The Longing

What pulls at your heart?

  A long time ago as a new Christian, I had just started attending some of the early Vineyard conferences in Canada. As typical of such meetings, people were getting healed and wonders were taking place. But at one particular meeting, the main speaker said something that has stuck with me, as he explained what he felt was the true purpose of such meetings.

  “The real reason we have these kinds of meetings is they are meant to frustrate you. To unsettle you so that when you get home and don’t see these kinds of things happening at home. You learn to cry out to God for his power because you want more of Him.”

  I like comfort just as much as the next, but I also miss what I know is possible in the spiritual realms. Somehow in my perfect world, I would like to have it all with very little effort. I mean, wouldn’t be great just to say a few things, pray over a person or two, and then “wham!” Everything falls into place and suddenly healings and changed lives are everywhere. Is that thought just fantasy or is it the shadows of a deeper longing?

  When scripture says things like, “all things are possible with God.” Matthew 19:26. These things “pull” on many of us to keep us like little kids peering over the edge into the unknown. We wonder, we dream, we speculate and sometimes we get brave for a season.

  Then at some point, life starts to settle in again around our feet and we return to slogging our way through the streets of this world. We find justification to put our desires on the shelf for a while, allowing them to collect dust.

Laodicean Age

  Let’s face it, lukewarmness is easy, and major corners of Christianity have turned it into quite the art form. Now anything can offend us at any given moment, but the snooze button of our lives is so close and so easy to hit.

  Like an 800-pound Gorilla in the room that everyone is pretending does not exist. We live with the Laodicean problem as it affects everything and at every level of Christianity. This is most likely why so many have fallen to worldly issues. And that is also why we need to be frustrated, to be pushed with the zeal of the Lord to go farther with him than before.

  Zeal? Yeah, you know that rare thing you hardly ever see anymore. That thing we have all been socially trained to hide from. But don’t worry, if there is any form of it left in your life, I am sure some well-meaning person inside the corporate church system will be more than willing to help exercise that from your life so that you can fit in with the rest of us.

   It is important to note how many of Jesus's actions would be considered “unacceptable” or even “radical” in today’s fellowships. Many feel that they would personally never act that way toward him if he walked into their room. But we easily turn our noses up at the thought of his followers acting the same way. Consider Jesus’s rebuke to the religious leaders of the day.

  “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, and say, ‘If we had been living in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partners with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ So you testify against yourselves, that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of the guilt of your fathers. You serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell?” Matthew 23:29-33

  Yeah, human nature does not change much without the Holy Spirit, so would our leaders today toss Jesus or his followers out the door for their radical actions and words? I suspect they would if it endangered their bottom line $$.

Searching for the Land of the Living.

  I remember studying at one point all the major players in the healing movement over the last one hundred and fifty years.

  Regardless of their background, they all had one thing in common, they all shared the common foundation of the same struggle. They struggled not to give up, and to keep pushing on even though they had not seen anyone getting healed.

  I remember John Wimber talking about when it finally started happening with him. He pushed the Vineyard church he was pastoring to go after healing. But as time marched on, no one was getting healed. Then one day he and the elders got called to a woman’s house to pray for her. After they did so John turned and started talking with the family, giving excuses for why she did not get healed when he realized the people he was talking to were not only, not listening to him, but they were watching something happening behind him. Turning around John realized the woman was healed and getting out of bed.

  So what do we long for, what have we tied our hopes onto? What keeps you up at night? Is there something of God you secretly desire above all else, something so deep you dare not even whisper it for fear you have wasted years in a fruitless hope?

When we tie our emotions, to the very center of who we are, to a place, a movement, or a dream. What we are actually doing is creating a spiritual connection. If what we have connected to meets the qualification of Colossians 3 you can expect God will help you in your journey, regardless of its length.

  “Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.” Col 3:2-4.

Why

  “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” Proverbs 13:12. Longing that connects to things of God helps to focus the heart and brings life. But Longing for selfish, foolish, worldly things only brings heartache to the soul as the only one who will help you is the Pernicious one (devil)

  Step by step the actions of the Father carefully help to carve off you the things that will get in the way of this longing. He did it with every major person in the Bible, as they all went through something. Struggle in their hearts produced a deep longing that would not let go of them. Perhaps we all need this.

Next week’s post, is “The Father's Heart... in us.”

FYI, the upcoming 100th. post is scheduled for Sept 25th.