LONGING FOR GOD

I was recently asked if I ever missed someone so much I couldn’t breathe. That longing is exactly how the Lord wants us to long for Him. He is so worthy of our hearts and attention. David experienced this longing…Psalms 42:1…”As the deer panteth for the water brooks, so my soul longeth after Thee, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God;”

He is always there, always big in a mighty way for us, it’s our passion for Him that waxes and wanes.

Christ chose to love the elect and to give His life for them. Love starts with a choice in the mind. We love Him because He first chose to love us. Paul tells us in Ephesians that we were dead in our sin. There is nothing in us to offer God to merit salvation. The only thing a dead person can do is stink and the stench of sin is worthy only of the wrath of a holy God. Since deadness cannot respond to anything God had to intervene on our behalf. He chose to love us by first writing our names in the book of life, before He even created us, or the world. Doesn’t that just blow your mind?! Then His creation fell into sin. Consider this - If He planned salvation for the elect even before He created the world, this means He planned for the existence of sin. He did not create and then sin ruined His creation and then He had to scramble at the last minute and figure out what to do about it. Everything exists because He has allowed it to exist, even sin. Why? TO PUT HIS GLORY ON DISPLAY! In His love He became a man and then He became the very thing which condemned His creation –He gave Himself over to sin bearing, paying the price for our sins on the cross. He bore the wrath of God on our behalf which we deserved. His sin bearing became a backdrop for His spectacular grace! A glorious, incomprehensible act to the human mind!

Paul writes about the process of salvation for the elect in Romans 8:30 – “And whom He predestined, these He also called; and whom He called, these He also justified (made righteous); and whom He justified, these He also glorified.” It’s written as if it were a done deal. Our salvation was secured in the past in God’s mind. At some point in time He makes sure our calling to Himself intersects with the gospel…the good news of Jesus Christ. For me it was when I was nine…at a neighborhood Good News Club. It was then when He removed the blinders to the truth of my sin, breathed life into me, and gave me the gift of faith.

How is your passion for God? Do you remember why He called you? It was to live to put His glory on display, to give Him the fruit of praise. It was so He could continue to lavish His love and grace upon you. We so don’t deserve such love and mercy. We only deserve death. Yet He chose to love us in spite of the stench of our sin. It is out of this love He has for us that we should desire to live for Him…to honor Him and praise Him. To be sure, my love for Him waxes and wanes. I don’t always give Him the attention He deserves and I battle with giving my heart to other things. It is at our final glorification - at His coming, or at our physical death prior to His coming, when our battling will finally be over. In the meantime, we are to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. We are to walk in obedience…we are to consider the members of our body dead to sin and alive to righteousness. This battle starts with the mind and how we think. We do what we do and feel what we feel because we think what we think. For the believer, a successful and Christlike walk, a walk that gives honor and glory to God happens when they constantly saturate the mind with God’s Word and then walk in obedience to the Word.

Desire God above all else…seek to be a person after His own heart. When we seek to be a people after God’s own heart God will be glorified and we will experience spectacular joy.