Galatians chapter 6 and verse 10.
This is the cry of the martyrs under the altar. Well, I guess we should read verse 9.
When the Lamb broke the fifth seal, I saw underneath the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God, and because of the testimony which they had maintained;
and they cried out with a loud voice, saying, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth?”
And there was given to each of them a white robe;
and they were told that they should rest for a little while longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brethren, who were to be killed even as they had been, would be completed also.
Then just a couple of verses in Psalm 80. Psalm 80. Well, I’m sorry, Psalm 90, verses 13 and 14.
Do return, O Lord; how long will it be?
And be sorry for Your servants.
O satisfy us in the morning with Your lovingkindness,
That we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.
And then finally, over in Revelation again, the verses at the end of chapter 22, verses 16 and 17.
“I, Jesus, have sent My angel to testify to you these things for the churches. I am the root and descendant of David, the bright morning star.”
And the Spirit and the bride say, “Come.”
And let the one who hears say, “Come.”
And let the one who is thirsty come;
let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost.
Lord, we come to You tonight. We thank You for this time of worship we have had together. We thank You for this time of singing.
We pray now that You will reveal in our hearts that longing and the reality of our love for You. We thank You, Lord, for all that You have spoken to us, how You indeed have not sealed the book at all, but declare to us the many wondrous things that were revealed to John.
And now, Lord, we ask by Your Spirit that You would draw us more closely to You as we prepare to leave this place. Knit our hearts together as one bride, and by Your Spirit give us one voice: “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.” We pray in His precious name. Amen.
In the book of Revelation, we are made aware that above our heads, in the invisible place called the heavenlies, there is a lot of spiritual activity going on. And as we know, as the time comes closer to the end, there is more and more static in the air, as Satan and principalities and powers and various angelic beings try to discourage the saints, condemn us night and day, and hinder us in whatever way they can.
Of course, we are exhorted in the Scriptures time and time again to put on the full armor of God and to live in Christ Jesus in victory. There is a lot of noise in the air, but there are these three voices to be heard in the heavenlies as well.
There is the Lord Jesus, who is saying, “Behold, I come quickly.” There is the bride, along with the Spirit, saying, “Come.” And there are those—maybe some of you even here this week—who have heard the Lord’s call and are responding: “Let those who hear say, ‘Come.’”
These voices are also in the atmosphere, as it were. I would like to conclude this time as we are together by trying to help us all understand that, since the time we were born again, there actually was born a longing in our hearts.
These things are often ignored. Often, we do not really understand ourselves. Over the years, I have spoken and counseled and prayed with a lot of young people—teenagers who had truly been saved.
I remember on one occasion talking to a boy who was quite rebellious and acting out, and he was just giving everybody a tough time. So I took him aside. I said, “What’s the matter?”
He started off on his parents and this and that and the other thing. And I said, “Well, you can act this way, but you’re not acting in the truth.”
He said, “What do you mean?”
I said, “Because I know you, and I know that you love Jesus. I know that you have Jesus in your heart. You love Jesus, and He loves you. Even though you are trying to hide it now, that does not change the reality. Inside, in your heart, you love Jesus with all your heart.”
And this mad, angry young man just burst into tears and began to cry. It was as if I had exposed something, but it was real in him. Yet because of all his struggling and circumstances and carnality and all of those problems of youth, he had forgotten that.
We got back in touch with that love for Jesus. Before we were through, he was praying and saying, “Jesus, You know I love You. I’m so sorry.” And he just carried on.
So it is with many of us Christians. We are walking along through this life; we are so busy. Sometimes we lose touch with something that is very seminal to our being, and it is this: if you really know the Lord, you will long for Him.
From the very moment that you were born again and the Spirit of His Son through you cried out, “Abba, Father,” there was some kind of connection there, and a longing to be with God.
Paul talks about that longing in Romans 8 in terms of a groaning for creation. Sometimes, he says, it is also my body that is groaning. “I want to be present with the Lord,” and groaning for this new creation. I am in metamorphosis, but there is something.
