I am now old enough to know the difference between the longings of youth and the hopes of old age. I trust that I have a couple more decades to see how much further my education will go in this, but I share some thoughts on this topic because I am sure there is a reader out there who struggles with letting yourself feel longings for things that are good and real because they feel hopeless at the same time.
Today’s question is, what does the child of God do with a heart full of hurts and longings when life-experience has trained us that most people are quite willing to block our goals for satisfaction? Do we bury the longings because it hurts too much to keep feeling hope for things that will never happen? Do we bury the hurts and disappointments because they seem to put us in a holding pattern of unfilled desires?
Or is there a way to face longings with God that does not require denial of anything, whether disappointments or desires, but leads us to a place of peaceful rest that God is truly working all things together for good in our lives in ways we could never accomplish by anything we tried to do in our own strength?
Ah, so you guessed which of the three choices I am going to focus on? Well, let’s aim for the bull’s eye and see how close we get.
For context, I am going through some painful life-experiences. Lots of attachment-pain. Lots of bewilderment. And lots of triggering my propensity to fix things. Enough time has gone by that things have solidified to the point that, humanly speaking, it is hopeless. Enough said. I am sure many people can relate.
I always begin my time with God telling Father everything I am feeling about life. It isn’t so he is well aware of my thoughts and feelings on the matter, but that I have opened my heart to him about whatever he has to say. As I then listen to what he speaks from his word, he always responds directly to me as his child, and always takes me places in his truth I couldn’t have known in advance. Here is how God met me today.
The first thing God did this morning in my time with him was connect David’s paragraph of prayer in Psalm 119:81-88 with the Beatitudinal reminder that:
·
letting myself accept my poverty of spirit
in fixing broken relationships
·
and letting myself mourn both the hurt to
me and the failures in me
·
and acknowledging in meekness that I
cannot fix any of this but can surrender myself to the authority of Christ who
can fix all things
·
and then fully receiving the feeling of hunger
and thirst for the righteousness of how Jesus would do things if I relied
on him
· will lead to satisfaction in righteousness however Jesus chooses to fulfill his promise to do so.[1]
With that in mind, I began prayer-journaling through this verse:
My soul longs for your salvation;
I hope in your word.[2]
My “soul” is my person. The essence of me. It is where I think, feel, have desires, and feel my conscience directing me for good or ill. It is ME. To long for something from my soul means it is the deepest most real kind of longing for what is real (as contrasted to the frivolous and superficial longings for BEEPS[3]).
“Longs” is where the battle is. We cannot let ourselves long for things we believe are hopeless. Even when I am constantly trying to figure out what to do, it is because I have a hope-springs-eternal belief that if I just do the right thing, or say the right words, or avoid the wrong things or the wrong words, people won’t reject me. As much as I have failed at it, that ALAON[4] propensity is a strong belief in my sark (flesh) that believes I can do it. Because I believe it (as wrong as that is), I keep trying to make it happen.
But to say that I “long” for Yahweh’s salvation means that I have given up trying to cover up my hopelessness with trying harder. I have accepted that I am never going to get certain things I want by trying to get them. However, instead of believing that my apparent 100% failure rate is hopeless, I have been blessed by God to “see” with my heart, soul, and mind, HIS salvation, or HIS way of doing things.
This means that, trying to trust God while having an inner belief that it is hopeless is not the least bit what David is expressing in his prayer. There are two things David knows that lets him fully feel his longings without despair.
First, there is the fact that this is “your salvation”, meaning, God’s salvation. The only way we can fully give up any hope of fixing things ourselves and fully surrender to the authority of Jesus Christ is if we have come to that Beatitudinal place where we KNOW God’s salvation! When we know the promises of God in our salvation, we can let ourselves long for the fullness of that even when all we feel is a “hunger and thirst for righteousness” that has no hint of satisfaction whatsoever. The satisfaction is in “your salvation”, and since it is Yahweh who owns this salvation, it is ours in Jesus’ name!
Second, the way that David knew to long for Yahweh’s salvation was because his experience of “your word” was filled with “hope”. Church folk who cannot let themselves long for the full experience of their salvation have an inner belief that living by God’s word is hopeless. Surprising? Find yourself arguing against the idea? All you need to do is look inside at anything that feels hopeless and ask Father what promises of his word you believe are impossible for you. If any of us cannot let ourselves long for things that are part and parcel of our salvation, we have a problem with hopelessness in relation to God’s word.
There is something that every child of God MUST let happen in our lives. We must let ourselves feel a hunger and thirst for the righteousness of God in what we are going through that is founded on our “hope in your word”. It is by God’s word that we understand “your salvation”. And when God’s word gives us understanding of God’s salvation (not our sarky version of it), we KNOW we can let ourselves hunger and thirst to experience righteousness in any situation and that longing “SHALL BE SATISFIED”![5]
This sharing flowed out of my time with God this morning as I processed my own thoughts and feelings on this matter. Relating to David’s prayer through the first four Beatitudes gives me a sense of what Father is saying to me, along with a good clue as to what he is doing. The second four Beatitudes tell me where God is going with this.
I am going to join God’s work today by continuing to pray through this Scripture in my downstairs prayer time, making it absolutely personal to my situation, and letting myself long for the realities of God’s gift of salvation while feeling the loss and grief that goes with the love-territory, so to speak.
I will attach to my longing for God’s salvation by
confessing my hope in his word and living in expectation for how he will “Satisfy
us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all
our days.”[6]
And I know he will satisfy that longing!
© 2022 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K
1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted,
Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English
Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles,
a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)
[1]
Based on the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:1-12.
[2]
Psalm 119:81
[3]
BEEPS is an acronym we learned from our Life Model family that summarizes
addiction to Behaviors, Experiences, Events, People, and/or Substances.
[4]
ALAON = Attachment Light Always On, as contrasted with ALAOFF – Attachment Light
Always Off. A healthy attachment light, or healthy attachment, knows when to
attach and when to rest, but many of us have failed to experience attachment
like that.
[5]
Yes, that is the direct promise of the fourth Beatitude, “Blessed are those who
hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied” (Matthew
5:6).
[6]
Psalm 90:14. Note: the expression “steadfast love” translates the Hebrew
word “hesed” which is that distinctive kind of love God has for the
people who have covenanted themselves to him. It doesn’t do justice to use only
our English word “love” to translate this word, so it is partnered with
adjectives like “steadfast”, or “unfailing”, to signify that God
will always perform his covenant and will never fail to do so. “Hesed”
is the Old Testament partner to the “agapè” love of the New Testament.
