When You Don’t Desire God
What To Do When… Series
Reading of
the word of God
Ps 34:1-8
I will bless the Lord at all
times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul makes its boast in
the Lord; let the humble hear and be glad. Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and
let us exalt his name together! I sought the Lord, and he answered me and
delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant,
and their faces shall never be
ashamed. This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all
his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and
delivers them. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who
takes refuge in him!
Let’s pray
Father, your Word is full of the
very truths that set us free. And as we grow in greater understanding of your
truth, we are liberated in greater depths of trust, and love and worship for
Your Glory! This morning Father, Liberate us from our fleshly callous desires
and ignite a desire in us for your glory to be shown. Liberate our noncaring and joyless attitudes we may have
about you. Resurrect our love for you.
Incline our hearts to your
testimony and not to selfish gain.
Open our eyes that we may see
wonderous things from your Word today.
Unite our hearts to fear you name
Satisfy us with your steadfast
love so we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
In Christ name
Amen
Warm Up
You may be
seated. If you need a bible please raise
your hand and we’ll get one to you.For those who don’t know who I am, my name
is Eric Mattie. I serve as one of the
elders here at LEFC. I appreciate this body’s openness to different mouth for
God’s word to be preached. We each bring a different style, a different passion
to the Word. Each unique in our delivery, yet still the same Word of God
brought to this congregation for its exhorting, instruction and correction. I
praise God for that and I thank him for this opportunity.
Today’s message
is titled “When I Don’t Desire God” I’ve included notes within your bulletin if
you’d like to follow the train of thought for today go ahead and take them.
Introduction
Starting out
in Psalm 34 we see David, a man after God’s own heart, who is on the run
from Saul and just got done fleeing a
Philistine King by acting crazy, he is in a cave, blessing the Lord, exalting
God and desiring God to be glorified. It is here in verse 8 where David says
taste and see that the Lord is good.
It is an interesting comment to taste
the Lord… to see the Lord.
We see earlier
that the desire of David is the magnifying of the Lord.
He wants others
to exalt His name with him.
And he starts
the psalm with the dedication and commitment continually praise Him.
We see that he
sought the Lord. The word sought implys a searching. a seeking. he treaded and
pursued God and the result was the Lord answering. He took the pains of seeking
the Lord and while he took refuge in Him, David declares the he was blessed.
You are
probably thinking “What does this have to do about not desiring God,
obviously, David desired God! this text and your title are confusing, why are
you showing us David Eric?
If
you are anything like me, growing slowly in the Lord, reading carefully His
word, thinking quietly on what is being revealed about God and his people. If
you are anything like me, you may look at the psalms and realize there is a gap
between what the Psalmist says in his prayer life (in this case David) and what
I say in my prayer life. If you are anything like me you see an intimacy and
satisfaction in the Lord that is still foreign to you.
Maybe
up here (mind) you can amen it and you work hard at Loving God with your mind
and you have the theology or you are growing in understanding of who God. But
down here (heart) your affections are not expressed in the same terminology
found here in the Psalms. If
Psalms are to be an example and inspiration for us to worship, we need to
observe deeper than just the circumstances and the words.
We need to see the heart. For it
is the heart that in Scripture says is The
seat of emotions, the seat of knowledge
and wisdom, the seat of conscious and moral character, the seat of
DESIRE, INCLINATION AND WILL. David,
desired God here, David had affection for God here. And we might not be
desiring god this way.
If we are going to talk about
what to do when you don’t desire God we have to understand what desiring
God means. Let’s try to define it. First
To
desire means, 1. to have affection 2. to anticipate 3. to crave 4.
to yearn for 5. to long for 6. to hunger after 7 to want something badly 8.
to thirst 9.to ache 10.
to have passion for
GOD!
(PREACH)
All these things, we are to have. In our deepest recesses in our soul this
definition of desire is the deepest love we can experience. In love we have affection and anticipation
and hope and longings and cravings and passions. In love for God, He is the
object of our hope, our longings and aching and thirsting AND ALL THESE THINGS
·
And we see here in Psalm 34 when the Lord is
found and we begin to enjoy him, verse 5 says that when we look at Him, our
faces are radiant. What does
that mean? To be radiant means literally
to sparkle. Fig. they are cheerful. The radiance of God is sparkling on their
face. It reflects a delight they are experiencing in enjoying God himself. Not his hand of provision, protection and
power, but HIM In his glory, we enjoy
seeing God in His glory.
