The Gift of longing.........
After spending many hours before Jesus one night, I left the Friday night "Watch of the Lord" sulking in discouragement. Once again, He had not come as I desired Him to. As I got into my car, anxious tears freely streaming down my face, a dear friend came up to my window. I voiced my pain that I desired the Lord so much, and yet He still was not revealing Himself to me. To my surprise, she smiled. She leaned in and whispered, "It's happening. You love Him! You love Him so much you weep for Him. Your heart is moving in love just like you've been praying for." Her unexpected angle of discernment struck me. I thought of the prayer I liked to pray over and over again throughout the day, "Cause this heart to love You. Cause this heart to love You." Suddenly, I realized that my longing was His answering of my requests. My tears were love for Him, the very thing I had been asking for. I loved Him by longing for Him. My heart was beginning to actually move in love, to be tenderized in love and to feel love for my Beloved rising within.
Our journey begins with longing. And before longing is the longing to long. It is the yearning to desire Him. We find in our hearts an awakening that beckons longing and paves the way for desire. It begins with the Lord Himself placing His divine drawing upon the heart of the one who loves Him. We find ourselves desiring to desire Him and pained by the present shallowness of our hearts. He awakens us to the great obsession of Himself, and we find this new ache within our hearts: our lack of love and absence of tenderness. We begin to hunger for the capacity to hunger. We begin to thirst for the ability to thirst. The longing to long is the escort into longing itself. It is the God-ordained gateway into the true gift of God to crave Him with all of our beings.
To long for God is to give witness to the Transcendent One. Longing is the echo of eternity within our souls. It is that which sets us apart and makes us pilgrims on the journey. This world is not our home, and our inner ache gives testimony to the brevity of life and the weight of eternity. "I am a stranger in the earth; do not hide Your commandments from me. My soul breaks with longing for your judgments..." (Ps. 119:19-20). Something within us reaches for One who is other than and for a realm that is beyond. We long for One whom we have not yet seen but we love (1 Pet. 1:8). With hearts empowered by a divine ache, we cry out for more of God. We search for any sign of Him. This is the precise position that He wants us to be in. It is the hungry that He fills. It is the desirous that He satisfies.
All divine longing is a gift. It takes God to love God, and He Himself must place within us the love with which we love Him. "...For it is God who works in you both to will [desire] and to do for His good pleasure" (Phil. 2:13). Longing is the beginning of that gift of love. We imagine this gift to be only the actual experience of intimacy with Him. Part of the actual knowledge or experience of Him in intimacy is the longing for that experience. The longing prior to the felt-experience is just as much a part of loving Him as the experience itself. They go hand in hand and cannot be separated. The initial longing is an irreplaceable part of the eternal intimacy. Both the craving and the satisfaction are equal parts of the gift of intimacy. It all plays a role in the impartation of Divine Love to our hearts. Oh, the gift of longing for God! Oh, treasured companion on the journey! For surely we need this Helper for the entirety of our way forward in love. Longing and our ache for His greater revealing are here to stay.
Love's Delay
"Tell me, O you whom I love, where you feed Your flock, where you make it rest at noon. For why should I be as one who veils herself by the flocks of your companions?" (Song Sol. 1:7).
In Song of Solomon 1:7, the young maiden inquires of the Lord where He feeds His flock. She has just told the Lord in verse two that His love is better than wine. She knows His love far exceeds all other pleasures. Her whole life vision has changed because of this foundational revelation. Yet the mere acknowledgement of His love's superiority is not what will ultimately satisfy her hungry heart. Though she has been overcome with the vision of His great love, her heart is still hungry to actually experience it. Only He Himself can answer the craving in her soul. She must personally partake of His love in order to find satisfaction. She must drink in order for her thirst to be quenched. She asks with desperation, "Tell me where can I go to drink of You; where do I feast upon this love?"
She is saying, "Where do You cause my heart to be satisfied with You and You alone? How is it that a soul drinks deeply of You? For now I am ruined for lesser pleasures. You are my Reward. Now I know that You are exceedingly broad. Who can know the vastness of Your personality? I know that there is more to You than I can fathom or imagine. You are an Ocean, and I stand gazing from the shore. I have been ruined by an awakening, but now my pain is greater than before. The high vision is before me, but I know only hunger and desperation as my reality."
She had not anticipated a delay in experiencing the pleasures of His love. She gave her wholehearted "yes" to the life vision of holy passion yet now finds herself in an unexpected quiet. Here she waits, ruined for lesser pleasures and kept from Divine consolations, in the boundless space between her passion and the beautiful experience of His. He is cultivating longing in her heart. He desires more than a recognition of His greatness; He wants a desperation and lovesick yearning to come to maturity within her. And so for a time she remains in this breach between the reach for and the fulfillment of superior pleasures. She is ruined by the vision of His beauty. She now knows He is altogether lovely and that no other pursuit will ever satisfy the deep cravings of her heart. Yet He keeps her here in this Divine delay for a season and she only knows the ache of longing and not the pleasure of its answer. She only knows the wound of love and not the actual experience of His healing cure.
