Spiritual Hunger 2
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27 And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”
Their is a aspect of loving and serving God with your mind but it must go beyond a mental relationship with God that can get to be to mechanical and spiritless:
A.W Tozer: wrote that in the last days the doctrine of justification by faith has been:
interpreted by many in such a manner as actually to bar men from the knowledge of God. The whole transaction of religious conversion has been made mechanical and spiritless. The an is “saved” but he is not hungry and thirsty after God. In fact, he is specifically taught to be satisfied and is encouraged to be content with little.
In Proverbs it says to trust in God with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding…
We were created to dwell with Him in reality, not theory alone. Until we experience the fullness of this we should never be satisfied.
Why have so many resigned themselves to an intellectual relationship only? Why have we settled for Christianity void of the presence of Christ?
We have taught Christianity in a way that does not build passion in people to draw them near and abide in the His presence?
Tozer continues:
God wills that we should push on into His presence and live our whole life there. This is to be known to us in conscious experience. It is more than a doctrine to be held, it is a life to be enjoyed every moment of every day.
Jesus died to remove the veil that separated us from the presence of God.
2 My soul yearns, yes, even pines and is homesick for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out and sing for joy to the living God.
3 Yes, the sparrow has found a house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young—even Your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God.
4 Blessed (happy, fortunate, to be envied) are those who dwell in Your house and Your presence; they will be singing Your praises all the day long. Selah [pause, and calmly think of that]!
4 Blessed (happy, fortunate, to be envied) are those who dwell in Your house and Your presence; they will be singing Your praises all the day long. Selah [pause, and calmly think of that]!
This is the goal of those who love God!
They hunger and thirst for His manifest presence.
The closer we are to Him the stronger it becomes, and the more we are affected.
Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible Psalm 84
To dwell in the presence of the LORD and to trust in him are sources of joy, or pinnacles of contentment.
Johns Wesley in one of his journals mentioned how God showed up after a time of repentance:
“Saturday June 16th 1739 - in that hour, we found God with us as at the first. Some fell prostrate upon the ground. Others burst out, as with one consent, into loud praise and thanksgiving. And many openly testified, there had been no such day as this, since January the first preceding.”
Charles Finney: Just after going to the woods to give his heart to God returned back to the law office were he worked. That evening in the office by himself he describes what happened next.
“my heart seemed to be liquid with me. All my feelings seemed to rise and flow out: and the utterance of my heart was “I want to pour my whole soul out to God” The rising of my soul was so great that I rushed into the room back of the front office, to pray.
As I turned and was about to take a seat by the fire, I recieved the mighty baptism of the Holy Ghost. without any expectation of it, without ever having the thought in my mind that there was any such thing for me, without any recollection that I had ever heard the thing mentioned by any person in the world, the Holy Spirit descended upon me in a manner that seemed to go through me, body and soul. I could feel the impression, like a wave of electricity, going through and through me. Indeed it seemed to come in waves and waves of liquid love: for I could not express it in any other way. It seemed like the very breath of God. I can recollect distinctly that it seemed to fan me, like immense wings.
No words can express the wonderful love that was shed abroad in my heart. I wept aloud with joy and love: and I do not know but I should say, I literally bellowed out the unutterable gushing of my heart. These waves came over me, and over me, and over me, one after the other, until I recollect I cried out, “I shall die if these waves continue to pass over me.” I said “ Lord I cannot bear any more” yet I had no fear of death.
Unutterable gushing could have been his way of explaining speaking in tongues.
An elder and another member from Finney’s church came by and asked what was wrong. As Finney tried to explain the Spirit of God overwhelmed the elder with convulsive laughter that sprang from the innermost parts of his soul, and he couldn’t stop for some time.
To protect our hunger for God:
1) We must develop a heart of worship.
What Is True Worship:
Is it a slow song? That could be part of it. But what is at the core of true worship?
Well where is the word first mentioned in the Bible?
5 Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.”
Abraham didn’t go over there to sing a slow song. He was going up there to put the most treasured possession in his life to death, simply because God asked him to do it.
Worship is a life of obedience.
You see singing a slow song of love to the Lord while living a life of disobedience is like: if JoAnn asked me to help Ellie get ready for school I said I was to busy. A little later she needs help and my reply is the same. She then asks if I can assist her with preparing lunch, but again I reply I’m to busy. She asks if I can pick up the Ellie from school only to get the same response again. She asks for help with dinner and cleaning up afterward and to get the response I’m to busy.
That evening after Ellie has gone to bed I now want something from her. Specifically marital intimacy. So I approach her with tender words such as “honey I love you so much.” With a little slow song in the background. What would most likely be her response.
My confession of love for her would only be in word, not in deed and truth.
18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
To worship God in truth is to worship Hi from the integrity of our hearts. It is to fear and reverence Him in the truest sense.
19 Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live.
20 In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.
21 Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”
Those who have His commandments and keep them are those who worship Him in truth, and he promised He would manifest Himself to them. Manifest means to bring out of the realm of the unseen into the seen. out of the unknown to the realm of the known.
We must have Humility!
6 But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”
7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
9 Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.
10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.
God’s heart cry is sandwiched between two exhortations of humility.
15 For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.