Complacency is death to our spiritual life.
AW Tozer says, “The degree of fullness in any life accords perfectly with the intensity of true desire. We have as much of God as we actually want…Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people. He waits to be wanted. Too bad that with many of us He waits so very long, in vain.”
David was a man after God’s own heart, and I believe this was in large part due to his deep desire to know as much of God as possible. David knew that God in His infinity, majesty, and supremacy can never be fully known by our finite minds and hearts, but he also knew that we can and must continually grow our intimacy with Him. This is what David wanted above all else. The Psalms are full of longing, deep cries from his soul as he relentlessly sought God.
Psalm 27:4&8 “One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in His temple…You have said, ‘Seek my face. My heart says to You, Your face, Lord, do I seek.”
Psalm 42:1-2 “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?”
Psalm 63:1 “O God, you are my God; earnestly 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.”
I read these beautiful, passionate words of David and contrast them with my own often hurried reading of scripture, my rushed prayers that amount to a “to-do” list for God, and my sometimes distracted worship, and I know that my desire is lacking. I realize that all too often I am complacent, shamefully content.
When Jesus died on the cross and cried, ‘It Is Finished!” the veil in the temple separating the Holy of Holies was torn from top to bottom. What did that signify? From that moment we were granted the incredible privilege and unfathomable grace of having direct access to the very presence of God! How dare we take that for granted? How can we respond with anything other than a desperate prayer, like Moses, of, “Show me Your glory!” How can we desire anything less than to sit at our Savior’s feet and to gaze at the wonder that is God?
How? Because as CS Lewis said, “We are far too easily pleased.”
I want to be like David and Moses–thirsty, hungry, desperate to see and to know more of God. And I’ve concluded that the only way to do so is to ask God to place that longing within me. It is another example of how incapable we are of choosing righteousness on our own. He tells us in Matthew 7, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” He wants us to pursue Him. Do we understand that our God, whose glory is so overwhelmingly powerful that a glimpse of His back caused Moses’ face to glow, invites US to seek His face? Yet, He waits to be wanted.
Dear God, I am ashamed at my complacency. I want to want You above all things. Make me thirsty for You. Fill me with longing for You. Show me Your glory!