I know we hate to use examples from movies, but there is a classic that most children knew when they were growing up here. It was E.T.
A lot of Christians, the truth of the matter is, have forgotten: “E.T., go home.” There is something in you that wants to go home. It is a longing.
The thing about a longing—as we heard in that song—is that you cannot fake a longing. You either have it or you do not.
I am convinced there are Christians who, I would say, do not really know the Lord yet. They think there is something better. But the more you get to know the Lord, the more you long for Him.
As I was meditating on what to share, this phrase came to me: “How long? How long?” Did you notice it in the song? “How long? How long?”
So I brought out my computer, and it found out that the person who says “how long” the most is the Lord Himself. Our God is longsuffering, and the most frequent speaker of this word is, “How long?”
You remember Jesus. Remember when the three disciples and Jesus went down the mountainside and they saw that demon-possessed boy, and nobody could do anything about it? He just sighed. He said, “How long must I bear with this wicked and unbelieving generation? Bring that boy to Me.”
Everything Jesus did, He had to do against the tide, against the stream of a generation that was unbelieving and wicked. “How long do I have to bear with this?” He said.
How many times has the Lord spoken to Israel and said, “How long? How long do I have to put up with this?” The Lord is longsuffering. Nobody—nobody—suffers as much as the Lord does.
That longsuffering patience, one day we may understand, but it will only be as He works that same kind of longsuffering in our hearts. Even part of the reason we are waiting right now for the Lord to come back is so that this character trait of longsuffering might be fully developed in us.
On the first level, of course, it is the Lord who said “how long” the most. But then we have a number of prayers of brothers and sisters and saints who are crying, “O Lord, how long will I pray and You do not answer me? How long will I be in this fix and You do not show up?”
Have you ever had that kind of prayer? That old, “Lord, how long? I have prayed. I have wept till I have no more tears, and still…”
Let us look at a couple of them, because you do not believe me. Psalm 74. Nobody said, “How long, Lord, until You answer me?” more than David, I am convinced. David was about as impatient as you and I are.
We do not see our signs;
There is no longer any prophet,
Nor is there any among us who knows how long.
How long, O God, will the adversary revile,
And the enemy spurn Your name forever?
Why do You withdraw Your hand, even Your right hand?
This “how long” is a complaint, isn’t it, I suppose.
Let us look at Psalm 80, and that will be it on this one. In verse 4—what a wonderful psalm of Asaph, what a wonderful prophetic understanding of God’s love and discipline.
O Lord God of hosts,
How long will You be angry with the prayer of Your people?
You have fed them with the bread of tears,
And You have made them to drink tears in large measure.
And so on he goes.
That is the second frequent reference to “how long.” Yet there is a higher “how long,” a third category, as I would put it. It is some saints who, beyond themselves and their own complaint, are actually praying something like this:
They are seeing and asking the Lord, “How long, Lord, until we can say, ‘There is our God, and He is winning, and He is glorious’?”
Let us look at just a couple of those. Zechariah, wonderful prophet there right at the end of the Old Testament, pretty much. In Zechariah chapter 1, it is actually the angel of the Lord who says this, but Zechariah is seeing it and surely is concurring with all that is being said.
Then the angel of the Lord said, “O Lord of hosts, how long will You have no compassion for Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, with which You have been indignant these seventy years?”
And the Lord said, “I’m glad somebody asked Me. I am so jealous for Jerusalem.”
But when was somebody ever going to say that? “How long, Lord, until Jerusalem was restored?” The Lord says, “Thank you, thank you. I am so jealous for Jerusalem.” Isn’t that wonderful?
Sometimes we need to lift ourselves beyond our own angst and our own desires and pray something a little higher.
As we read earlier, I believe that those martyrs under the altar were asking for more than revenge. They were not saying, “Lord, how long until You get us revenge? Can we watch our enemies in a pool of blood?”
No. “Lord, how long before righteousness has its day? How long will it be?”
