Homesick for God

Today I felt called to begin to write, to collect my thoughts and reflections.  These are the wanderings of my mind.

This past weekend we counseled some friends of ours who are on the brink of divorce.  The wife has been having an affair.  I reiterated the importance of casting aside the paramour, of cutting off all communication with the other man, in order that she might see more clearly and return to the husband of her youth.  She has lost all sight of what brought them together, of what she loved about him, blinded by the lustre of the illicit affair, blinded to the steady, true, gracious, forgiving and unearned love of her husband.  He has chosen to love her and forgive her despite her actions.  He has chosen to show her grace.  It struck me today as I was thinking about the situation that, much like Gomer and Hosea, we are like the wife, seeking glittering things and putting aside the love of our Savior.  We are taken in, are swept away with those things that give us temporary and momentary pleasure but have no eternal value. 

A couple of years ago, I was in a position of immature faith and struggled to maintain a regular quiet time or devotion time with God.  I spent much of my downtime watching secular entertainment and reading secular books.  Reality television was a particular vice of mine.  A good friend of mine recommended a book called Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers.  She said it was a book that every Christian should read.  The book stirred in me a desire for God that I had not known before.  I was struck by the way in which God loves me, Gomer, a prostitute, constantly choosing to commit adultery by putting other things in place of Him.  The book began in me a journey toward greater knowledge and intimacy of God, a journey which I am still on today.  I began to eliminate much of the secular entertainment from my life and began to replace that with faith-based, mostly fiction, books like Redeeming Love.  Although I was still not reading anything deeply theological, it was a start.  I had replaced the idol of secular television and reading with reading that at least acknowledged God and contemplated the things of God.  God worked through those books and began to develop in me a desire to know more about Him and a desire to become more Christ-like.  Eventually those fiction books gave way to non-fiction, and just a couple of years later, I now am reading books and listening to sermons that are pushing and growing me in innumerable ways.  All because of the one book.  We all have to start somewhere.

I realized today as I was thinking about my friend:  just like she has to remove the stumbling block to her marriage, we have to remove the idols in our lives in order to give God room to kindle desire for Him in us.  The Bible says that all good gifts come from our Father in heaven.  Any of those good gifts can become idols for us.  John Piper says: 

The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie.  It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world.  It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we drink in every night.  For all the ill that Satan can do, when God describes what keeps us from the banquet table of his love, it is a piece of land, a yoke of oxen, and a wife (Luke 14:18-20).  The greatest adversary of love to God is not his enemies but his gifts.  And the most deadly appetites are not for the poison of evil, but for the simple pleasures of earth.  For when these replace an appetite for God himself, the idolatry is scarcely recognizable, and almost incurable.  From Hunger for God. 

We all have something in our lives which has become idolatry for us.  Is it our children who we allow to usurp the place of God in our lives?  Our spouse?  A job, a dream, a home, our ministry even…the list goes on and on.  All good gifts can become idols.  We must constantly ask God to reveal these idols to us so that we might be able to remove them and give God more room to infiltrate our lives.  I think of the image of the beach—you build a moat around your sand castle and you dig out the sand and the water fills the hole where the sand was.  Like that, God will fill the hole left when the idols are removed.  Are we willing to let him have that space?  Are we willing to give up anything and everything, if, as Piper says, “by any means, we might protect ourselves from the deadening effects of innocent delights and preserve the sweet longings of our homesickness for God?”  I want to be homesick for God.

Prayer:  Dear God, You are worthy of all of my focus and attention.  You are so good and gracious to me and I am so undeserving, so worthless.  I am like Gomer.  I constantly wander and allow good things, things you intended as good gifts, to become idols in my life.  Lord, help me to remove those idols in my life; I ask You to reveal those idols that I do not see.  It is as the song “Victor’s Crown” says, “Every high thing must come down/every stronghold shall be broken.”  Let me see those things that I have elevated above You in my life, whether intentionally or unintentionally, and help me to reorder my priorities, to make You my One True Love.  Make me homesick for you.  Forgive me when I mess up.  I love You.