·
Such a vision, clearly doesn’t make it about
me and my being blessed. It becomes all
about him and his glory our desire becomes all about that very goal.
As a church our mission is:
By grace, we desire to glorify God
by intentionally making mature disciples of Jesus Christ.
What
the desire? To glorify God What the means to do this: by making
disciples of Jesus by grace.
In the elders efforts to Building
the Body here at LEFC, we are careful not to try and become a machined
manufactured ministry that exult the method instead of the Messiah. And while
there is some intentional actions we are doing and values we are encouraging
you to embrace, we realize that God does the work in each and every heart. He
brings the people through these doors and calls them to himself.
(EMPHASIZE) And to that means, of God being the
author and finisher of your faith that we continually call this congregation to
avail itself to the ministries that are here and start to intentionally become
a mature disciple in Christ who glorifies God the most by being satisfied in
Him to the fullest!
Such desire…. Such passion….
Do you desire God like that? To truly make your life, not about your comforts
and collections and careers, but to make your life truly satisfied in Him, so
that he might be glorified.
Such
a question, might cause some of you a
crisis of your faith. Perhaps you realize that since you crossed that line of
faith, your affections are not changed. You don’t desire God and His glory like
that. You don’t get the rejoicing in God commands and the love God with your
whole heart commands. In fact you’re unsure where this leaves you.
For
some of you, you may understand these things and you have identified a dry
spell in your desire for God. Your going through the motions but figuratively
speaking you are dying on the vine not sure what to do next. You sense an
apathy for Christ and it is beginning to be a comfortable apathy where it no
longer bothers you.
For
some you have this mental agreement but are having a tough time finding the
affectionate love for your Savior that I’m talking about.
Each of those things are what this
message addresses. In your outline:
What to Do when you Don’t desire God, we are going to spend our time with both
information of theology and then application of theology because if this
message was just about what to do, I’d fear that we create a legalistic
approach and you’d leave with more burdens on your heart and lives that are not
necessary. So in starting out lets get our theology straight by saying…
When You Don’t
Desire God…
1. Understand the Desire for God is a
Gift from God.
Like salvation, which is a gift
from God offered freely to you, Desire for God is a gift from God.
In Salvation
We are not saved because of our
physical circumstances, physical appearances, our financial records or good
nature. The bible says before Christ
We are dead in our sins and we desire the
passions of the sinful nature
“And you were
dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course
of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is
now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the
passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and
were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. Eph. 2:1-3
We are hostile to God and cannot submit to God or please him
For the mind that is set on the
flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it
cannot. 8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. Rom 8:7-8
We cannot understand the things of God in fact we view the things of
God as stupid (or folly) (or foolishness)
The natural person does not accept
the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able
to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. 1 Cor 2:14
(PREACH) But then one day, God
called out your name. Like Lazurus
“Come forth” He called out “Dead man in
Sin come forth and you became born
again. It was a gift of His Grace
“But God, being
rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we
were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you
have been saved… For by grace you have
been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of
God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” Ephesians 2:4-9
·
He opened your eyes to see your sinfulness and
the beauty of Christ death and resurrection and the offer of forgiveness and he justified you.
·
His shining of the truth in to your life is a
gift, you couldn’t figure it out unless he opened your eyes
But you are a chosen race, a royal
priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may
proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his
marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once
you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
1 Peter 2:9-10
·
Your trust in Him is given from Him he gave you
the faith to believe.
For it has been
granted to you that for the sake of
Christ you should not only believe in him
but also suffer for his sake, Phil
1:29-30
When you are
growing in Christ you are realizing that His mercies are new every morning and
as you walk in Him He is revealing more and more of His gifts to you that are
in Christ. More and more mercy poured out to you to enjoy and rest in and
praise Him for…
And here is the
gift of the Desire for God
In
Desiring God
And the Lord your God will
circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love
the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may
live. Deut 30:6-7
·
It says here God will cut away the thick
calluses on your heart (your sinful
heart )and your children's hearts, freeing you to love God, with your whole
heart and soul. You will have an affection for God fully!
And I will give you a new heart,
and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone
from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. Ezek
36:26
·
He will give us a new heart for Him and a new
spirit His spirit that is alive!!
·
He will remove the hard heartedness we had in
our sin. Our hatred for God in our being. The veil of understand in the eyes of
our hearts.
·
And at salvation you opened this word and you
began to understand His word, He opened your eyes and you saw you tasted that
the Lord was Good.
