GOD-DESIRE
FOR
The great
danger facing all of us...is not that we shall make an absolute failure of
life, nor that we shall fall into outright viciousness, nor that we shall be
terribly unhappy, nor that we shall feel (that) life has no meaning at all –
not these things. The danger is that we may fail to perceive life's greatest
meaning, fall short of its highest good, miss its deepest and most abiding
happiness, be unable to tender the most needed service, be unconscious of life
ablaze with the light of the Presence of God – and be content to have it so –
that is the danger. That someday we may wake up and find that always we have
been busy with husks and trappings of life and have really missed life itself.
For life without God, to one who has known the richness and joy of life with
Him, is unthinkable, impossible. That is what one prays one's friends may be
spared – satisfaction with a life that falls short of the best, that has in it
no tingle or thrill that comes from a friendship with the Father.
Phillips Brooks
Sermons
God has
created each of us with a thirst that only He can quench. French philosopher
Pascal called it a God-shaped vacuum in our hearts that only He can fill. Or as
Augustine put it, “Our souls are restless until they find their rest in Thee.”
Man is perpetually seeking. To whatever degree we don't know the unseen and
eternal realm; we seek answers in the seen and
temporal. We look for eternal answers among temporal things. But we discover
that they cannot provide them.
The Rest of the Gospel, One Press, 2000, p.
31.
The best
evidence that a Christian desires (loves) something more than he desires
(loves) God is his willingness to sin against God either in order to acquire
that desire. “If you love Me keep My commandments,”
Jesus said (Jn. 14:15).
Lou Priolo
The Complete Husband, Calvary
Press, 1999, P. 114, www.calvarypress.com.
If
you just get the big things straightened out, you will have what you need in
the little things. What everyone in the world is obsessed with, God makes a
distant second. He’ll give you what you need to live on if you need Him in
order to live.
David Powlison
Worry - Pursuing a Better Path to Peace, P&R Publishing, 2004, p. 21. Used by Permission.
There is a
God-shaped vacuum in every heart.
Blaise Pascal
You have made
us for Yourself and our hearts are restless until they
find their rest in Thee.
Augustine
Quoted in: This We Believe, Zondervan,
2000, p. 40.
Nothing makes
God more supreme and more central in worship than when a people are utterly
persuaded that nothing – not money or prestige or leisure or family or job or
health or sports or toys or friends – nothing is going to bring satisfaction to
their sinful, guilty, aching hearts besides God.
John Piper
God's Passion for His Glory, p. 41.
What you are
when you are alone with God, that you are – and nothing more. You may make a
great show of love and faith in church, singing like Pavarotti or attracting
the masses to your profound Sunday school lectures. But if there is no private
communion between you and Jesus – frequent and deep communion – then your
religion is worthless.
Kris Lundgaard
The Enemy Within, P&R Publishing,
1998, 119.
I want deliberately to encourage this mighty longing
after God. The lack of it has brought us to our present low estate. The stiff
and wooden quality about our religious lives is a result of our lack of holy
desire. Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. Acute desire must
be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people. He waits
to be wanted. Too bad that with many of us He waits so long,
so very long, in vain.
A.W. Tozer
What I am
anxious to see in Christian believers is a beautiful paradox. I want to see in
them the joy of finding God while at the same time they are blessedly pursuing Him.
I want to see in them the great joy of having God yet always wanting Him.
A.W. Tozer
Men Who Met God, Christianity Today,
v. 31, n. 1.
Where love is
the compelling power, there is no sense of strain or conflict or bondage in
doing what is right: the man or woman who is compelled by Jesus’ love and
empowered by His Spirit does the will of God from the heart.
F.F. Bruce
Paul – Apostle of the Heart Set Free,
Eerdmans, 1977, p. 21, www.eerdmans.com.
A believer
longs after God: to come into His presence, to feel His love, to feel near to
Him in secret, to feel in the crowd that he is nearer than all the creatures.
Ah! dear brethren, have you ever tasted this blessedness?
There is greater rest and solace to be found in the presence of God for one
hour, than in an eternity of the presence of man.
Robert Murray M'Cheyne
The intrinsic
drive to please the significant people in our lives reflects the fact that we
were built to bring pleasure to someone outside of ourselves – God. The highest
satisfaction of life is knowing in our spirits that He
indeed is pleased with us.
Joseph Stowell
How would you
finish [this] sentence? “One thing have I desired of the Lord; that will I seek
after _________.” What is the greatest desire and longing of your heart? In the
answer to that question lies the explanation for much of what we do – our
choices, our priorities, our use of time, the way we spend money, the way we
respond to pressure, whom or what we love. [King] David’s answer (see Psm.
27:4) reveals why God could say, “This man’s heart beats like mine.”
Nancy Leigh DeMoss
A Place of Quiet Rest, Moody, 2000, p. 39.
God and
eternal things are my only pleasure.
Henry Martyn
It is possible, in our pursuit
of intimacy with God, to:
1.
Allow our familiarity to
degenerate into flippancy.
2.
Fail to remember
His transcendence by placing extreme emphasis on His immanence.
3.
Lose sight of His holiness.
4.
Overemphasize the subjective
fruit to the exclusion of the objective foundation.
5.
Fail to come to Him on His
terms.
6.
Lose sight of the distinction
between Creator and creature.
Sam
Storms
Excerpted from: Dangers of Intimacy, November 8, 2006, www.enjoyinggodministries.com.
Used by Permission.
On January
12, 1723, I made a solemn dedication of myself to God, and wrote it down;
giving up myself, and all that I had to God; to be for the future, in no
respect, my own; to act as one that had no right to be himself, in any
respect. And solemnly vowed to take God
for my whole portion and felicity; looking on nothing else, as any part of my happiness, nor acting as if it were; and His law for the
constant rule of my obedience: engaging to fight against the world, the flesh
and the devil, to the end of my life.
Jonathan Edwards
A soul may be
in as thriving a state when thirsting, seeking and
mourning after the Lord as when actually rejoicing in Him; as much in earnest
when fighting in the valley as when singing upon the mount.
John
Newton
God was so
precious to my soul that the world with all its enjoyments appeared vile. I had
no more value for the favor of men than for pebbles.
David Brainerd
As long as I see anything to be done for God, life is
worth having; but O how vain and unworthy it is to live for any lower end.
God, I pray
Thee, light these idle sticks of my life that I may burn for Thee. Consume my
life, my God, for it is Thine. I seek not a long life
but a full one like You, Lord Jesus.
Jim Elliot
Quoted
by John MacArthur in Matthew 8-15, Moody, 1985, p. 214.