LONGING
FOR FURTHER STILL
BREAD
1 As
the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. 2 My
soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with
God? Psalms 42:1-2 (NIV)
1 O
God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body
longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water. Psalms 63:1 (NIV)
11 You
have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your
presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand. Psalms 16:11 (NIV)
8 “For
my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the
LORD. 9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my
ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:8-9 (NIV)
14 “And
these are but the outer fringe of his works; how faint the whisper we hear of
him! Who then can understand the thunder
of his power?” Job 26:14 (NIV)
15 Then
Moses said to him, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up
from here. 16 How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and
with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your
people from all the other people on the face of the earth?” 17 And the LORD said to Moses, “I will do the very thing
you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name.” 18 Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.” 19 And the LORD said, “I will cause all my goodness to
pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence.
I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom
I will have compassion. 20 But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may
see me and live.” 21 Then
the LORD said, “There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. 22 When
my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my
hand until I have passed by. 23 Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back;
but my face must not be seen.” Exodus
33:15-23 (NIV)
7 But
whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider
everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus
my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I
may gain Christ 9 and
be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law,
but that which is through faith in Christ--the righteousness that comes from
God and is by faith. 10 I
want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of
sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, to attain to the
resurrection from the dead. 12 Not
that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I
press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers, I do not consider
myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is
behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which
God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. 15 All of us who are mature should
take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that
too God will make clear to you. 16 Only
let us live up to what we have already attained. Philippians 3:7-16 (NIV)
12 “‘Then
you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You
will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 14 I
will be found by you,’ declares the LORD.
Jeremiah 29:12-14 (NIV)
28 But
as for me, it is good to be near God. I have made the Sovereign LORD my refuge;
I will tell of all your deeds. Psalms
73:28 (NIV)
BUTTER
“To know God and love
God always produces a longing to know God and love God more. It’s inevitable.
For if we really know him in some measure, it implies that he has made himself
known to us (Luke 10:21-22; Matthew 16:17). And if we really love him in some
measure, it implies that he first loved us (1 John 4:19).”
John Bloom
“If
you wish to know God, you must know his Word.
If you wish to perceive His power,
you must see how He works by his Word. If you wish to know
His purpose before it comes to pass, you can only discover it by His Word.”
C.H. Spurgeon
“For the highest good
any of God’s saints will ever experience is to be near God (Psalms 73:28).”
John Bloom
“None honors God like
the thirst of desire.” Frederick Faber
“You’ll know your heart’s been set aflame by the
fire of revival when nothing else matters to you as much as He does – and your love
for Him.” Anne Graham Lotz
“I hear some speak or sing about
intimacy with God, I sometimes wonder if we grasp what a real experience of
intimacy with him is truly like. A dimension of appropriate (biblical) fear
often seems lacking. I know the apostle John wrote that ‘perfect love casts out
fear’ (1 John 4:18). But fear of condemnation in judgment isn’t the kind of
fear I mean. I’m talking about the fear the apostle John experienced when the
risen Son of God — the same person on whom John leaned during the Last Supper
(John 13:25) — manifested himself to him on Patmos and caused him to ‘[fall] at
his feet as though dead’ (Revelation 1:17)….To be intimate with God is to know
his mercy, grace, patience, love, faithfulness, and forgiveness, and it is to know God’s
severity and wrath against sin with reverent fear.” John Bloom
“This crisis of faith sent grasping hands in search of His loving
grip. Wrestling in this wasteland led me
to know God in a deeper way. Day by day
I came to trust the kind of love that never fails and never leaves. And this same love is yours in Christ
too. Even when we’re afraid.”
Jolene Underwood
“To encounter the living
God is to get a glimpse of the Source of all joy and pleasure (Psalms 16:11),
all hope (Romans 15:13), all power (Job 42:1-2; Luke 1:37; Revelation
1:8), and indestructible life (Hebrews 7:16; John 3:16). It is to get a glimpse, in the words of C.S.
Lewis, of ‘the place where all the beauty came from’ (Till We
Have Faces, 86). And to get such a
glimpse, a taste, an apprehension of this magnitude of glory can’t help but
leave us longing for more.” John Bloom
“The
end of learning is to know God, and out of that knowledge to love Him and
imitate Him.” John
Milton
“Those who know God will be humble. Those who know themselves cannot be
proud.” John Trapp
“Jesus wants
to do much more with our lives than simply meeting our needs and making us feel
better….I am deeply motivated to know God.
I want to know Him as He truly is, not through the distorted reflection
of those who call themselves by His Name.
And I want to make Him known to others as accurately, winsomely, clearly
and compellingly as I can.” Anne Graham Lotz
“God
is the kindest person in existence, and the most severe. In Christ, he is
‘gentle and lowly’ (Matthew 11:29), and he is ‘the Almighty’ whose wrath is
terrifying (Revelation 1:8; 6:15-17). He is ‘a friend of . . . sinners’ (Luke
7:34), but only to ‘those who fear him’ (Psalms 25:14)….His nearness really is
our greatest good.” Jon Bloom
HEART
SAVOR
- · We will never get to the end of knowing God – His ways are infinitely higher than our own - yet we are to longingly desire to know Him more.
- · God blesses our desires to know Him further.
- · His nearness to us is for our greatest good. It is the cup which overflows. It is the soul’s satisfaction with nothing wanting. It is why we are here. Draw near to Him and He will draw near to you and tell you great and unsearchable things that you do not know. “22 let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. 23 Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.” Hebrews 10:22-23 (NIV)