This is all a gift! To
Desire God is not something we do for ourselves, Its something He puts within
us.
Look at this verse:
Jesus said to them, "I am the
bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me
shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not
believe. John 6:35-36
Notice the words hunger and thirst! That’s desire! Jesus promises to satisfy our
spiritual hunger. He promises to quench our spiritual thirst… in HIM And as
frail and mortal people with human tendencies, we continue to hunger for God
and thirst for God.
Look at another of David’s
psalm turn to Psam 42
As a deer pants for flowing
streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.2
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. Ps
42:1-2
We see in the life of David that
he found times of satisfaction and delight in God. AND He found times where he
longed for God acknowledged his desire and God answered Him.
Restatement:
When we don’t have the desire for God and His glory we must understand the desire of God comes from God. So while we may up here say “Yes I want it, but down here we have no desire for God” we need to be aware that God’s grace enables us to have that desire.
When we don’t have the desire for God and His glory we must understand the desire of God comes from God. So while we may up here say “Yes I want it, but down here we have no desire for God” we need to be aware that God’s grace enables us to have that desire.
The very thing God works in us,
He works out of us. Notice
“Therefore, my beloved… work out your own salvation with fear and
trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his
good pleasure.” Phil 2:12-13
This
is not gaining and maintaining our salvation through works. To clarify, this
verse says God works powerfully, (actually energetically) in us. He exerts such an influence over us as to
lead to a certain result in our minds "to will and to do."
We have a part in
desiring God but it is not to create it within us.
Notice how Paul
viewed it
What then is Apollos? What is
Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I
planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor
he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. 1
Cor 3:5-7
Ill. Think of it like a farmer. He
cannot create the crop. But he
cultivates an environment to allow the crop to come. Out of the ground. He
waters, he tends weeds. That is how we are to work with God. He works in us to
work out of us the desires.
For the remaining time I want to give
you some application of God’s word in this vein: that you are weeding out
different desires and watering the desire for God that he has planted in you.
Again not for legalism, but for proper living out and growing the love for God
in you.
So
When you don’t desire God the
number 1 thing is to understand that the desire for God is a Gift from God.
#2
When You Don’t
Desire God…
2. Undermine the Desire of the Devil,
the World and Your Flesh.
To undermine something mean to
weaken or wear something down. I want to give you three tools for these three
desires that fight against our desire for God.
Desire of the Devil
There is one desire of the devil:
“Your adversary the devil prowls
around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” 1 Peter 5:8
“Then the devil comes and takes
away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved.”
Luke 8:12
As unbelievers the enemy will
do everything in his power to deny God’s existence and his ability. He deceives unbelievers and
tries to steal the Glory of the grace and goodness of God.
Yet
as believers, who have a relationship with God, the enemy cannot touch your
salvation. The Bible says that the Holy
Spirit of God has sealed us for the day of redemption. But he will work at
causing you to doubt God’s personhood and power.
The devil wants to devour your faith. He will
steal the Word of God for you. He will kill your schedule with goo things and
busyness so you are not in the Word. But
we need to stay in the word of God to grow our faith. You see the devil knows
Scripture he knows
“So faith comes from hearing, and
hearing through the word of Christ.” Rom 10:17
So here’s the first tool:
(declare) Undermine the desire of the devil by
Digging into God’s Word
When we read, and meditate and memorize
the Word of God, it strengthen and awakens our faith. Jesus says his words
are life (John 6:63). When we open this word and plan to read everyday it gives
us the hope we need. It leads us to freedom as we see His truth. It is the
source of wisdom for living. It provides for us protection we need through warnings
and command. Digging into God’s Word enables us to defeat the devil. Ultimately
His Word is the source of great and lasting joy.
“I rejoice at your word like one
who finds great spoil.” Ps 119:162
“How sweet are your words to my
taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” Ps 119:103
Therefore I love your commandments above gold, above fine gold.” Ps 119:127
Your words were found, and I ate
them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am
called by your name, O Lord, God of hosts. Jer
15:16
·
Illustration: The Chuch Swindoll encounter Mel
and I had. The question Melanie asked: “How do you maintain your passion for
Jesus after all these years. “Carve out
a portion of the day to open the Word and fellowship with Him. Wow Simple but powerful.
·
George Mueller, one of the top heroes of the
faith in my book. Famous for founding orphanages in Bristol England in the
1800’s and depended on God to supply all of his needs, on a adaily basis said
this:
“In what way shall
we attain to this settled happiness of soul? How shall we learn to enjoy God?
