WHEN I DON'T DESIRE GOD pt. 1

First of all, I have a confession to make. This book was written as a follow up to Desiring God but I haven't yet finished that book. That's a very bad habit of mine. I tend to buy books that express sentiments or struggles that I'm feeling at the moment.

Anyway, I had read enough of Desiring God to have my spirit awakened to the idea that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. John Piper has more accurately expressed my spiritual desires and goals than any other living author, except maybe Elisabeth Elliot. At the end of Desiring God there is an appendix which expresses the struggle we may come to after realizing that we don't desire God and His glory the way we ought. Years later, he has expanded those thoughts into this book and I am so glad he did. I think it would have been easier for him to leave his audience struggling with their deep questions than to delve into this brutally honest, soul-baring exercise. Too much of evangelicalism these days is superficial and trendy. It's refreshing to hear this voice in the wilderness.

The first chapter explains why he wrote this book. After discovering the liberation of knowing that we are allowed and even commanded to pursue joy in God, he was devastated by the realization that any indifference to this pursuit would amount to sin. I think we've all experienced this. I have had times of incredible zeal for God and enjoyment of His presence. And yet there are other times, more often than I like to confess, when I could honestly care less. So what to do? Piper says the times of incredible zeal and pursuit of God and God-glorifying joy is what real Christianity is about.

"Manageable, duty-defined, decision-oriented, willpower Christianity now semed easy, and real Christianity had become impossible. The emotions - or affections, as former generations called them - which I was now free to enjoy, proved to be beyond my reach. The Christian life became impossible. That is, it became supernatural. Now there was only one hope, the sovereign grace of God. God would have to transform my heart to do what a heart cannot make itself do, namely, want what it ought to want."

This is the key. Not me trying harder, but me pressing more deeply into God in prayer, in meditation on His word, in obedience, and in faith. Every generation has its weakness. And I believe that every generation has its voice(s) in the wilderness who really get it. John Piper really gets it I think. He speaks with the voice of those from the past who "got it": Augustine, Luther, Edwards and others. He sees through the superficial, trend-driven, worldly motivations of today's church and calls us deeper.

"I would like to help those who are beginning to see that salvation is the awakening of a new taste for God, or it is nothing. 'Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!' (Ps. 34:8). I want to help those who are starting to see that conversion is the creation of new desires, not just new duties; new delights, not just new deeds; new treasure, not just new tasks."

He then goes on to quote those who've come before us and how they have realized the same things. He quotes Augustine, Calvin, Thomas Watson, and finally Jonathan Edwards ~

"Our hungerings and thirstings after God and Jesus Christ and after holiness can't be too great for the value of these things, for they are things of infinite value....[Therefore] endeavor to promote spiritual appetites by laying yourself in the way of allurement....There is no such thing as excess in our taking of this spiritual food. There is no such virtue as temperance in spiritual feasting."

Finally Piper answers an objection that this "joy" he's impelling us to seek after is not another superficial, self-seeking pursuit.

"The fight for joy in Christ is not a fight to soften the cushion of Western comforts. It is a fight for strength to live a life of self-sacrificing love."

Yes, this fight is something we do for the benefit of our own souls. But that is not the end, just the beginning. This fight for joy will allow us to go beyond ourselves in loving and sacrificing for others in order that "Christ be made known in all the world as the all-powerful, all-wise, all-righteous, all-merciful, all-satisfying Treasure of the universe."

I truly believe that the underlying problem we have in the church today (and I certainly include myself in this) is that we do not really understand the nature of God. His glorious attributes are not preached in the uncompromising way that will wake us up from our spiritual slumber. We have been lulled into a false sense of spiritual security. We think God is obligated to keep us in our present state of materialistic comfort. We presume on His mercy and grace not realizing that we are probably a breath away from His judgment.

For a change to occur, we need to make a radical break in every way from the prevailing attitude of the world (and the worldly attitudes that have infected the church) and ask God to rip the scales off our eyes that we may see Him in all His glory and say with Isaiah, "Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts."

Repentance is a good start I think. I pray that an attitude of repentance and humility before my King, the all-consuming Fire, would permeate my whole life. And with this attitude, I wish to go on in this fight for joy, with the grace and strength He supplies.