God Himself

Hi Team Chill! 

Hope everyone is having a great week so far! (Joseph, how was moving in?)

I've been revisiting some old journals of mine and a little nugget I read stuck out to me. It was from a prayer encouragement called "When We're Long Distance" from an RHTS. The speaker was sharing about what genuine love for God is like. Six years later, this is still something I am trying to keep in mind and strive for in this journey of faith and servitude and I felt God teaching me this through prayer, classes, and encouragements at NYTS as well. As I reach a time of uncertainty (i.e. the changes that come with the new school year; what to do after graduation, etc), I find myself asking God for a lot of things and worrying about a lot of things, and that yearning for God Himself gets put aside.

Here's some food for thought:

When we look at the story where Jesus feeds the 5,000, the 5,000 were fed, but later on, only three saw Lord Jesus transfigure. In other words, only three felt true satisfaction and were able to say, "It is good for us to be here." The 5,000 ate of His blessings and were made full, but they eventually left Jesus when His teachings got more difficult to swallow. Likewise, many of us receive great blessings from God. But none of those are God Himself. Those are His gifts but they are not Him.

Having a truly intimate love for God, we do not just love God's blessings and His grace, but we desire God for who He is. But sometimes, our love is not directed at God, but at His blessings. How rooted is our faith and how much do we truly love Him? If times get rough and the blessings go, does our faith also go? If we only go to God to gain blessings of peace, joy, and comfort, our relationship is not true love at all, because we only want what He can give us. God has mercy on us so He gives us these things, but we need to think about what matters most to us in our relationship with God. Do we serve only expecting Him to reward us in return? Our answers to these questions tell us whether our relationship is shallow or deep.

What we should long for really isn't those blessings. We cannot simply be happy and content with those blessings alone. Lord wants us to know Him and love Him much more intimately than that, for our own benefit–that we can receive full satisfaction.

Let us fall in love with His voice, His heart & mind, and as much of Him as our limited beings can gather. He seems like He is far away, but He is actually just a profound prayer away. The gifts are nice, but He is far, far, better.

O God, You are my God;

Early will I seek You;

My soul thirsts for You;

My flesh longs for You

In a dry and thirsty land

Where there is no water.

[Psalm 63:1]

-Ruth