HUNGERING FOR HOLINESS

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HUNGERING FOR HOLINESS
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Psalm 421-2

• As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul
  longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God,
  for the living God. When shall I come and behold
  the face of God?

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Psalm 631-8

• O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul
  thirsts for you my flesh faints for you, as in a
  dry and weary land where there is no water. So I
  have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding
  your power and glory. Because your steadfast
  love is better than life, my lips will praise
  you. So I will bless you as long as I live I
  will lift up my hands and call on your name.

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• My soul is satisfied as with a rich feast, and my
  mouth praises you with joyful lips when I think
  of you on my bed, and meditate on you in the
  watches of the night for you have been my help,
  and in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy.
  My soul clings to you your right hand upholds
  me.

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Psalm 841-2

• How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD of
  hosts! My soul longs, indeed it faints for the
  courts of the LORD my heart and my flesh sing
  for joy to the living God.

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Hebrews 129-14

• Moreover, we had human parents to discipline us,
  and we respected them. Should we not be even more
  willing to be subject to the Father of spirits
  and live? For they disciplined us for a short
  time as seemed best to them, but he disciplines
  us for our good, in order that we may share his
  holiness.

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• Now, discipline always seems painful rather than
  pleasant at the time, but later it yields the
  peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have
  been trained by it. Therefore lift your drooping
  hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make
  straight paths for your feet, so that what is
  lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be
  healed. Pursue peace with everyone, and the
  holiness without which no one will see the Lord.

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HUNGERING FOR HOLINESS

• A number of Scriptures speak of such yearning as
  normative
• Imagine a scene in a court-appointed therapists
  office
• Something like that may be going on in the gospel
  record with Jesus (Mark 321).

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If such hunger became normative for us

• People would wonder about us
• Because we think, feel, respond, pursue life in
  such odd ways, so differently (note the root idea
  of Holy is different).
• We would be more like John Wesley described as
  The Character of a Methodist.

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HOW TO DEVELOP SUCH HUNGER

• In many ways, hungering for holiness is like any
  other appetite.
• From biblical perspective, hungering for holiness
  is like the most primal and radical hungers.
• Since we were made in Gods image, how strange we
  should have no hunger for God!

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HOW TO DEVELOP HUNGER FOR HOLINESS

• Sometimes we have no taste for what is good or
  best.
• Sometimes we have a taste, an appetite, for
  things that are not good.
• A primary reason why only tasting the goodness of
  God (as in a conversion experience) does NOT lead
  to real hunger for holiness
• Deadly appetites remain unchecked.

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HOW TO DEVELOP HUNGER FOR HOLINESS

• First, we need a taste.
• Second, we need recurring opportunities to taste
  that lead to appetite, especially in desperate
  circumstances.
• Third, we need a community who share our tastes,
  who are also hungry for holiness.

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We Need a Taste

• Every robust appetite requires a taste.
• How to get a taste
• Worship
• Word
• Witness
• Reflection

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We need recurring opportunities

• We must learn to experience whatever hungers or
  thirst or deprivations we have as opportunities
  to taste the Lord and see what happens.
• Every good desire/worthy drive reflects the
  deeper and best desire for intimacy with God.
• Every evil or base drive reflects the twisting or
  perverting of legitimate desire

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Three ways our neediness can turn us toward the
Holy One

• To be human, a creature, experienced in sin, in a
  fallen world, is to be needy.
• We can embrace disciplines that cause us to face
  our neediness, or that create need/deprivation,
  in order to practice turning toward the Holy One
  for a taste.
• We can expect that the Holy Spirit will lead us
  to places and through periods where we see and
  feel how desperately we need Him.

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We Need a Community

• Note the imagery of walking and how one learns to
  walk
• If a holy life is normal, and an appetite for God
  expected, then it will best develop in community.
• An illustration from a Mexican restaurant
• This is what John Wesley meant when he insisted
  there is no holiness but social holiness.

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TO HUNGER FOR HOLINESS

• The most natural and supernatural longing is to
  be filled with the fullness of God.
• If we do not seek a deep experience of grace
  where skewed appetites lurk, the deep places
  where the primal hunger for God rightly belongs,
  we will not develop the appetite for which we
  were made.
• Wesleys encouragement

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TO HUNGER FOR HOLINESS

• Seek until you find. Dont settle for less than
  all God has for you!
• Make sure you are often in places where a taste
  of the Lords holy love is likely to happen.
• Let your experiences of deprivation, dry seasons,
  the hard times, turn you toward God as source.
• And, do all these things with some others who
  will watch over your soul, inquire how it is
  going, and offer themselves as channels of grace.

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