And the Lord says, “Shh. Rest a little longer. Believe it or not, you are going to have to suffer some more, because there are others who are going to die for the faith along with you.”
It is really an amazing statement. But there is a longing on yet a higher level.
Higher than all of these things is when there is a heart that loves the Lord and cries out, “O Lord, how long?” That is the highest cry.
Above circumstances, above things being rectified: “Lord, how long?”
I have never heard a song that so expresses just sheer love for the Lord than our brother Nee’s song. It is called “Since Long Ago,” but actually it should be, “Lord, How Long?” That is really his heart.
So I want to look at this emotion of longing. It is found among those, as I said, who know the Lord. Do you know the Lord? Have you seen Him more and more? Have you known Him and His saving love for you? Have you known Him in His lordship? Have you taken His yoke upon you and learned things of Him?
Oh, the more you know Him, the more you long for Him.
I want to put this longing in two simple phases, although it all goes together. There is the front end of longing, which would be best interpreted as the eager desire of a lover who, once having been loved or promised love, longs eagerly. It is an eager longing.
That is the front end. It is like the final words of the bride in the Song of Solomon: “Hurry, my beloved.” There you go. That eager waiting.
Let us look at some verses in the New Testament that show us this eager waiting that we are involved in. The first one is in Philippians chapter 3, verse 20.
For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ;
Who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.
We eagerly wait for the Savior. Those who long for the Lord and love the Lord have realized that their citizenship is in heaven.
This is our latest dock right here. We have been stationed on earth, but E.T., go home. We know where our real home is, and we cannot wait for the Lord to show up and relieve us of our duty.
Most of us are just attachés, but who cares? We are all in this embassy. We are all citizens of heaven, even though we are living on earth. Won’t it be wonderful when heaven joins with earth in New Jerusalem? For these things, we eagerly wait.
Let us also look in Hebrews chapter 9, verse 28.
So Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly wait for Him.
He is going to come back for those who eagerly wait for Him.
And then let us jump right over to Titus. I know you know all these things. I am just trying to show you how eagerly you are waiting. Maybe you did not realize it.
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men,
instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age,
looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus;
Who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds.
That is wonderful. We eagerly wait. From the moment we have been kissed by the Lord, from the moment we realize how much He loves us, we wait for the fulfillment. We eagerly wait for Him to come.
But as time stretches out, eagerness changes. We eagerly wait, I am sure. You cannot fault them in the apostolic century, in the first century, when they said the Lord was going to return. They really thought it was certainly going to be within two or three years, and they died in that eager waiting.
Well, now we have been waiting a little longer than a few years. Actually, the saints themselves, John included, found that this longing changed in its composition from eager waiting to longsuffering.
Longing begins as an eager desire, but with time it becomes a suffering—a suffering that is waiting and waiting and waiting.
Those of you here who have lost a spouse, or a daughter or a son, or even a mom and dad or a grandmother you loved, there is a longing that involves suffering. You will never be satisfied until you see them again.
I know a number of my own family who have gone on to be with the Lord, and I will never be fully satisfied until I see them face to face again.
I remember the first time I spoke on “How long?” It was out in Seattle with Brother Godwin’s son. As I was preparing to preach on, “How long, Lord, until You return?” the night before I was to speak on Sunday, Saturday night, I got a phone call that my sister, at forty years old, had died. She was giving birth to her sixth child. She was a missionary far out in a remote place and hemorrhaged and died before they could get any proper help to her.
This sense of “How long?” came with unusual force to my heart. How long before I see my younger sister again?
There is that longing that must suffer because it waits long. The same applies when you have known the Lord for a long time. There is a certain aspect in which there is a suffering, because you have been together through so many things with the Lord.
This longing goes beyond doctrines. It goes beyond songs. It even goes beyond utterance sometimes in prayers. What can you do? There is a longing.
Paul almost sounded relieved, did he not, in one of his final statements in 2 Timothy chapter 4? You remember how he said, “I have fought the fight, I have run the race, and I have kept the faith. Now there is a crown of righteousness laid up for me, and for all those who love His appearing.”
