by the author: “When God the Holy Spirit reveals God the Son to us, our spirit resonates within us. This is the greatest experience of delight and satisfaction available to the human race.” I believe this with all my heart; but I know that many believers unconsciously, if not consciously, believe that there are other human pleasures that must be more wonderful than this. But the very fact that God is God and is the ultimate in everything tells us that to experience His touch has to be the greatest thing we can experience, even if our personal experience doesn’t align with this.

He is called Beautiful and Glorious and Wonderful and Awesome in the Scriptures, all of which reflect this need and desire in humans for wonder and awe and fascination. He has put this in us and then shows us that HE is the fulfillment of this desire.

“It is God’s plan and pleasure to unlock the divine treasure chest and reveal the beauty of His Son to fulfill our longing for fascination (I Cor. 2:9-12)…We have a beautiful God beckoning us to encounter His beauty, but we must understand that it takes time and energy to begin plumbing the depths of God. It takes time and energy to pray and fast and study Scripture. Those who spend all their energies in their jobs and ministries and then in pursuit of entertainment and recreation, quickly find themselves depleted…We cannot over-saturate our souls with activity. This can only lead to a dull spirit.”

“Spiritual boredom” is symptomatic of a Church that has been inundated with entertainment and recreation. Because of indulging in the avalanche of movies and games in our day, Christians are impatient with any experience of God that takes time or that isn’t instantly gratifying. “A night out at the latest blockbuster movie moves us to tears, but the worship service the next morning does nothing for us, dulled as we are into expecting drive-through fulfillment, rather than devoting ourselves to eternal fascination.”

Mankind works hard to fill this hunger for fascination with other things. In our culture it’s the theaters and malls, etc. And while entertainment isn’t evil in itself, it has become a substitute for seeking God among believers. “It’s not that we don’t want to see God, we just can’t find Him among the barrage of information to which we’re exposing ourselves…”

Often believers try to repent of having the desire for fascination and wonder, thinking that it’s sin to want to be entertained. I remember in my younger years believing this way, having been brought up in the holiness movement;and I’ve seen many, many sincere followers of Jesus with this same belief. With such belief, the way to deal with a God-given hunger is to cut out all forms of entertainment and insulate oneself from unhealthy fascinations.

As the author says, “…this purging of influence will never fill the void remaining in their hearts.” So what often happens is that since the God-given hunger is not being met by fascination with a superior entertainment, they begin to experience boredom and revert back to the old lifestyle of finding fascination in substitute entertainment and chalk up the whole thing to a legalistic phase in their life.

We experience the beauty of God in the face of His Son Jesus (II Cor. 4:6). Regular encounter with God in Christ is the only way that our hearts stay alive in the long run. “As immortal souls operating in a mortal world, we must look for something eternal to fascinate hearts that are designed to live forever. And we must begin to cultivate it now.”

For some people, overindulgence in entertainment isn’t the issue but rather their job or ministry. They expend great energy staying current with the latest trend, worrying about whether or not they’ll be in the right place at the right time to get recognized, but even the God-given recognition will never satisfy this hunger for fascination.

“People who chase entertainment or positions (at work or in ministry) do not have the energy to persevere in their pursuit of the beauty of God.” To do this, there must be a determination, as with David and the apostle Paul and others, to pursue “this one thing” – the beauty of God.

I’ll close this out with some quotes from the end of the chapter:
• God did not intend for us to grit our teeth in order to prevail against a lifetime of inferior pleasures. He knew that willpower alone couldn’t pull us through, so He created superior pleasures…God revealing God to the human spirit is the most exhilarating experience in the universe…As we progressively see Him in all His glory and splendor, boredom ceases to be an issue.
• The overwhelming beauty of the Bridegroom King will ravish the end-time Church, enabling her to suffer every kind of persecution and tribulation and remain fervent in love…
• Though most of the Church in the Western world has lost its wonder in God, the Lord will redress this great tragedy. The passive, stagnant, spiritually dull Western Church will be awakened as God reveals Himself once again…
• Perceiving Jesus’ beauty results in the supernatural strengthening of the inner man…The Church will fall hopelessly in love with the Man Jesus, considering it their glory to give up everything to and for Him…In revealing His Son, God fascinates His people beyond anything they have ever known. This fascination serves as a holy protection mechanism from all the deceptions of the enemy, and it strengthens believers with a godly motivation to always reach toward the beauty that will remain when all else fades away.

Lord, thank You for making us with a hunger for fascination; I invite You, Holy Spirit, to do what You alone can do – reveal the beauty of Jesus to us, Your people, so that we are ruined for the lesser pleasures that never satisfy. You are beautiful, Jesus – we would see You more clearly! Amen.

The chapter next week is The Longing for Beauty, chapter three. Grace to you!