How shall we obtain such an all sufficient soul satisfying portion in him as
shall enable us to let go the things of this world as vain and worthless in
comparison? I answer, This happiness is to be obtained through the study of the
Holy Scriptures. God has therein revealed Himself unto us in the face of Jesus
Christ.”
Desires of the World
The Pride of Life The
world announces its independence and seeks to be idolized. It seeks S.E.L.F. in
the following ways: Success and security without God. Exaltation
and promotion of self. Live for nothing greater than self. Forsake
any help or close friendships.
These
are the very things the world preaches and promotes
We see a great description of
one man victory over worldly desires.
“By faith Moses, when he was grown
up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to be
mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.
He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of
Egypt, for he was looking to the reward. “Heb 11:24-26
·
Moses desired allegence with God and facing suffering for His Lord a greater
delight than the treasures of Egypt!. He desired it over the “fleeting
pleasures of sin.”
Look at this verse
“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing
salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly
passions,”
Titus 2:11-12
The NIV says that grace teaches,
encourages, corrects and disciplines us
to say “no” to ungodliness and worldly passions.
From this verse I give you this tool to undermine to desires of the
world:
Encouraging
yourself in the Lord
Preach the word to yourself.
Preach it hard as to correct yourself. Make the meditations of God your
content.
But I will sing of your strength;
I will sing aloud of your steadfast love in the morning. For you have been to
me a fortress and a refuge in the day of my distress. Ps 59:16-17
I will remember the deeds of the
Lord; yes, I will remember your wonders of old. I will ponder all your work,
and meditate on your mighty deeds. Ps 77:11-12
J.I. Packer says about meditation:
“Meditation is the activity of calling to mind, and thinking
over, and dwelling on and applying to oneself, the various things that one
knows about the works and ways and purposes and promises of god. It is an
activity of holy thought, consciously performed in the presence of god, as a
means of communion with God, and to let his truth make its full impact on one’s
mind and heart. It is a matter of
talking oneself about God and oneself; it is indeed, often a matter of arguing
with oneself, reasoning oneself out of moods of doubt and unbelief into a clear
apprehension of God’s greatness and reassures us—“comfort” us, in the old,
strong Bible sense of the word—as we contemplate the unsearchable riches of
divine mercy displayed in the Lord Jesus Christ.”
J.I.
Packer, KnowingGod
Encourage yourself out of the pride of life
and its promotions. Don’t let the discouragements that come from unfulfilled
worldly desires send you into a deep depression.
Undermine
the desires of the world by encouraging yourself. Preach what the Lord
promotes, Meditate on what the Lord treasures. Encourage yourself, not about
yourself and how you can do it, but how the Lord is strong and He can do
anything.
Desire of the Flesh
Back in Eph 2 we learned that
before Christ we
“lived in the passions of our
flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature
children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” Eph
2:3
“In the same way we also, when we
were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.”
Gal 4:3-4
The New
Testament over and over again, gives the picture of an unbeliever, one who is
not a Christian as a prisoner, a slave, captive, in bondage. That all mankind
men and women and children who haven’t accepted God’s gracious gift that is
Found in the Son of God are Enslaved
by sin… Entangled by Satan’s lies…. And Enjoying the desires of their sinful
nature
Before Christ
we had a sinful nature that was programmed only to yield to temptations.
Growing up in this world without a proper biblical world view and the Spirit
living inside of us we have formed
habits of filling our hunger and thirsts with all that this world has to offer.
We have learned to love the world yet as new
“Do not love the world or the
things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not
in him. For all that is in the world— the desires of the flesh and the desires
of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the
world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does
the will of God abides forever. “ 1
John 2:15-17
The Desires of the Flesh. The world appeals to the natural desires
of people and invites us to satisfy them in sinful ways. Ways to F.E.E.L. good
like: Forbidden sexual passions. Eating disorders. Extreme
gorging to fill up empty spots in life. Lazy lifestyles. We love the
world when we look to it instead of depending on God, to satisfy these desires.
The
Lust of the Eyes The
world attracts us to values and wants that are contrary to God's Word.
W.A.N.T.S. like: Wine and alcohol drunkenness. Applause and
awards. Narcissism and self trust. Temporal and material
pursuits. Sensual and erotic desires..