In those days in 2 Timothy, when there was a lot of compromise in the church, there were faithful ones who were suffering for their faithfulness to the Lord. Paul was assuring them that their cry for the Lord was indeed a good work.
Do you know how to love the Lord’s appearing is a good work? It is something of faith. It is something of love. It is something of hope—these three. To love the Lord’s appearing is such a wonderful thing.
So we come simply to ask this important question: How can we keep our hearts eagerly longing and waiting for the Lord? How can we do that?
I know that is where most of you are, because you would not be here if you just wanted cheeseburgers. You are hungry for meat, and you have received some meat this week, and thank God for that. You have a hunger and a longing for a fulfillment that has not yet come.
Now, how can you keep this waiting alive?
We have already spoken, and I am not going to browbeat you again. I am not going to tell you that you need a friend who will keep slapping you in the face to wake up. Just hope you have a good wife to do that kind of thing.
Everybody here knows, every servant of God here knows, every brother and sister who has known and truly loved the Lord has known times when your heart has grown cold. I wish somebody had a perfect record on this thing, but I have never found one yet.
There are some thieves. I will mention just three, not to prolong the agony.
Busyness is a great robber of longing and love. I know some marriages that have been destroyed just because of busyness. It is not really that people did not love one another; they were just too busy to build love, and something went wrong.
There is a busyness among Christians today that, I have to say, causes most of them to have little time to realize this longing in their heart.
I think the church of Ephesus was—I do not know, there are many things that could be said—but at least one thing could surely be said of the Ephesian church: they had gotten so busy being Christian that they had lost that dynamic of first love as the motive for doing those Christian things.
It is possible for a church to get so busy. Saints, you hear this, but I have known in personal experience a number of servants of God who tell me honestly they never have a devotion. They do not have time. They are always preparing a message or visiting somebody in the hospital.
They do not have a personal devotion to the Lord. They do not even have a time where they say, “Jesus, I love You,” or sing one of these simple songs. No, they do not have time for that anymore. This is grown-up Christianity, you know—just business, business.
What a robbery. Do not be robbed by busyness.
Of course, worldliness is another thing that dulls us. It is very simply because our treasure is on earth. You keep trying to polish up that old rusty treasure on earth, that old jalopy, instead of storing up treasures in heaven.
That worldliness really does a number on our longing for the Lord, because there is a certain shame that comes in there. The Lord is a really honest Person. I find Him so.
If you go to Him and say, “Lord, actually, I love this world more than I love what I have seen of Your kingdom in the Word. The kingdom of God in the Word seems a little restrictive. I am not sure. I think I like the United States better. I have a pleasant life. I have a nice wife, kids, five cars, a dog.”
I mean, just go on, admit it. It is okay. Especially for young people—you still have college and career and marriage and kids and a dog and a family, all that to realize. All those things do not satisfy.
But go on, believe the world’s hype. It is advertising all the time, “This is all you need to be happy.” And it is usually some drug that tells you that you could have a fatal episode taking it. I cannot believe those ads.
If you are a young person and you say, “You know what? I love this world, especially living in Richmond, Virginia, and I like going to this school and all that,” just be honest with the Lord. Then say to Him, “But Lord, would You sensitize my heart so that I could understand the beast behind the world?”
The world has been doing a bait-and-switch thing. You know what that is? That is when that used-car salesman says, “I have got a car, just what you need, for a thousand dollars.” Then you get there and he says, “Oh, I’m sorry, I sold that one. I have got one here for ten thousand.”
The world has been telling you a whole lot of lies. Just about the time you are going to get that promotion or that bonus, it says, “Ah, well, I need another eighty hours a week out of you.” It is meant for bondage.
However the world lies, and even if it gives you a lot of worldly possessions, it is out the window. One of the things you lose is your longing for the Lord.
I think the third thing I will mention in passing is that some people get really discouraged. They have a really tough time. Some people do not get married, though they wanted to. Their jobs did not work out like they wanted, or the vocation they were hoping for did not materialize.
