heart-thirsty

I've been rather pitiful in my blogging of late - sorry. Then to make matters worse, this is going to be a fairly long post. Bear with me, please. There might be something here underneath all the chaff.

Last weekend, I had something of a retreat at home going through Roy Hession's 'Be Filled Now', a book I'd definitely recommend. This was in part a response to So Long, Insecurity; if I want to defeat the power of fear and insecurity in my life, I need something better to take their place in my heart and mind, and the Spirit of God seemed like a sensible option.

Also, my boss had recently been to the Isle of Lewis, which had a tremendous revival back in the 1950s, and I'd been inspired by descriptions of that season. Instrumental in that revival were two old ladies who sought God. Anyways, I won't get into all that now, but I do recommend you take some time to listen to this thrilling account.

I've been mulling over my need for personal revival - what it means to earnestly seek God, to focus on this 'one thing' that Psalm 27 talks about, and furthermore the effect that would have on my sense of uselessness and failure at this time. I guess I'm heart-thirsty.

Let me share with you something I read last night...

Today... we do not hear much about the need to see God. It is only as we turn the pages of the past that we become aware of our lack of this emphasis, both in preaching and in living the Gospel. In former days, we find, even in times of spiritual darkness, that there were always some who were gripped by a consuming passion – the longing to see God. For them there was only one goal, to know their God. They were heart-thirsty, and they knew that God alone could satisfy their thirst...

At the present time the situation is very different. We have much more light on the Bible and the message of the Gospel, and we look back rather despisingly on many of these seekers of old. But the solemnizing fact is this, that the coming of more light has not brought an increasing passion to see God. In fact, it seems to have had the reverse effect. That deep hunger for God Himself is obviously lacking, and it would appear that we have lowered our goal in the Christian life to something less than God Himself.

Two emphases stand out today: First of all, instead of stressing holiness in order to see God, the emphasis is on service for God. We have come to think of the Christian life as consisting in serving God as fully and as efficiently as we can. Techniques and methods, by which we hope to make God’s message known, have become the important thing. To carry out this service we need power, and so instead of a longing for God, our longing is for power to serve Him more effectively. So much has service become the centre of our thinking that very often a man’s rightness with God is judged by his success or otherwise in his Christian work.

Then there tends to be today an emphasis on the seeking of inner spiritual experiences. While so many Christians are content to live at a very low level, it is good that some do become concerned about their Christian lives, and it is right that they should. However, the concern arises not so much from a hunger for God, but from a longing to find an inner experience of happiness, joy, and power, and we find ourselves looking for "it," rather than God Himself.

Both these ends fall utterly short of the great end that God has designed for man, that of glorifying Him and enjoying Him for ever. They fail to satisfy God’s heart and they fail to satisfy ours.

- Roy Hession, We Would See Jesus