“I want deliberately to encourage this mighty longing after God. The lack of it has brought us to our present low estate. The stiff and wooden quality about our religious lives is a result of our lack of holy desire. Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people. He waits to be wanted. Too bad that with many of us He waits so long, so very long, in vain.”
-A.W. Tozer
It seems to me that we who call ourselves Christians have a far, far too small a view of God, and do not do nearly enough to work to open our eyes to the vastness of the ocean that He is. Instead, we allow our hearts and minds to be filled with longings and colors and sounds that drown out the low rush of the mighty tide that pulls at the edges of our souls. We are those people who race from building to building at the base of a massive ivory monument that is lit with the softest and most overwhelming hues at every sunset, and yet we choose to stare at the lights that line the streets and make up the screens in front of our eyes. How is it that our hearts and minds have grown so small as to be satisfied with what is barely a fraction of the truth?
Moses spent forty days alone on a mountain, and it was later said of him that he spoke with God “as a man speaks to a friend.” John the Baptist lived out his life in the desert, only to die shortly after his mission to prepare the way for Christ, and the son of God called him the greatest among men. Job lost everything he had before God came and spoke directly to him. How is it then that we expect to live lives surrounded by gold and glitter and the over-ripeness of culture and yet still swim in the massive swell of the knowledge of the Creator? The most glorious of creation are hidden from the view of civilization.
This summer I spent nearly eight weeks on the road, most of it hiking in the back country of the western United States. One of the ranger stations we stopped at before entering into Bryce Canyon had this quote from a renowned mountaineer scrawled on the chalk board near the entry way; “Sights like these are reserved for those alone who will pay the price to see them.”
I can’t help but wonder if that isn’t how our view of God is; the higher price we pay, the greater the reward will be. Now, I am not advocating a life of seclusion or suggesting that we need to sell all our possesions and live in poverty. For some, that is exactly what God asks, but those are not lives for all. However, the principle is true. Christ himself spoke numerous times of the cost of following him. For some, it meant leaving everything they had. For others it meant servanthood to the point of death. Others joined together and gave everything that they could to provide for others, even to the point of bringing themselves to poverty. It is the perogative of a person who seeks communion with God to give away, set aside, and give up as much of the things of this world as they can. Brother Lawrence said it this way (speaking of the practice of attaining the realization of the constant presence of God in our lives),
“remember that to attain to this state, we must mortify the senses, inasmuch as no soul which takes delight in earthly things can find full joy in the Prescence of God; to be with him we must leave behind the creature.”
For different lives this practice of “mortifying the sense” as Brother Lawrence describes it, will play out differently. Yet for all there is that common cry to deny ourselves the excess pleasures of this world and let God be our all and our end. The Psalmists declaration of, “whom have I in heaven but you, and the earth has nothing I desire besides you” can only be said when we have thrown aside all the things that hinder us (Hebrews 12:1).
Those who swim know well that to enjoy the open water, one cannot be entangled by any excess. Our problem today is that we have grown so used to being pulled down by a mass of weight that for many it seems a terrifying thing to be without those things that have for so long kept us steady. Even for Peter, one of Jesus’ closest followers, the shifting waves of the sea were terrifying. But isn’t that the thrill of diving into an ocean; the knowledge that it is something that is so massive and beyond our power? Those people who confine themselves to their backyard swimming pool or even to simply sitting and listening to the sound of the waves have no idea of the wild rejoicing that comes when we throw ourselves completely in and fall full upon God, trusting Him to guide the waves and to keep us afloat.
Oh, my heart revolts against the small, weak view that we have! Our eyes are locked on a gray cement wall, or on the foam at the edge of the pool at the base of a massive waterfall at best. Our savior and so many who have gone before have demonstrated what we are meant to be. We are to be a people who are caught soaking wet in the middle of a hurricane, laughing for joy at the fact that it is the very God who saved us that created the strength of the wind and waves. We are to be openned wide, calling suffering joy and loss gain, declaring that death is simply the gatekeeper to life and that to be poured out is to be filled. How have we become so small? Our hearts have shriveled here in these closed in places. We need to escape the small things and to stare at a Grand Canyon sky, to breathe air at the highest point of the Himalayas, to read the Word of God as it is; a book of fire and a sword that cuts through sinew and tendon to the very marrow of the soul. We need to seek out the stories of men and women who have spilled their blood and their hearts across the nations for the sake of their creator’s glory and let them influence us, not the people who stand a foot high behind the glass on the tv screen. We must, as Paul exhorts, “fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” What greater glory is there than to give up the petty pieces of this life and in their place receive a crown that has been fashioned by a King who rules over every particle of existance?
Do not think that your desires can ever be too large. It is ours to, “seek glory, honor and immortality” (Romans 2:7). I urge you, as the Spirit in me urges my own soul, to peel back, by the power of God’s grace, the tape from our eyes; to throw off the weights that keep us stuck on shore or straggling knee-deep in the shallows. Throw them off and throw yourself into the swell of this fearsome, breathtaking ocean that is the Creator of Heavens and Earth. He will take you places, oh, He will take you, and you will live a life that is higher and deeper and wider than you have ever imagined possible. The cost is high, yes, but the view from the top of the waves is what we were made for.
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