Craving...

Remember when you were a kid and you had a bad case of puppy love?  Now of course, back then, it was true, unadulterated, life long lasting love, right?!? Only now, as an adult, you can look back and see it was puppy love. 

Remember how it felt?  You couldn’t wait to see the object of your affection.  To have him pass a note to you in class.  To see him walking in the hall or to catch a glimpse of him on the playground.  That butterfly feeling.  That jump out of bed because today is a school day and you’re going to get to see him feeling.

That’s what I thought of when I read Psalm 84:2.  Now hopefully you don’t stop reading here because you think I’m silly and immature to compare God’s Word and our God created longing for a relationship with Him to puppy love – hear me out…

I looked up this scripture in 3 different translations:

The NIV:  My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. 

The Message - What a beautiful home, God-of-the-Angel-Armies! I’ve always longed to live in a place like this, Always dreamed of a room in your house, where I could sing for joy to God-alive

Amplified - My soul yearns, yes, even pines and is homesick for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out and sing for joy to the living God.

What a word picture those create!  Don’t you agree?!?  Can’t you just hear the author’s voice as he says “My soul yearns, even faints”!  Can’t you just feel the longing in his heart to be near the object of his desire? 

That is what we were created for!  We were created to yearn and long and pine and be homesick for our Creator!  We were created with a longing in our spirit that only He can fill.  We were created to jump out of bed excited and ready to just catch a glimpse of Him.  We were created to get a giddy feeling when we get a love note from Him and in fact, we got an entire book, the Bible, filled with His love for us! 

But here is the thing…just like puppy love starts out innocent and pure and exciting but then fades away for various reasons – that’s how we are with our love and longing and desire for the Lord (or rather, I should say, how we can be – some of us have it dialed in but some of us still struggle).

We let life circumstances get in the way.  We decide one morning to sleep in and not get up for our devotion time with the Lord and then one morning turns into two and three, etc.  We decide one Sunday that we’d rather go to the beach than to church and then one Sunday turns into two and three, etc.  We decide that the loss of our job or the dissolution of our marriage or the rebellion of our teenager must certainly mean that God isn’t real or has left us or at the very least has forgotten about us. So we forget about Him.

And yet, we still have a craving.  We still have a longing.  We still have a yearning.  So what do we do? We fill it.  We turn to food, alcohol, work, sex, TV, exercise, shopping, any number of things to fill that craving, yearning, empty place.  And those things may feel good, temporarily, but the truth is, that any of those things, done on a craving, yearning, trying to fill an empty place level, will only end up doing us more harm than good.  IE trying to fill yourself up with food = gain weight ; shopping on a craving, yearning, fill yourself up level = out of control credit card bills; drink alcohol to fill an emptiness in yourself = alcoholic, you get the idea.  The thing is nothing and I mean NOTHING can fill the God shaped hole in our heart, soul and flesh. 

Just watch this video of Pastor Louie Giglio explaining Laminin – you’ll see that we were created – deep inside our DNA – with a connection to God

 

Just like, as we grow and mature, puppy love changes into something new and different - our craving, yearning and longing or lack thereof can also change into something new and different.  Isaiah 43:19 says: “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”

All we have to do is ask the Lord to help reignite our craving for Him.  To help us realign our focus from what has been distracting us, food, shopping, internet, etc back onto Him.  Onto His Word – His love letter to us.  He will.  He will draw us closer to Him.  And when He does – and when we pursue Him – when we set our craving and yearning on Him – then and only then will we be truly satisfied!