This is the pattern of His way with our hearts; knowing this should bring great consolation to our hearts. He is actually drawing us in the delay. He is enlarging the capacity of our hearts to experience the pleasure of His presence by withholding it. This is the perfect, Divine wisdom of the Lover of our souls, to bring us forth, to His side, leaning and loving, a pure and spotless bride!
2009/02/17
The Way of the Yielded Heart
The Way of the Yielded Heart
It seems to me that God makes use of all kinds of persecutions to test our hearts in the matter of our affections. If our hearts are attached to worldly things - wealth, reputation, the affections of men and a multitude of other earthly comforts, then our reward is here. But if by the proving of various persecutions we gladly suffer the loss of all things, then it is evident that our real affections are in things not of this world. Our claim to the eternal and true riches promised in the after-life is affirmed by our loss of the counterfeits offered by the first. We suffer loss of the first to prove our love of the second. We suffer loss of the temporal to gain the eternal. We lose but a day to gain eternity. "He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose."
Our brief time on the earth is for the examination of the soul. It is here that we choose for ourselves a place in the realm of eternity. Pity the poor soul who only sees the present day, and spends his life for the things designed only for the testing of his suitability for the next.
I do believe in prosperity. I believe the gospel is a "good news" gospel. But I believe we should "seek first the kingdom of God" in all that we do. I would rather seek the face of God than the hand of God. I believe the promise of prosperity has a purpose of testing the hearts of those who seek it. For "those who desire to be rich" such gain may prove to be to their eternal loss, and pierce their hearts with many sorrows. For those to whom the riches of this earth mean nothing yet to whom such riches come, "fearing God they shall come forth with both of them."
"Do you seek great things for yourself? Do not seek them." If, in the Providence of God they fall your way, your stewardship of it will be required on the day when the hearts of all men are made known. But not having sought after it, the heart is still pure of its gain, and so suffers no loss in eternity for having had its earthly benefit. But those who seek after such things betray the true motive of the heart, and their loss in heaven will be in proportion to their treasure laid up elsewhere. As the first book of Timothy says, "those who desire to be rich fall into temptation ( they fail the exam )..... they have strayed from the faith ( missed the point of being here ) ...... and pierced themselves through with many sorrows." ... if not in this life, certainly the next.
That is why Paul could say in Phillipians chapter 3, "I have suffered the loss of all things. ...what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ." Whatever we gain in this life, whether it be reputation, fame and fortune, comfort, possession and power, whatever we have in this life, we must hold them loosely with a yielded heart, if we are to lay hold of that which is eternal
2009/02/13
That I May Live...
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Romans 6:23
That I May Live...
My God, my God, what have I done?
The sin in my life has killed your Son.
Despised and rejected, how could it be,
A king so pure should die on a tree.
He stood before Pilate, no fault was found.
Convicted of nothing, beat to the ground.
Crown of thorns placed on his head.
A purple robe, blood stained red.
The soldiers mocked and spit in his face.
“Hail, king of the Jews”, said in that place.
They led him away, he carried his cross,
His energy draining, endured for the lost.
Carrying his cross, not easy to bear.
Simon of Cyrrene was forced to share.
On top of the hill and nailed to the cross.
The ultimate sacrifice, made for the lost.
With his last words, the curtain was torn.
“It is finished”, a new era is born.
Placed in tomb, the stone was sealed.
On the third day, God did reveal.
His Son is alive for all to see,
Sacrifice made for us to be free.
My God, my God, forgive my sin.
I accept your gift that I may live.
C. Dakota
2008/06/29
2008/06/27
Exodus 20 says the ten Commandments for the Covenant Community
15. When the people heard the thunder and the loud blast of the ram’s horn, and when they saw the flashes of lightning and the smoke billowing from the mountain, they stood at a distance, trembling with fear.
16. And they said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen. But don’t let God speak directly to us, or we will die!”
17.Don’t be afraid,” Moses answered them, “for God has come in this way to test you, and so that your fear of him will keep you from sinning!”
18. As the people stood in the distance, Moses approached the dark cloud where God was.
Proper Use of Altars
19.And the Lord said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: You saw for yourselves that I spoke to you from heaven.
21.Build for me an altar made of earth, and offer your sacrifices to me—your burnt offerings and peace offerings, your sheep and goats, and your cattle. Build my altar wherever I cause my name to be remembered, and I will come to you and bless you.
Friday meeting to the God.....
This is arranged for students by the staffs and students of TNAU to get blessings from lord jesus christ. The members are gathering on friday and have a wonderful praise, worship and message of lord from godly persons.come and enjoy the presence of lord jesus in the evening time.
