The Seven Longings of the Human Heart - Week #5

Because of more than normal events swirling around me this week, I'm not going to cover chapter four as I had intended, but we'll do that next week, the Lord willing.

This time I'd like to simply add a bit more to the "Longing for Beauty", which was last week's chapter; what I want to share is in the form of a quote from a wonderful book, "The Evidential Power of Beauty, Science and Theology Meet" by Thomas Dubay. (By the way, I highly recommend this book!)

Dubay says this about beauty:

"It is easy to note the difference between the person affected by natural beauty and the one seized by the beauty of Christ...Consummate splendor in monstrous horror: the Passion and Crucifixion of the Lord of glory...The beauty here is the unspeakable love of the Father and the Son for ungrateful sinners...

"Far, far beyond all created beauties is the divine glory that shines out from this unsurpassable love found in the torture of Holy Week: Perfection Himself whipped to blood, crowned with thorns, mocked, spit upon, ridiculed, nailed, pierced - all because He loves you and me, who have in return sinned against Him. In this consummate ugliness, this unspeakable outrage, shine a picture of divine beauty immeasurably beyond all earthly splendors..."

Dubay's contention throughout the book is that all beauty points to Jesus and that the ultimate satisfaction of this innate hunger for beauty is to be found in looking to Him and contemplating the beauty of such poured-out love for ungrateful sinners as seen in the cross of Christ.

Lord Jesus, thank You for pouring Yourself out; Father, thank You for pouring Yourself out in Your Son; and Holy Spirit, thank You for loving the Father and Son and empowering us to know their ravished love and to love them back...what a wonderful salvation!!! Thank You that we'll have all eternity to gaze upon this Beauty and discover the wonders of God's love forever and ever. Come to us in increasing measure so that our united cry becomes, "Come, Lord JEsus!"

Grace and blessings on you this week!

The Seven Longings of the Human Heart - Week #4

Chapter Three – The Longing for Beauty

“In every man’s heart there is a secret nerve that answers to the vibrations of beauty.”

This quote from Rhodes scholar Christopher Morley opens this chapter. Mike Bickle goes on to say, “The heart is a resonance chamber, a God-designed void created to be filled with and to reflect the beauty of God. And the beautiful God made His favorite creations to be beautiful. God’s beauty emanates from His Person and resonates within us. We reflect God’s own beauty.”

Much as we may protest that beauty doesn’t matter, there is a God-given longing to be attractive and beautiful (or striking and engaging), and this reflects God’s genius and His personality. Besides desiring to be attractive ourselves, we also have an innate longing to perceive or gaze on beauty.

“The revelation of God’s beauty has two dimensions to it: first, the beauty of Jesus as the Bridegroom, and second, the beauty of His Bride.” In redemption through Jesus, God imparts His own beauty to His people.

The human longing for beauty impacts how we structure our time and spend our money, and in pursuit of this legitimate longing, “our culture has cultivated an unhealthy, destructive obsession with physical appearance. The secular beauty industry has tapped into this longing in the human spirit and exploited it, creating frustration and self-loathing each step of the way. Advertising executives set the unrealistic standards by which we judge others and ourselves…The obsession with physical beauty is coming to a pinnacle in Western culture…Many sexual and eating disorders are linked to an obsession with natural beauty that goes beyond the protective boundaries of God’s Word.”

Of course, we know that it’s appropriate to enhance our physical beauty but there are healthy boundaries to this since our greatest beauty emanates from within because of our union with Christ. We have all known people who, upon first meeting them, are very attractive or handsome, but when we get to know them, they don’t seem that beautiful and may even seem unattractive if their inner heart and character is ugly. The opposite is true as well; there are people that we meet who may not have great natural attractiveness but who, upon getting to know them, are stunningly beautiful persons because of the radiant beauty of Jesus shining through their being.

There are those Christian believers who believe that to want to be beautiful is shallow or a sin and so they treat this as evil. But again, like the other God-given human longings, that only complicates the issue, driving this desire inward and causing the person to have it fulfilled in ungodly ways.

His Beauty for our Ashes

Isaiah 61 says that by the power of the Holy Spirit Jesus came to give us beauty for ashes. This is an unbelievable exchange. Ashes are good for nothing at all and are the product of our “burning our passions on wrong things. Some believers’ lives are like ash heaps even after they have known the Lord for many years. Most people don’t realize how much they have lost by making sinful choices.”

We settle for the legal benefits of salvation but don’t understand that the cross and the Holy Spirit is for much more than “a cabin on the edge of glory” after a life of living in the ash heap now. We were made to be beautiful even now. The wonder of it all is that no one wants ashes – except the beautiful God!

