In January my church had a time of corporate prayer and fasting for 21 days. We met every morning at our campus to worship and pray both individually and collectively. We did it as a way to tithe the first fruits of our year to God and start the year off abiding in him. In hindsight, the 21 days were altogether incredibly valuable; in the middle of it, however, I met a lot of resistance from my own heart and from lies and agreements I had bought into from the past.
For example, I saw others during our daily gatherings really enjoying intimate worship and delighting in the love of God, and I started to get jealous. I wanted that kind of worship and relationship in my own journey with God, but somehow I just couldn’t access it. I searched my heart desperately trying to figure out what walls were keeping me from accessing more of the love of Christ. I told him so many times that I wanted more of him no matter what the cost. I figured that was what he wanted to hear and it sounded good enough to me. That plea was answered with just more silence, and I answered that with utter frustration with God. Why aren’t you showing up for me? I thought.
It wasn’t until day 19 that I began to discover what God wanted to reveal to me about my own heart and my attitude towards him. You see, for the majority of the time during our season of prayer and fasting I was seeking an experience; I wanted God to reveal his will for me in a powerful way. Instead, he just said no. At the time, before I realized the larger invitation God was sending me, this silence was really making me angry.
But on that 19th day, I began to realize something: I was going about everything the wrong way. I was desperately seeking God’s will, but I was not seeking HIM. In other words, I wanted to hear him say, “Go do this or that,” and I’d leave and go do that by myself and all would be well because I was in the will of God. However, this is not the kind of relationship God ever intended for us to have with him. In reality, that way of thinking wasn’t relational at all; instead it was as if I had a boss named God and I was doing his bidding. That’s not relationship.
Oswald Chambers once said, “The call is an expression of the nature of the One who calls, and we can only recognize the call if that same nature is in us.” Our greatest calling, above all else, is to know the Father intimately, not to figure out who he is then go to work for him. I was confused by his words in Jeremiah, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” I really thought I was searching for him with all of my heart, and the fact that I wasn’t getting anywhere sparked feelings of being forgotten and alone. As it turns out, I really wasn’t searching for him with all of my heart. I just wanted his benefits, not his presence. That’s not what he wants, and that’s not really what we want either.
In the deepest places of our hearts there is a desire, a longing, to be known and to be loved. We don’t always recognize its presence because often times we try to satisfy it with something temporary or try to kill it altogether, but it’s there. And God is inviting us to follow that desire. He desperately wants us to feel the longing, the aching, so he can romance us and show how much he wants us.
That desire, though, comes at a great cost. There is a major element of risk to following that desire because it requires us to be completely vulnerable, and when we are vulnerable, we no longer have control. And we can get hurt. The cost, however, comes with greatest reward: to be fulfilled and satisfied in the deepest aching of our hearts by the only one who could ever do it. He’s a Father who is so delighted in his children that he gave himself up to death to win us back. He’s the greatest love we’ll ever know.
