An Invitation to Abide

Carrying His Heart in Our Longing

“Father, thank you for the invitation. It’s Your conversation, help us join You.”

Even in the midst of our frail humanity or heroic spirituality, God is not needy. He is the Living God who is ecstatic, self-giving, and overflowing with love.

C.S. Lewis highlights this in The Screwtape Letters when he writes:

“…He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself—creatures, whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them, but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over.”

He seeks to curate the hearts of those in Him, knowing our ache for deep union with Himself, and we can trust He will bring that about in His way.

“For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.” — Romans 8:29-30

Christ illuminates this to our broken hearts. It’s a need of my own He has been faithful to minister to. That is His gentle, tender love. I believe what God has revealed to me is how He wants people around me to experience Him in my longing, in my ache for Him.

God is raising up people in His church to return simply to carrying His heart. A people holding up His torch, trusting that He will light the flame. We need spiritual voices shaped by humility and obedience that can only come from a heart continually looking unto Christ, being transformed day by day. Renewal from the dogmas of culture into quiet passionate hearts that contemplate and behold the mysteries of Christ. Yes, biblical orthodoxy, and outward practice of the good gifts He’s given us, but not at the expense of enjoying the Father’s pure delighting in us which stems from the overflow of that for His Son.

I pray that God nurtures in our souls an ache for deep enjoying of Him now, because it is that which will continue on in future glory.

I am longing to become this kind of soul, and not just for my benefit, but for others. I ask God to continue to bring about these particular individuals in my life, because they draw me to Him. And I trust He will help me become for others what they are for me.

Souls that carry the humble heart of Christ and long to even when they don’t.

There is humility in the lives of those who long to carry Christ’s burning heart.

The longing is enough, it’s magnetizing, attractive. It’s His presence in and of itself. It’s not falling short of love that kills the church, but our being okay with it.

I see a future where God restores the kindling heart of zealous, self-assuring Christians whose hearts are wayward from His, in the honest, humble, admitted, longing for Christ and His heart. It is, and it will, be enough.