desire

Categories Book Notes, Following Christ

Inciting Passion

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This year, I have been concentrating on exercising my mind towards the things of God.

No doubt my longer-term readers have noticed the emphasis of this blog shifting from anecdotes to thinking and theology. Those who have seen my book lists have seen weightier books appearing more often on my lists–and have seen a greater emphasis on critical evaluation in my reviews. Those who know me personally have likely seen or heard some of my intellectual struggles of this past year as I’ve wrestled with the role of the miraculous gifts in today’s church, with what might appropriately induce someone to leave a church, with the role of Christians in government, with non-violence as a Christian virtue, and more.

Now, as I return to the classroom, teaching again, I still intend to exercise my mind towards the things of God–but to that I add one more goal.

I would like to stir up my passions towards God.

I want to incite within my soul such a thirst for God that I find the murky waters of this world unfulfilling. I should like to develop such a taste for God that I will turn aside from every trifle this world offers. I would like to desire God so deeply, so fully that the desire for Him drowns out every desire for any other person or thing. I should like for Him to become my consuming passion, my deepest longing, my forever quest.

I am reading John Piper’s Desiring God–and as I read, I am crying:
“Lord, awaken my hunger. Lord, awaken my thirst. Lord, awaken longing. Awaken my desire–for You.”

“I know of no other way to triumph over sin long-term than to gain a distaste for it because of a superior satisfaction in God.”
~John Piper, Desiring God

O Lord, I desire to find such superior satisfaction in You!

“…it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us…We are far too easily pleased.”
~C.S. Lewis, quoted in Desiring God

O Lord, may I not be easily pleased by the small joys this world offers.

“…This persistent and undeniable yearning for happiness was not to be suppressed, but to be glutted–on God!”
~John Piper, Desiring God

O that I may be glutted on You!

“God is glorified not only by His glory’s begin seen, but by its being rejoiced in.”
~Jonathon Edwards, quoted in Desiring God

May my life bring You glory as I rejoice in You.

“The pleasure Christian Hedonism seeks is the pleasure that is in God Himself. He is the end of our search, no the means to some further end.”
~John Piper, Desiring God

O, that I might delight in You, not as a means to my heart’s desire, but because You are my heart’s desire.

(This is a reflection on the foreword and introduction to John Piper’s Desiring God. For more reflections on Desiring God, see my notes here.)

Categories Reflections

Through the tears

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I’ve had a plan, all these years–a plan that carried me seamlessly from high school to college to grad school. I had planned for every contingency and merely had to adjust to the appropriate path whenever life arrived at a branch point. I graduated from college unmarried–I had a contingency plan for that. I had contingency plans I didn’t end up using–plans for if I didn’t get into an internship, for example.

But now I come to the end of my plans. Now I’m at the great intersection where hundreds of paths lie open before me–and I have no idea which one to take. I have no well-planned flowchart here, no rubric for deciding.

The future is a hazy mist fast approaching, and I feel lost in the fog.

A ray of light shone through on a frightening path. I shied away from it at first. Then God eased my fears and I felt my heart come into focus. This, this was what I wanted for my future. This was what I hadn’t even realized I’d been wanting all along. All my dreams aligned along this path and I was ready to follow it wherever it went.

What I didn’t expect was the “road closed” sign just beyond my view. I came upon it and had no choice but to turn aside.

Now, once again, I stand in the valley of decision–a broad vista of limitless paths. They bewilder me, they overwhelm me, none of them truly excites me. I want that path back.

I didn’t have, still don’t have a contingency plan. That future that so frightened me at first had come to excite me so. And now, every future I can envision seems drab and cold and lifeless.

I should be excited. The world is open to me. I have my whole life in front of me. I can do whatever I want to do. I can be whoever I want to be. Except, that is, that I cannot do or be that thing which I came to desire more than anything else in this world. That path is closed to me.

Abraham lay Isaac on the altar, believing that God would resurrect him. Any hope of resurrection has faded in my soul. Now, like Japheth’s daughter, I say, “If this is what you have vowed, put me on the altar–but first let me grieve what I have lost.”