The Spark of Desire // Taste and See That He Is Good, Part 2

Any relationship needs a spark of desire to make it fire. Friendships. Marriages. Families. Work. Desire is a key ingredient of a lasting relationship. Well – what about God?

Relationships, they’re a funny thing – boy meets girl, courtship, romance, engagement, marriage, honeymoon – what an exciting time! This passion, this desire, they enjoy each other to the full. Then they have kids. Sleepless nights, there’s the mortgage, paying off the credit card, arguments, pressure and almost half, end in divorce.

Of course, there are a lot of things that can go wrong. But somewhere along the way (somewhere), the fire goes out. The flame, the passion, the desire to be together – they evaporate. Not that relationships are all about passion and desire. But on the other hand it’s pretty important. Wouldn’t you agree, in making a marriage hang together?

Well, what about our spirituality? Does desire, does passion have a role to play in our spiritual lives?

When it comes to our spirituality, I believe that experience has an important role to play. Yesterday, on A Different Perspective we talked about the fact that there are two ways of knowing things. There’s like head knowledge, a series of facts, a series of dot points and head knowledge is really important. But it’s not until we marry that with experience that we can really say that we know something.

Remember, if you were with us that we talked about fruit. It’s one thing to know that we should eat more fruit because it’s good for us. It’s another thing entirely to bite into a banana or a mandarin or a peach and go, "Wow, that fruit is really nice!"

Three thousand years ago, King David of Israel wrote this. He said:

Taste and see that the Lord is good. (Psalm 32:8).

When we look at the spiritual marketplace in the twenty-first century, crystals, eastern design of religions (you know, design your own), astral travel, the all-called "crossing over", "feng shui", you know, people designing their houses to be tranquil according to what they believe to be spiritual principles.

It’s all about taking spirituality and trying to experience it in life. And so sadly those same people will look at Christianity, they look at Jesus, they look at the cross and think, "No, no, no, no. That’s boring, that’s … I know the public image of that, that’s just a set of rules."

But what if God’s plan is that we can have the most amazing experience of Him, here and now. I mean an authentic spiritual experience. All those other things; crystals and feng shui and the eastern design of religions; they involve things or forces or notions or feelings or idols. And yet, with God, with Jesus, it gets really personal.

We forget sometimes … God isn’t a stained glass window. He’s not a book. He’s not a bunch of rules. He’s not pew, He’s not a hymn. God’s a person and we forget that. Deep in His mighty heart, God thinks, God wills, God feels, God suffers, God laughs, God cries. And if God’s a person, then it follows that we can have a relationship with this person. Not a "thing" not a "concept" not a statue, a person. Jesus is the very image of God. It’s Jesus who loved and laughed and cried and wept. That’s God, that’s what He looks like.

There was a man by the name of A.W. Tozer who wrote in the mid twentieth century. He was a great writer. And at the time that he was writing, it was that whole time of science and post-war. You know, science was going to make things better. And it was all that head knowledge, it was all the go. And there the space race was starting and modernization and we were all getting kitchen gadgets and so on. He was writing straight into that and have a listen what he wrote into that space. He said:

Look, where the modern scientists have lost God amid the wonders of His world, it’s a real danger that we could lose God amid the wonders of His Word, the facts, the things we believe. We’ve almost forgotten that God is a person and as such we can have a personal relationship with Him. In this hour of all but universal darkness, one cheering gleam appears. Within the fold of conservative Christians there are people, increasing numbers of people, whose spiritual lives are marked by a growing hunger after God Himself.

They won’t be put off with words or shallow logic. They won’t be content to busy themselves with nervous activity. And yet to still to know an inner emptiness. These people have a thirst for God. They won’t be satisfied until they’ve drunk deep at the fountain of living water. There are those who, while they love the altar and delight in the sacrifice, they’re just unable to reconcile themselves with this continued absence of fire. They desire God above all. There’s a thirst to taste for themselves this piercing sweetness at the love of Christ about whom the prophets wrote and the psalmists sang.

They want to taste. They want to touch with their hearts; they want to see with their inner eyes the wonder that is God. 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 spiritual lives, it’s a result of a lack of holy desire. Complacency is the deadly foe of all spiritual growth. What we need is acute desire to be present, or there be no manifestation of Christ to His people. He waits to be wanted. It’s too bad that with many of us He waits so long, so very long in vain.

I love that!

Three thousand years ago, in one of the spiritual songs, the Psalms, that’s recorded in the Bible, someone wrote this. It’s Psalm 42:1, if you’d like to look at it.

As the deer pants for streams of living water so my soul pants for you my God.

Maybe you’re someone who has never met Jesus. You’ve never put your trust in Him; you hunger for some authentic spiritual experience. Maybe you’ve been going to church for thirty, forty years and in your heart of hearts, you know that you’ve never experienced sort of desire – passion for God. Or maybe that’s the sort of flame that used to burn in your heart once upon a time. But like a couple with kids and a mortgage and credit cards and responsibilities, somewhere along the line, that flame went out.

I’ve got some good news! Doesn’t matter who we are or where we’re at or what we’ve believed in the past or not believed or what we’ve done or not done. God longs for us for a close, intimate, personal relationship. An experience so real, so authentic, it’ll blow your socks off.

Isn’t that what you want? Because in a minute I’m going to pray, I’m going to pray a prayer that A.W. Tozer wrote at the end of the first chapter of his book, The Pursuit of God.

I believe that desire needs to be present in our hearts and I believe that God can put that desire there. If you want that, pray this with me:

God, I have tasted Your goodness and it satisfied me but it has made me thirsty for more. I’m so aware, I’m so conscious of my need for further grace and I’m so ashamed of the lack of desire that’s in my heart.

God, I want You. I long to be filled with longing. I thirst to be made more thirsty (still). Lord, show me Your glory so that I may know You for real. Begin in me a mercy, a new work of love. Say to my soul, ‘Rise up my love! Come away!’ and then give me the grace to rise and follow You up from this misty lowland where I’ve wandered for so long.

Father, I want You. Give me that desire. Light that flame. Spark that fire. Not by might, not by power, but by Your Holy Spirit. Father, I ask that specifically of You today, in the mighty name of Jesus Christ.