There were many plans and hopes. We are planners and hopers, and besides, we have been lied to by our parents and the world who say, “You can do anything you want.” No, you cannot.
Some people get very discouraged and disappointed, even a number of people who have been very faithful. I often tell the story of when I was a pastor back in the church. It was my first experience of sharing with people and trying to shepherd the sheep. Then one day, when I was shepherding the sheep, I got sheep-bit.
Now, who would ever think sheep would bite the shepherd? Well, that was just the beginning of my problems in that business.
The whole point is that many times people who serve the Lord get disappointed, even offended. Their hope kind of dims, and they do not know if they have a longing anymore for the things of God because they have been offended in some way.
These are the kinds of things that sometimes can affect this longing.
I do not want to carry this on too long, but I just want to say this: there is a key to keeping the incense burning. It is usually discovered in a Christian’s life somewhere between the early stages of that eager longing and entering into longsuffering. Something happens in the middle.
I hope you find the key. There is a key that keeps your spirit fresh and keeps your longing alive. What is that key?
It is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Sometimes, when we talk about this whole thing of waiting for the coming of the Lord—watch and pray, wait, “Are you saying, ‘Come, Lord Jesus, come’? If you are not, repent!”—some guys say that.
It can sometimes be misinterpreted that waiting for the Lord, even longing for the Lord, even loving the Lord, is some kind of work.
“I have got to commit myself. All right, come on, honey, slap me. I think I am falling asleep. I cannot fall asleep. I have got to love the Lord. How can I love the Lord? Give me ten steps to love the Lord.”
We think it is a work. “Okay, I have got to wake up. I have got to watch and pray. I keep hearing, ‘Watch and pray.’ Yeah, yeah, I have got to watch and pray.” And you watch, and then you snore.
You say, “Oh, this is not working. I am losing my way. I know that when Stephen was talking, I am in the second group that does not get taken.”
Now, here is the truth: longing and longsuffering are not really yours to keep up. It is Christ in you crying out to the Christ of glory. It is the Holy Spirit dwelling in you who wants to be reunited, as it were, in the fullness of Christ.
There is a great mystery here when we talk about the Spirit and the bride saying, “Come.” You know the Holy Spirit is God, which means He is omniscient and omnipotent and omnipresent. There is no limitation with the Holy Spirit.
Yet because of His responsibility—namely, especially to perfect the bride—He has voluntarily, in some fashion, even as Jesus did, longsuffered in bearing in the body of Christ.
But He longs to be free to express Himself through the saints. There is a longing that the Spirit has in this whole matter. That is why the Spirit and the bride say, “Come,” because the Spirit feels so restricted in the body of Christ. He feels quenched sometimes. He feels grieved sometimes. He feels like He has been slighted sometimes. He feels like the Lord is not being honored.
He gets offended when Jesus is not the Head over us. But in the midst of the whole thing, it is because He longs for that which the Father has longed for and which the Son desires. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are longing for the church to be ready.
So it is the Spirit in you, Christ in you, that is the key to that burning desire. If you will find that—if you realize He dwells within you and He has this passion and desire—how it will help you in your life.
There are so many titles you could give to this wonderful letter of Paul to the Philippians. Many times it talks about Christian joy and things like that. It seems to me that the testimony of Paul in Philippians is this: “I have got joy and buoyant, overcoming life in me.”
We have to remember Paul wrote that letter when he was in a decrepit situation. He was completely bound from traveling and working, and all he was able to do was pray for the saints as he was in prison, write a letter, and this and that.
But how could he be so buoyant? How could he overcome the discouragement of all that and still long for the Lord, to where he says, “Christ is my life”? “I would rather go and be with Him, but I guess I need to stay here for your sakes,” or that is what the Lord seems to indicate to him.
But whatever, it is this buoyant life in me. “I have all things in Christ that I need.” Oh, he had found a wellspring, and it keeps that burning alive.
Let us look at a couple of verses there. It is just so simple. In Philippians chapter 1, verse 6:
For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.