Manifestations of Inner Beauty

When we realize that our desire for beauty (both to be beautiful and to look on beauty) comes from God and that He is the fulfillment of this longing, then we rightly begin to look to Him, and the psalmist says that those who look to Him are radiant (Psa. 34:5)!

The beauty of God within us is manifest in different ways:
* Our countenance begins to brighten
* Our personality is affected as it is infused and filled with the graciousness of God’s personality
* Even our outward physical appearance improves
* Our overall health is enhanced by the presence and joy of God within us

Moses prayed in Psalm 90:17 that the “beauty of the Lord our God be upon us” (be seen in and through us). Peter also speaks of this inner beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit (I Peter 3:3,4).

The Scriptures indicate that it’s God’s delight to beautify His people (Psa. 149:4). God takes pleasure in you, in me! He takes joy in beautifying us.

By nature we don’t feel beautiful and attractive physically. Some of the most beautiful people have the same struggles that all people have over this, unable to see themselves as lovely and attractive.

Just as in the physical, we don’t feel attractive spiritually before God. We see our sin and failures and weaknesses in contrast with His holiness and beauty, and we automatically assume that He could never see us as attractive. Once we begin to get revelation of His way of looking at His children, it fundamentally changes how we relate to Him and to others. If He says I’m lovely because of the beauty of His Son and because of the "yes" in my spirit, then what others say about me doesn’t matter. (Psalm 45:11; Song of Songs 7:10)

When I began to understand this profound reality in God’s heart as it applied to me personally, it changed my paradigm of how I viewed God and myself and others. I began to gain confidence in my life in God and with others; boldness to love Him unashamedly and to love others grew in my heart. And I see others as beautiful too as I increasingly see them through the eyes of a perfect and loving God. (I’m still growing in this, of course, but have walked enough in it to know the great impact it has made on my life and walk in God.)

This chapter has so much in it, so I’m going to simply give some key quotes from the rest of it:
* God’s beauty in us is a vast subject…Let there be no doubt: the Godhead is he main celestial attraction, but when He unveils His ultimate plan to present a beautiful Bride to Himself, the angels will gather at the balconies of Heaven and shake their heads in wonder. You will be physically, emotionally and spiritually beautiful forever because of Jesus.

* (Jesus’) glorified body was the perfect melding of the spiritual and physical realms, allowing Jesus to partake of the best of both worlds (John 20:26; 21:12-15). He has a body for each of us that is just like His.

* Matthew 5:14 “You are the light of the world.” (Jesus) was speaking of believers being beacons here in this age, but He was also referring to the future. He was speaking of the day when the saints would be made like Him, the One who lights up the New Jerusalem and the New Earth as well (Rev. 21:23). The people of God in the New Jerusalem will also release God’s light…God will clothe His people with light (Rev. 21:9-11; Daniel 12:2,3; Matt. 13:43).

* Our future bodies will be filled with God’s power and glory…

* We will have supernatural abilities in our five senses…excellent sight at a distance as well as at close range…able to hear at distances…Our taste buds will enjoy food beyond anything we can currently imagine…Our sense of touch will give us the ability to feel perfectly and discern objects with great clarity…Our sense of smell will give us the ability to enjoy and discern what is going on in the environment around us…

The chapter concludes with our corporate identity as the Bride of Christ, which speaks of our corporate beauty as God’s people together. God’s plan for beauty isn’t just for individuals but for all of His people together. He speaks of the Bride as “the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.”

The Father will present to Jesus a beautiful Bride; this identity speaks of much more than a buddy or girlfriend; it speaks of a level of ownership in relation to everything her bridegroom possesses. This is a staggering truth that, when received and trusted, transforms the way we view God, others and ourselves.

This present life is the time of “beauty preparation.” Just like Esther went through meticulous beauty preparations before appearing before the king, so the Holy Spirit is preparing the Bride of Christ to appear before Him, pure and spotless and like Him someday. As we grow in our capacity to agree with God’s assessment of us and His work of beautifying us, and as we help others grow in this as well, we are all being prepared for His return and the day of the Father’s proud presenting of us to Jesus as His Bride forever.

Come, Holy Spirit, and open our eyes to the beauty of Jesus and His beauty in us. May His light and life emanate out through us as we continually say “yes” to His love and to His work in our lives. Thank You that You delight to do this!

Next week we’ll cover chapter four – The Longing for Greatness. Grace and peace to you this week in the Lord Jesus!

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!

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.”