by Dave Miller
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Be honest. If this is the first time you have wrestled with our place then, like me, you balked at the idea. At the very core of our hearts, we, like Adam and Eve, desire our way, our authority, our glory over God’s. Our attempts at fame and recognition only bring the death, mourning, crying, and pain that God seeks to take away in the end. We settle, as CS Lewis wrote, for mud pies, when God is offering us a holiday at sea. In view of our glorious God, let us no longer be far too easily pleased.
There was a merchant who was looking for pearls. One day he found a pearl like nothing he had ever seen before. He recognized its incredible worth. This one pearl was such a great find that he went and sold EVERYTHING he had just so he could buy it.[1] Jesus said, that is the value of the kingdom of heaven. At the center of that kingdom is a God worth everything and became man to ransomed a people for himself.
AW Tozer understood the joy of God in ways that few will, but all could. He wrote:
If we co-operate with Him in loving obedience God will manifest Himself to us, and that manifestation will be the difference between a nominal Christian life and a life radiant with the light of His face. [2]
It is on our obedience that we demonstrate our desire to give everything to him. Do you want a life radiant with the light of God’s face?
Then let’s return again to the preacher I heard after returning from Africa with a heart longing for the global God I had encountered. John Piper said:
God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. [3]
Looking back I now connect Jesus’ parables to Pastor John Piper’s teaching. I read his work Desiring God where he wrote:
We praise what we enjoy because the delight is incomplete until it is expressed in praise. If we were not allowed to speak of what we value and celebrate what we love and praise what we admire, our joy would not be full. So if God loves us enough to make our joy full, He must not only give us Himself; He must also win from us the praise of our hearts— not because He needs to shore up some weakness in Himself or compensate for some deficiency, but because He loves us and seeks the fullness of our joy that can be found only in knowing and praising Him, the most magnificent of all Beings. If He is truly for us, He must be for Himself! [4]
If God is for himself, then it is only right that we be for him as well. May we see the supremacy of God before all other things on our journey to an eternity filled with people from every tribe, tongue, and nation gathered around the throne joining the point of life, the worship of our God. May the goal of every action, thought, and desire be our Glorious God. May we cast aside all, and give away everything that keep us from this pearl of great price and treasure hidden in the field.
Forgive the extended quotation but the words of AW Tozer are timely still. Few have made this point in recent times as he:
The idea of cultivation and exercise, so dear to the saints of old, has now no place in our total religious picture. It is too slow, too common. We now demand glamour and fast flowing dramatic action. A generation of Christians reared among push buttons and automatic machines is impatient of slower and less direct methods of reaching their goals. We have been trying to apply machine-age methods to our relations with God. We read our chapter, have our short devotions and rush away, hoping to make up for our deep inward bankruptcy by attending another gospel meeting or listening to another thrilling story told by a religious adventurer lately returned from afar.
The tragic results of this spirit are all about us. Shallow lives, hollow religious philosophies, the preponderance of the element of fun in gospel meetings, the glorification of men, trust in religious externalities, quasi-religious fellowships, salesmanship methods, the mistaking of dynamic personality for the power of the Spirit: these and such as these are the symptoms of an evil disease, a deep and serious malady of the soul.
For this great sickness that is upon us no one person is responsible, and no Christian is wholly free from blame. We have all contributed, directly or indirectly, to this sad state of affairs. We have been too blind to see, or too timid to speak out, or too self-satisfied to desire anything better than the poor average diet with which others appear satisfied. To put it differently, we have accepted one another's notions, copied one another's lives and made one another's experiences the model for our own. And for a generation the trend has been downward. Now we have reached a low place of sand and burnt wire grass and, worst of all, we have made the Word of Truth conform to our experience and accepted this low plane as the very pasture of the blessed.
It will require a determined heart and more than a little courage to wrench ourselves loose from the grip of our times and return to Biblical ways. But it can be done. Every now and then in the past Christians have had to do it. History has recorded several large-scale returns led by such men as St. Francis, Martin Luther and George Fox. Unfortunately there seems to be no Luther or Fox on the horizon at present. Whether or not another such return may be expected before the coming of Christ is a question upon which Christians are not fully agreed, but that is not of too great importance to us now.
What God in His sovereignty may yet do on a world-scale I do not claim to know: but what He will do for the plain man or woman who seeks His face I believe I do know and can tell others. Let any man turn to God in earnest, let him begin to exercise himself unto godliness, let him seek to develop his powers of spiritual receptivity by trust and obedience and humility, and the results will exceed anything he may have hoped in his leaner and weaker days.
Any man who by repentance and a sincere return to God will break himself out of the mold in which he has been held, and will go to the Bible itself for his spiritual standards, will be delighted with what he finds there.
Let us say it again: The Universal Presence is a fact. God is here. The whole universe is alive with His life. And He is no strange or foreign God, but the familiar Father of our Lord Jesus Christ whose love has for these thousands of years enfolded the sinful race of men. And always He is trying to get our attention, to reveal Himself to us, to communicate with us. We have within us the ability to know Him if we will but respond to His overtures. (And this we call pursuing God!) [5]
I don’t know where you are in your walk with Christ. If you are anything like me you are often far too easily pleased. You look for quick fixes and automatic religion. You clamor about on spiritual highs and wonder where the book of Acts went and question whether you can ever be a part of something like that again.
I am just a small-town boy. But our God has taken me on a journey that I have no intention of ever leaving! Will you join me to seek His face? Will you turn to God in earnest and begin the exercise unto godliness, seek to develop your powers of spiritual receptivity by trust and obedience and humility? If so, I can most assuredly say with Tozer, the results will exceed anything you may have hoped in your leaner and weaker days.
God’s story of Glory is marching to forever will you join the call to this Glorious purpose? If yes, then look no further than Jesus to begin.
Until there's #NoPlaceLeft...
[1]The Parable of the Pearl of Great value was told by Jesus and recorded by Matthew in his gospel. Matthew 13:45.
[3]Piper, John (2011-01-18). Desiring God, Revised Edition: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist (Kindle Locations 4980-4981). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
[4]Piper, John (2011-01-18). Desiring God, Revised Edition: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist (Kindle Locations 4980-4981). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
[5]Tozer, A. W. (Aiden Wilson) (2011-03-24). The Pursuit of God (p. 51-52). Kindle Edition.
Sentergy: When Jesus, People, Practice and Theology Collide
Chapter 1: The Glory of God
Chapter 2: The Glory of God in Jesus
Chapter 3: The Glory of God in the Gospel
Chapter 4: The Glory of God in Disciple Making
Chapter 5: If You Love Me You Will Obey What I Command
Chapter 6: Monday Morning Disciple Making
Chapter 7: Monday Morning Disciple Making Part 2
Interlude: The Father's Heart
Chapter 8: All Scripture All People All Places by Carter Cox
Conclusion: The Lump In Your Throat