A Want To Want God

I read this poem from A.W. Tozer's The Pursuit of God today on Justin Tailor's Blog and thought you would be well served to read it as well. Love you All!

O God, I have tasted Your goodness,
and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more.
I am painfully conscious of my need of further grace.
I am ashamed of my lack of desire.
O God, the Triune God,
I want to want You;
I long to be filled with longing;
I thirst to be made more thirsty still.
Show me Your glory, I pray,
so I may know You indeed.
Begin in mercy a new work of love within me…
Give me grace to rise and follow You up from this misty lowland
where I have wandered so long.
In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Harris on Need

Click Here for excellent thoughts on God's provision, our definition of need vs. the Biblical definition of need. Here's a couple quotes:

"Our definition of need has been super-sized by our culture of consumption.

So we think that we need not only to eat, but to eat food that we love, and preferably to eat out. We think that we not only need to be clothed, but to wear the latest fashion and have five of everything. We think we need more than just a roof over our heads. We want a bigger house, with a big yard. We think we need multiple cars, four-wheel drive vehicles to drive on paved roads."

"One of the potential spiritual benefits of an economic recession is that as we tighten our budgets, as we change our lifestyle, we can actually begin getting a clearer picture of what we actually need. We have a lot more than we really need."

On Heaven

Our pastor is doing a series on Heaven and it has brought to mind many of my favorite sermons and writings on Heaven, so I thought I would share a few.

This is a minute clip from Dr. John Piper. A thought all believers MUST think through..."Would You Want Heaven Without Jesus?"


Secondly, a 3 minute clip, also by Dr. John Piper on "Why the Fear of Hell Won't Scare People Into Heaven"



Third is a thought from C.S. Lewis out of The Problem of Pain (pg 145-147) emphasis mine.

"You may think that there is another reason for our silence about heaven-namely, that we do not really desire it. But that may be an illusion. What I am now going to say is merely an opinion of my own without the slightest authority, which I submit to the judgment of better Christians and better scholars than myself. There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else. You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: But most of your friends do not see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that. Again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw-but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realise that this landscape meant something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported. Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of-something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through.... Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it-tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest-if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself-you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say "Here at last is the thing I was made for." We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all."

What are your thoughts?

Where to Start

I am not sure where to start exactly since we have been out so long. So I will start with today. You already know we have been sick, we have had Christmas and New Years, Justus turned 7 months and a trip to Midland sooo there is not much else to tell besides some random details, and well, I am not sure if those will ever make to the ol' blog....I will spare you, thank me later.

I finished a book today and started a new one. The book I finished, Shopping for Time, How To Do it ALL and Not Be Overwhelmed by Carolyn Mahaney is an excellent resource for women who feel like there plate is always full and women who want to avoid this pattern. It is easy to read, loaded with practical application and full of Biblical tools to prioritize your time. It was so good that I am going to outline it and refer to the outline monthly.

The book I started is Fanny J. Crosby, An Autobiography. I am five chapters in and loving it. Fanny Crosby is a beloved Hymn Writer. She has been blind since she was 6 weeks old when a physician, who thought he was treating her eye for a cold, used the wrong solution and blinded her eyes for life. She wrote over 8,000 hymns, many of which you might recognizes...Blessed Assurance and To God Be the Glory to name a couple. I have only read up until she is 12 but so far her contentment with her blindness has blown me away. This is a poem she wrote when she was eight,

Oh what a happy soul I am,

Although I cannot see;

I am resolved that in this world

Contented I will be.

How many blessings I enjoy,

That other people don't;

To weep and sigh because I'm blind,

I cannot, and I won't."

One of the goals I set when I was about to have Justus was to read more. I want to always be learning and growing. It is not always easy to do this while juggling the home, the boys and other work. I read a quote by Dr. John Piper that has spurred me on in my goal to read more. I saw it on the Girl Talk blog and it was so timely.

He recommends setting a goal to read for 15 minutes a day:

“Suppose you read slowly like I do--maybe about the same speed that you speak--200 words a minute. If you read fifteen minutes a day for one year (say just before supper, or just before bed), you will read 5,475 minutes in the year. Multiply that by 200 words a minute, and you get 1,095,000 words that you would read in a year. Now an average serious book might have about 360 words per page. So you would have read 3,041 pages in one year. That’s ten very substantial books. All in fifteen minutes a day.”(When I Don't Desire God, p. 129)