Now In
Christ we have a New Nature and a New Option on How to handle temptations
But thanks be to God, that you who
were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of
teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have
become slaves of righteousness. Rom
6:17-18
·
Yet we need to undermine the desires of our old
self, our fleshly habits a fleshly love and sinful affections that we are
accustom to returning to. It has become default behavior in our life and we
struggle to fight to reset our behavior and desires to be for God and His
Glory.
How can we undermine the old habits and desires of our flesh:
I’m going to give you
a starting point and then a key. It’s not my key, it’s something I heard which
is great and want to pass along to you.
How
do we undermine our Flesh? The starting point: THROUGH PRAYER! Now what I want to pass along to you is the
acronym IOUS it comes from material from John Piper and here it is. Undermine the desires of the flesh by..
Sincerely
Praying the IOUS
Pray these prayers which are found
in Scripture (PREACH)
Incline my heart to your
testimonies, and not to selfish gain! Ps 119:36
·
The first thing we need is an inclination in our
heart towards God and his word. Since you mentally desire it, sincerely, pray
it. We need to ask God to create desire for Him in places of our lives where
there is none. We need him to replace
worldly desires with desires for Him. Pray for God to do this.
Open my eyes, that I may
behold wondrous things out of your law. Ps 119:18
·
There are times when we read His word and his
word doesn’t give us the inspiration, the hope or the joy its intended to
because we are reading with our own ideas. We need to undermine this fleshly
approach by asking God to open the eyes of our heart. When we are in dry times with God and
starving for something, cry out to him to give you this let these prayers be
your fervent desire in dry times, don’t let yourself off the hook just because
your time with God is up, bring your
bible to work then and keep praying.
Unite my heart to fear
your name. Ps 86:11
·
Our hearts are divided with good cares like
family, and marriage and friends, but also with bad cares, like the fearing
your finances, anxiety over your children and stress over your job. There are
times when parts of our heart are desiring God in that area, and there are
times when it is not. We need our heart to be unified. Sincerely pray in order
to unit every portion of your heart to Him
Satisfy us in the morning
with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Ps
90:14
·
All that we want for the outcome of undermining
our flesh is the desire for God. That we
would find satisfaction and delight in His glory. Pray to this end!
Do you see what’s going on? If
there is a disconnect from what the Psalmist pray and what you pray, begin to
sincerely pray they’re prayers. And it starts with these prayers of Desire.
Write these verses down. Find other verses and prayers in the Bible to emulate
So undermine your fleshly desire
through prayer
There they are three tools or
strategies to undermine the desires that you and I fight against everyday.
Digging into the Word, Encouraging yourself in the Lord, and Sincerely pray the
IOUS
Now we’ve looked at the weeding
out the desires that fight against the desire for God.
Let’s look briefly at the
last point
When You Don’t
Desire God…
3. Undergird the Desire for God with Godly Training.
Rather train yourself for godliness; for while bodily
training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds
promise for the present life and also for the life to come 1 Tim 4:7-8
·
the apostle alludes here to the gymnastic
exercises among the Greeks, which were intended as a preparation for their
contests at the public games.
·
We are to discipline ourselves in godly
activity that will undergird or
strengthen or support our desire for God. Ultimately to strengthen our whole
Christian life.
Specifically today, we are going to look at ways to train
our desires to grow in our passion for God
Three suggestions,
but make space in your notes because I’m going to say a bit you’ll want to
write down.
First to train
your desire for God by
Inspiring Yourself with godly books and biographies
First biographies.
Out side of God Himself and His
very words, Biographies of godly Christians, will inspire your life to live at
a level not easily viewed in our celebrity saturated society.
When you read their writings and
see how God worked and moved them, there is a depth that we are missing in
today’s American Christians. This depth is needed in our desire and worship.
They lived full lives for Christ they had full thoughts of a Big God, sovereign
and majestic…
In our society
we have watched every celebrity compromise fall and disappoint our notions of
them. And they are supposedly living the American dream and fulfilling the
desires of their own life. We need to be
inspired by people who even with their flaws, lived a life of godliness and
gave glory to God and have writings that
can stir our inner thoughts.
