“As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?” – Psalms 42: 1-2 NIV
As I was listening to “praise music” recently, I found myself thinking that praise is more like a cry to God. Singing of His greatness reminds us of our fallen state. When we praise Him, we recall our imperfection in the face of a perfect God. In our praise, we see that we have been separated from Him. Our praise is a cry to return to knowing Him as we did when Adam first walked in the garden with Him. Our praise is our longing for completeness.
There are so many devices that we try to use to silence the echo of the hollow space within us. We seek pleasure, pursue riches, and fall in love with idols. We so easily warp the longing, the ache for God into something that we can obtain, something we can master. It is our habit to distort the design of God into something we can manage or into something we can control.
Sorcery abounds these days. People are chasing spells, catching dreams, and yielding to their egos. They have a religion that seeks to empower their minds and worship their own souls. It is a trust in one’s self and a dominion over their own lack. People have faith in themselves.
It is not a new trick. It is the question in Genesis 3:1 of “Did God really say that?” that the serpent asked of humankind. Suddenly there is doubt mingled with the longing to truly know God. It is so achingly hard to be separate from the perfectness of God. It seems so easy to slip, to get confused, and to distort one’s spiritual nature.
Some of the lost are halfway found. They are looking for something to believe in. They are not looking for lordship over their own lives but escape from their own pain. They long for love and peace but they do not know the endless source. They are enmeshed in guilt and judgment but do not know the source of freedom. They want to be spiritual but don’t know how to receive the Holy Spirit. They want to be saved but they don’t know how to find the Savior.
It is so very easy to deform the perfect gifts of God. Spirituality has been distorted and truth made unrecognizable. But, some of the lost are halfway found. They recognize something greater. Their souls long to find it. They are looking for the true path. Their songs are the cries to the true God. They already know their need. They recognize their spiritual nature. They are searching for an encounter with God, but they just don’t know in what direction they should be going to find Him. They do not know that it is by encountering Christ that they can meet with God.
Written by Janet Keefe
(You can read Part 1 HERE)
