Our Heart’s Longing

I had to think about this chapter for a while.   Pondering how to talk about the thoughts it inspired in my heart and mind.  This chapter started talking about how people always seek for happiness, but perhaps what people are doing is not really seeking for happiness but for something deeper.   Eventually we headed over to Romans 1 were we can read: 

¹⁸ For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. ¹⁹ For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. ²⁰ For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. ²¹ For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. ²² Claiming to be wise, they became fools, ²³ and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

The thought is this.  God put a spark of knowing him within all of us.   BUT we fight that knowing to the point that some of us suppress that truth.   We deny it, calling it something else, like “I’ll be happy when I have a family”, “I’ll be happy with the right job”, “I’ll be happy when _____________”.  Some of the ideas we come up with may seem more lofty than others, but in the end all we are doing, if we aren’t pursuing God, is denying that spark that has been put within us. 

And God… God takes us seriously.  If we continually pawn him off, exchanging him for other things, he’ll let us do that.  Which results in people searching and searching, wanting to fill that emptiness within.   All the emptiness, and God gives them over to their empty searches. 

What do we do with that as believers?

That’s the question isn’t it?  If as believers we know that God has made it possible for us to know him, that everyone can recognize him for who he is by looking at creation, and looking deep within themselves, what does it mean for us?   

It means truly that if we seek for him we will find him.  There’s no doubt about it is there?  For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 

If we are believers, there is no excuse for us not to know the Lord God.  To be able to find him and learn of him and everything because we have not only the creation to reveal God to us, but we have his written word!  Actual information, actual words from his Son to help us understand what we see around us.   It’s HUGE if you stop and think about it. 

I urge you (and when I say you I also mean me)… follow your heart’s longing.  Follow it.  Feed the spark that is within.  Be amazed at God in the creation around us.