Desire, Discipline, Delight part 5

In the same way that our bodies know they have a need, the inward consciousness of spiritual need creates spiritual desire. The more we respond to this spiritual need, the stronger its cravings become. With time, we are driven to prayer and the Word because of those cravings. But if you have been on a spiritual diet, you no longer feel those cravings, so we are admonished by Jesus to make ourselves pray. We should naturally have spiritual desire. It’s part of the new birth. 1 Peter 2:2 “… like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the Word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation.” 
 

Birth, whether spiritual or physical, creates a craving for nourishment. The absence of this holy desire in the heart is proof either of a decline in spiritual desire, or that the new birth has never taken place. Which is it for you? Heaven-given appetites are proof of a renewed heart. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be filled.” 

Once that desire is great enough, we will pay the price of discipline, and once that’s paid, we come to the place of delighting – which then grants us the desire we had in the first place. Habakkuk 3:17-18 “Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, 18 yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.”
 

The word, ‘rejoice,’ in verse 18 is actually the word “leap,” or “to jump up in the air.” The word joy means to spin around with joy. Habakkuk had found that many of his prayers had gone unanswered; there were many problems in the land, yet he ends his book with these words: “Even though everything on God’s earth was going wrong – I am still going to enjoy my God. I’m going to jump as high as I can for God and come down spinning.” When you make up your mind that you are going to delight yourself in Him, you can have a big time in Him.
 

I love telling this true story about a man who had raised his son from the time the boy was about 5. The mother had died and dad raised him in church. He was a good father. When the boy was about 17 (it seemed overnight), he quit going to church. He told his dad he was becoming an atheist, and he got to running around. It broke his dad’s heart; he would come to church so broken down he couldn’t even worship God. As others worshiped and praised, he would sit and weep.
 

Two years had passed and the boy was now 19. One of the man’s friends, whose son was his son’s friend, called one night. “I don’t know if I should tell you this or not – yet I’m a dad, too, and thought you would want to know. My son told me your son is getting ready to marry a woman he met in a bar; she’s a prostitute in her early 30’s.”

That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. That dad got in his car and started down the highway, so burdened that he didn’t realize how fast he was going. When he came to a corner, he couldn’t make it. His car spun out and hit a tree. The man was merely bruised and scratched. When he crawled out of the car, still on his hands and knees, he said, “The Spirit of God came upon me and spoke to me, and said, ‘Do you realize that there is not one thing you can do to save your son? Go to church and leave your boy to Me. Start worshiping Me. Make Me your delight.’” 

That man took God at His Word. The next Sunday he went to church… and something happened. When he picked up the song book, and started worshiping God, the Spirit of God came upon him. He stayed in that attitude of delighting in God. He resumed his life of worship. Less than one month later  – this had been going on for two years – in less than one month – his son came to church, walked down to the altar and recommitted his life to God. He dumped that woman.

It only took God one month to do what two years of worry could not do. As soon as God changed the dad’s motive, the prayer was answered. 

Let’s be like Hannah and Habakkuk; let’s worship God no matter what and leave the rest to Him. END