You
might say, great where do I start. Here’s the list:
Start with Hebrews chapter 11 look
at the great lives of the Bible. Get bible studies or books about them. (EX)
or I’d encourage you with “The
Swans are Not Silent: series by John Piper. You can buy the hard copy but I
have to mention many are available for free download. At Desiring God.org In
this series he covers three lives per book and focuses on specific aspects of
their life. There has been many people he has written about like:
William Tyndale, Adoniram Judson, and John Paton John Bunyan, William Cowper, and David Brainerd
John Newton, Charles Simeon, and William
Wilberforce John Calvin Martin Luther and Augustine
Or you could go onto entire books about one persons
life. You might want to start in our own library down stairs (EX) They are simple booka a quick read.
If you are not a book person, you can download sermons
or entire conferences about the life of Jonathan Edwards. William
Wilburforce and others at the websight I
mentioned. You can also check out the movie “The End of the Spear” about the
life of Jim Elliot or The 2005 movie called Luther which, for me was very
inspiring.
If you’re still skeptical about this approach to
flaming your desire about God, consider these verses
By faith Abel offered to God a
more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as
righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith,
though he died, he still speaks.
Heb 11:4
Remember your leaders, those who
spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and
imitate their faith. Heb
13:7
Inspire yourself with the examples
of Godly lives, see how God’ s grace is displayed in their live and desire for
Him to do the same for you.
Second Godly Books
What I mean by godly books I mean
serious books about the bible and thinking.
Great are the works of the Lord,
studied by all who delight in them. Ps 111:2.
·
Notice those who delight in the works of God,
study them. They think about them it causes them to have a bigger view of God
it causes them to worship deeper, love more passionately and to desire and
hunger more sincerely.
You
might say “what about my devotional books and light Christian reading?”
Consider the words of C.S. Lewis and see the challenge within these words…
“For my own part,
I tend to find doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the
devotional books. And I rather suspect that the same experience may await many
others. I believe that many who find that ‘nothing happens’ when they sit down
or kneel down to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden
while they work through a bit of tough theology… with pencil in their hand.”
C.S.
Lewis
What book would I recommend: Wayne
Grudem’s Systematic Theology. Its very reader friendly to a Sunday morning
crowd. John Calvin’s “Institutes” can be finished in 9 months reading 15
minutes a day for 6 days a week. Pipers
Desiring God. Jonathan Edwards Freedom of the Will C.S. Lewis’s Weight of Glory is a small book
but great read.
Any other recommendations… see
Pastor Kyle’s book of the quarter next week…
Ok train your desire for God by Inspiring Yourself with
godly books and biographies
Second suggestion
Train your Desire for God by
Reaching Out and Grow with Others
“And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and
good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but
encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.”
Heb 10:24-25
·
Our life is not designed by God to live
individually. We need each other.
·
You need others in your life that you can grow
with,
·
Others that will stir you up in love.
·
Others that will keep you accountable.
·
Others who can speak into your live.
“But God has so composed the body… that there may be no division in the body,
but that the members may have the same care for one another.” 1
Cor 12:24-26
Build into
your life a caring for the people around you and where they are at in their
desire for God.
Be
intentional in finding someone to grow with. Don’t soften it with, “Let’s got
out for coffee” Tell them up front “I need
to grow in my walk I’m looking at you do to it with What do you say?”
Be as clear as a bell.
Final suggestion
Train your Desire for God by
Escaping the Everyday Demand
Luke
5:16
But
he would withdraw to desolate places and pray.
I don’t have a lot of time to build
this point so let me just say.
Take a time to be unrushed. And get
before God. Masybe it’s a Saturday
morning or a week night, a weekend or a days getaway. Escape to refresh. Escape
to connect. Just you and Jesus. Examine your spiritual health. Evaluate your
life in light of one of these questions from Don Whitney’s book 10
Question to diagnose your spiritual health
1. Do you thirst
for God?
2.
Are you governed increasingly by God’s Word?
3.
Are you more loving?
4.
Are you more sensitive to God’s presence?
5.
Do you have a growing concern for the spiritual and temporal needs of others?
6.
Do you delight in the Bride of Christ?
7.
Are the spiritual disciplines increasingly important to you?
8.
Do you still grieve over sin?
9. Are you a quicker forgiver?
10.
Do you yearn for heaven and to be with Jesus?
These are questions to water your desire. To train you in
godliness.
Conclusion
When you don’t desire God remember three things Understand that the desire for God is a gift
from God. Undermine the desire of the devil, the world and your flesh. And
Undergird your Desire for God with Godly Training. Let’s pray
“Father work deeply in our hearts to have our hunger and desires be upon you
and your glory. Grant within us a deeper love fpor you so that when we are
satisfied in you your are most glorified! In Jesus name