We continued our consideration of texts that lend support to the idea that God is more glorified when His glory is not only seen, but rejoiced in, that God wants not only our minds but also our hearts. Here are two we examined;
Psalm 73:25 “Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides You.”
Imagine being able to say that consistently and mean it? This verse is quite frankly unintelligible to any of us who have reduced our Christianity to mere acknowledgment of facts about Jesus, yet there it is alive and well in the Bible. Notice the writer does not say what is heard far too often today, words like, “Heaven is like the very best of the very best golf courses, it’s where you can be with all the people you loved on earth.” He is focused on the one thing which is the main thing in heaven, namely God, not reuniting with Aunt Mildred or the puppy he loved when he was ten years old. Do you notice today how little God is even considered when people talk about heaven?! A practical test for how much you want God in heaven is this; if you could have all the peace and quiet and pleasure and joy and comfort and satisfaction and emotional and physical and mental well being you could possibly imagine, if you could have perfect health and all your best friends, and have them in abundance, but not have God in heaven, would you want to be there? The Psalmist would say emphatically, “no.” Would you?
How much do you desire God and what do you do about it? How long is your list of things or people or experiences that you in fact desire more than you desire God? Notice that I did not ask, “Do you have anything that you put ahead of your God?” That’s an easy answer for all of us. The better question to ask is, “What are those things, experiences or relationships you place ahead of God, practically speaking?” God doesn’t like competition. He is not pleased when we make idols, and by the use of our time and energy and money, show how much we really value them ahead of God. He doesn’t like it when we worship created things and get more excited by the new carpet in the living room than we do about Him. He is not much impressed by the pitter patter of our hearts as we drive through the suburbs and wish we lived just a little more comfortably, and drove just a little more luxuriously. He is not impressed when He sees that more people in Nebraska worship with greater devotion and zeal and passion on Saturday afternoon than they do Sunday morning.
We ought to fall on our faces that we love Him so little, that we value Jesus so little, that we prove our allegiance to other loves so freely, with nary a qualm that the King of the universe might have a problem with us as he takes our spiritual temperatures and so often reads, “just a bit above freezing.”
The Psalmist knew a God of infinite value, and that same God wants us to know Him as much more than a lapel pin we stick on at funerals, weddings and the odd Sunday. He wants our lives and gives us Himself, and there is no greater exchange for the Christian who knows Him, and is growing to know Him as the One who alone is able to satisfy his deepest desires. A great job, marriage, family, home, health, sex, power, prestige, children, wealth, cars, vacations etc . . .won’t do it, because even together, they are far too small to fill the vast canyons of the human heart. We were made for more than this life can offer and that’s why the Psalmist writes as he does. St. Augustine said it this way; “You have made us for Yourself and we are restless until we find our rest in You.”
Jesus presses this idea of valuing God above everything and everyone else in Matthew 13:44 when He says, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.”
What’s His point? He is saying that if someone values something highly, he will do (live) in accordance with how highly he values that something. In the case of the parable, a man comes across a treasure in a field, understands that it is worth an inestimable price, and in light of that, goes and sells all that he has, all that he values up to that point in his life, in order to buy the field that contains the treasure. It is the person who meets Jesus for the first time and as a result “sells” everything he held dear up to that point in his life. That “selling” will include both small and great things; perhaps he immediately says goodbye to dangerous “friends”; maybe it involves a life-long “selling” of the mountains of unbelief he lived in, or selling the great reservoirs of pride he swam in that convinced him he really was the center of the universe. Maybe he sells the ladder-climbing dream he cherished all his life, the dream he had of being made much of in this world. Bottom line is that he sees something of inestimable value, against which everything else is accorded lesser, much lesser value.
Final thought; Jesus points out that the man “in his joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field,” making it quite clear that the pursuit of God is not a joyless, merely duty-driven road, but a joyful one. There is great joy in laying aside lesser joys for superior ones, and God Himself is the most superior of joys. Let us go to Him and ask Him to continue to unveil His supremacy over lesser passions and let us continue to “by the Spirit put to death the deeds of the body,” (Romans 8:13) among which is anything that seeks to dim our view of God.
For further study;
Psalm 84:10
Matthew 22:37-40
Philippians 1:21
Philippians 3:7-11