Desire for God

My heart is filled with longing for your laws at all times…LORD, I call out to you with all my heart (Psalm 119:20, 145).

One more reflection on Psalm 119. Via this Psalm we have explored what it might mean that David was 'a man after God's own heart' (Acts 13:22). We have looked at four things that may have caused God to describe him this way: obedience, humility, integrity and worship.

Today, something that brings these different things together. Not something at the top of the list, but something, pardon the pun, that lies at the heart of the matter.

Years ago, I read a book called, When Did We Start Forgetting God? It argues that Christians talk a lot about God and do lots of things for God, but we have, in large part, forgotten him. It suggested that a church that has not forgotten God exhibits one principal characteristic: a desire for God—a desire so intense it sometimes looks like drunkenness or even madness.

That is what is missing in much of Christendom today. We have lost our desire for God. It is easier for us to be doing things for God and to be talking and yes, preaching and preparing devotions about God, than to fan into flame a desire for him.

If you doubt me, listen to David, "You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water" (Psalm 63:1). "One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple" (Psalm 27:4). We see this in the New Testament where, Paul writes, "Everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ and become one with him" (Philippians 3:8-9).

I could go on. There are many other examples of this in the Bible. They are rooted in the summary of the law as Jesus gives it, "You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength" (Mark 12:30).

I hinted at this in my previous devotions. But I think that any reflections on what it means to be a person after God's own heart that does not ponder this, a deep desire for God, falls short. It is this longing for him, that causes God to describe David this way.

If someone were to ask you, 'What do you want more than anything?" Would you answer simply, "God!"? I'm not sure many of us Christians would answer that way. Our desires wander so easily. Thus, I invite you to pray for yourself, pray for your church leaders, pray for the church, that the Holy Spirit would fill us with the desire that filled David.

As you journey on, go with the blessing of God:

"May God himself, the God who makes everything holy and whole, make you holy and whole, put you together—spirit, soul, and body—and keep you fit for the coming of our Master, Jesus Christ. The One who called you is completely dependable. If he said it, he'll do it" (1 Thessalonians 5:23).