Give Me More of God

I have been unsatisfied as of late of my desire and attitude toward God. These "feelings" are hard to put into words but I think most of us have found ourselves there at certain times in our walk with Christ. For me, it's been an overwhelming sense of despair and that feeling I often got while serving in the military when I put my 120 pound rucksack on my back. Then realizing that I would be jumping out of a plane with it and humping it in the jungle for the next several days - Ugg!

After my study and messages on Romans yesterday, talking with my wife last night and then my devotions this morning, I realize that there has been some discipline(s) that I have not exercised as fervantly in the last few months as I have in the past. Specifically they are fasting and prayer. Yes I have been praying but my sense of urgency and desperateness has not been what it demands. In light of where I'm at in my walk and the sense of being overwhelmed by a myriad of circumstances my greatest need is more of God.

In reading Romans in these last weeks, chapter 13:11-14 have come out of the inspired pages of Scripture as a desperate prayer as we plow through this most influential letter to the Christians at Rome. The time is now to "wake up out of sleep!" The urgency of my sense of despair as well as our circumstances in the snowballing affects of secularization in America; not to mention what is going on in the world around us requires a series wake up call to action.

That action must start on our knees before the Creator God who is the only one who can give the grace to increase our faith to cause change (beginning with my heart) through the Gospel. The answer and solution is always by grace through faith in him.

The fasting part deals directly with our desires. My desires have been far to concerned with the things of this world and even my own despair and sense of being overwhelmed. And so my desire needs to change to being overwhelmed by the presence and glory of God. Piper puts it like this, "The fight for faith is a fight to feast on all that God is for us in Christ. What we hunger for most we worship" (A Hunger for God: Desiring God through Fasting and Prayer. pg 10). 

The above quote is also the book I'll be reading to assist in fasting biblically and in the right attitude. So through prayer may his grace let my will respond to my Lord, knowing that power to obey is not in me, but that his free love alone enable me to serve him. So here then is my empty heart, fill it with your grace!

Philippians 3:8-11 "Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith - that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead."

Give Me More of You

I haven't wrote in a long while on this blog. To be honest, I haven't wrote much of anything besides for sermons and teaching. So here as is so often, I find myself sitting here in my office, behind as usual, with all that needs to be done before the Lord's day arrives. I'm reminded by a gentle prodding of the Spirit that I'm to be more overwhelmed by Him than I'm to be with my circumstances. Yet, I cry out, "Lord do you not know all that is going on here at church?" There is so much heartache, cancer, broken families, death, and rebellion.

Between that first paragraph and the one I'm writing now, I had a person come in that is struggling with a lot of things, especially the truth of God's word and the authority it has on our lives. Well it didn't end well and here again I sit numbed by it all and wondering what more I could have done.

The only answer is to press in and rest on God. As we are toiling, troubled and distressed, there is ever a perfect peace. God is the only one who can bring order out of confusion, and my defeats are His victories. We are invited to come as sinners with our cares and sorrows, to leave every concern entirely to Him. Every one of our sins calling for the precious blood; oh may it revive a deep spirituality in our hearts.

Let us, in these hardest of times, live near the good Shepherd, hear His voice, know its tones, and to determine to follow its calls. We are so prone to deception and to follow the culture and the way of this world, may we chose to know and abide in the truth. Let us walk each step in the power of the Spirit. The answer is found in the truth of the gospel, help us not to be ashamed of it, that we would bear its reproach, vindicate it, see Jesus as its essence.

Lord help us as we more often than not find ourself lukewarm and even cold at heart; unbelief scars our confidence, sin makes us soon forget You. May we pull and cut from the root the weeds that grow and thrive from our intending of our souls.

Help us to recognize that we truly live only when we live wholeheartedly to and through You; and that everything else is vanity and but a vapor. It is Your presence  alone that can make us holy, devout, strong, happy and satisfied. Abide in us, gracious God. Give me more of You.