Job CCIV

 The heart yearns for what it truly desires above all else. When one has a yearning, it’s not a take-it-or-leave-it proposition; it’s not something that can be substituted or replaced with something else, but an overwhelming longing the attaining of which eclipses all else. No sacrifice is too great, no toil is too excessive, because the yearning for what the heart desires is so great as to make any effort worthwhile.

One of the greatest tragedies of the modern-day church is that it has lost its yearning for God and the things thereof. We’ve gone from desiring God to desiring the things God can provide, from desiring fellowship with Him to having an experience. Whether the experience is of divine origin matters little to many. They just want something outside the norm, something that will animate them, or give them goose bumps, something that will assail the senses rather than pierce the heart so they can say they felt something.

When the heart is transformed and renewed, it yearns for God above all else. Because the desire and longing are singular, whenever someone offers a substitute for the intimacy that only a broken and contrite heart can experience with God, it is rejected outright. I want God, and you’re offering me prosperity? No, thank you, I think I’ll pass. I want God, and you’re offering me prominence? I’ll have to pass on that one as well.

The reason those appealing to the flesh are so popular is because much of their audience, although claiming to be blood bought and born again, are still in the flesh. God is not the yearning of their hearts; He is an afterthought. He is not the main meal, but a side dish. Give me the stuff first! Give me the McMansion and the cars, give me the name recognition and digital footprint, give me all these things first, then sure, I’ll take a smidgeon of God as well. Not so much as to make me change my ways, not so much as to cause me to repent and humble myself, not so much as to make me crucify my flesh, but just enough to give me fire insurance.

Coming from a man who once had everything life had to offer, whether wealth, prominence, authority, or the respect of his peers, Job’s words regarding the yearning of his heart to see God and behold him with his eyes should not only hold weight but reveal the vanity of everything the world deems as the pinnacle of success.

When men use God as the means by which they achieve the desire of their heart rather than make Him the desire of their heart, there will always be compromises, there will always be concessions; they’ll always try to strike a bargain with the world in order to achieve their goal. It’s why so many try to make excuses for the Word of God rather than preach it. It’s the reason so many inject their feelings or opinions when it comes to what God has declared, rather than unashamedly proclaiming the truth.

It’s a zero-sum game. Either your heart yearns for the presence of God, or for something else. You can’t yearn for God and something else. There is only room for one true, lasting, consistent, and permanent desire in the heart of man, and the actions, words, and lives of those claiming to desire Him above all else betray the truth they hope to keep buried.

Job had nothing to gain by pretending otherwise. He wasn’t trying to put on airs or pretend to be more spiritual than he was. He was beyond pretense, beyond caring what his friends thought of him. Even if he still cared, they’d already made up their minds.

In the depths of his despair, when everything that could be taken had been taken from him, when his strength had abandoned him and his body given to putrefaction, when breathing itself became a burden, he did not yearn for restoration of his wealth, restoration of his health, restoration of his respect or authority, but that he would know the presence of God, and behold Him.

That sentiment alone should serve as a rebuke to most spiritual leaders today if they were still capable of blushing. Alas, they’ve chosen their master; the desire and yearning of their heart is plain for all to see, and those of like mind gravitate to them as though drawn by some unseen force.

Tell us good things. Tickle our ears. Tell us that feeling in our gut that all the play-acting we’re doing, pretending to worship and adore Him, isn’t the Holy Spirit urging us to repentance, but the byproduct of an overactive mind. Tell us we’re fine just the way we are, duplicitous and lukewarm, faithless and hedonistic, and in exchange we will make you rich beyond your wildest dreams. Tell us lies, and we’ll believe them even though deep down we know they’re lies, because we love our lives too much to lose them.

We’ll take heaven as long as it requires no sacrifice. We’ll take sanctification as long as it requires no repentance, but if you want to keep your jet and your mansion, don’t you dare tell us we have to surrender the smallest of creature comforts the flesh has become so accustomed to. That is one bridge too far, and you know it!

It won’t take prison, torture, internment camps, or martyrdom to cause much of what calls itself the church in the West to abandon Christ, deny Him, and pretend they never knew Him, but simply the threat of having their toys taken away because they were always the true yearning of their hearts, and not Jesus. It’s the stuff they’ve always longed for. Jesus was just a convenient means of attaining it.

Give me Jesus, give me Jesus, you can have all this world, but give me Jesus! If only we meant the songs we sang. If only they were the genuine cry of our hearts rather than words that passed our lips. Wouldn’t that be something?

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.