Insatiable longing?
I just finished the book Shattered Dreams by Larry Crabb and it was the first book that I have finished and immediately wanted to read all over again. Its just where my heart has been the last year..figuring out the root of the aches and longings of my heart.
One of my favorite chapters compared the heart’s journey through life from a secular view and spiritual view and how Satan can use an easy life to cheapen grace and mask the power of the Lord. Here is a little excerpt that I think is especially true of Americans:
Satan’s masterpiece is not the prostitute or the skid-row bum. It is the self-sufficient person who has made life comfortable, who is adjusting well to the world and truly likes living here, a person who dreams of no better place to live, who longs only to be a little better - and a little better off - than he already is.
The Spirit’s masterpiece is the man or woman who much prefers to live elsewhere, who finds no deep joy in the good things of this life, who looks closely in the mirror and yearns to see something different, whose highest dream is to be in the Presence of the grace-filled Father. It is the person whose life here is consumed with preparing to meet Him there.
I think I loved this chapter so much because that is exactly what my heart has learned over the past year…that even the good blessings in life..a great family, a good marriage, deep friendships…are not meant to satisfy the depths of our hearts. Those are all great things! They are things that the Lord in His grace chooses to let us enjoy. But only He has the ability to wholly satisfy. There is a ache in our hearts while we are in this place to be with our Maker. And that ache and longing will only be satisfied when we get to be in His presence for eternity.
I was so convicted while reading it that though I know this truth, I still fight my flesh and the lie that “if only I was married, THEN this ache would dull” or “if only I looked like so and so, THEN I would be just a little more satisfied than I am now.”
Lies.
It was when the hopes and dreams for my life came crashing down a year ago that I got to experience my God like I never had in my life. Things in this life - even good things - can never produce the kind of joy we are designed to experience. And the Lord was gracious enough to reveal that truth to my heart by taking away the things of this world that I held too closely to. And I hope He continues to do so throughout my life (although I know that involves pain, and so it scares me a little to hope for that). But I know that is the one place that I am able to worship in truth.