And then Philippians 2:12:
So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling;
for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.
I do not know how else to say it, but in light of all that we have heard from our brothers Lance and Stephen, let me put it this way: the hope that you have of longing and waiting and keeping that incense burning for the Lord is because the Alpha and the Omega lives in you.
The Alpha, He who began a good work in you, will be the Omega who finishes it in you.
That is why Paul told those Colossians. You know what the problem with the Colossians was? Most of them were Gentiles. They were looking at the Jews, and the Jews seemed so much further along. Then there were these Jewish believers who had these Gnostic ideas of angels and a whole kind of system of religion, and they felt like, “Wow, I am no place.”
Paul says, “Do not be deceived by all of that stuff. Here is your hope: Alpha and Omega is in you. Christ is in you. You have been saved. Now walk in Him.”
You will get to see the boundaries of Christ more and more. You will see all that He has done. Paul reveals this, what I call the macrocosmic and microcosmic Christ: micro-Christ in you, macro-Christ overall, and we in that. What a revelation.
But the point is, that is your hope. What is your hope of being faithful to the end? Are you just one of those Christians who can do it? There are some who cannot, but not you. You have willpower, and you are going to do it.
I do not think you have much hope.
But the person who realizes they do not have much hope finds that there is One within them who is very hopeful. He has a life to keep stirring up that longing, if you will let Him do so.
Paul could rejoice in this Philippian letter because the Lord kept stirring something up in him—something toward life, something that made him long for the Lord Himself.
Let us take a look at a few practical examples of what I am trying to say. If you are willing to look away from yourself, even deny yourself, strangely you may discover a life within—a life that helps that longing turn into faith.
Longing can go one of two ways. Longing can get into yourself and become full of self-pity, or longing can be turned into faith and bring you closer to the Lord. It depends on whether you understand that life which is living within you.
Let us look at Psalm 42, a very familiar Scripture we all know. Actually, Psalms 42 and 43, which in many Hebrew manuscripts are just one psalm. In Psalm 42, we notice that famous verse in verse 1, one of the most famous songs in Christendom in the twentieth century, for sure.
As the deer pants for the water brooks,
So my soul pants for You, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God;
When shall I come and appear before God?
Oh, what a longing there is there.
But we see that there is something amiss, could I put it? That is not really quite it, but look at verse 5.
Why are you in despair, O my soul?
And why have you become disturbed within me?
Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him
For the help of His presence.
We see this taken up in verse 11 once again:
Why are you in despair, O my soul?
And why have you become disturbed within me?
Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him,
The help of my countenance and my God.
Then Psalm 43, which I said is a continuation of possibly one psalm, and verse 5 once again:
Why are you in despair, O my soul?
Why are you disturbed within me?
Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him,
The help of my countenance and my God.
Now, without going into a lot of issues here or trying to talk about this very much, let us make the basic point: sometimes your soul gets down. Why are you cast down, O my soul?
Sometimes your soul is panting, but maybe for the wrong reasons.
I remember back in the charismania days of the early seventies, there were people desperate to get baptized in the Holy Spirit. They were searching for something so much outwardly, they were straining and striving, and they could not get there for the very striving of it.
There is such a thing as being a deer whose soul is panting for the water brooks and panting for the water brooks, and somebody has to stop that soul before he conks out and faints.
Who can stop a panting soul? “I am desperate, I am desperate. Oh God, I am desperate for You. Where are You, God? I need You, God.”
Who said that? The Spirit of God within: “Come drink of the waters within.”
Who talked to David’s soul? “Why are you in despair, O my soul?” Now, who is talking to him? Is that David being like the good cop and the bad cop?
Well, in a way it is, but actually it is something deeper. David had found his spirit. His spirit knew that God was going to come through, and he rose in faith and talked to that soul.
Have you given your soul a good talking-to?
This is the problem in longsuffering. There are some people born to melancholy, like the sparks fly downward. You know, that is the opposite, right? Okay. Melancholy. Oh boy. Give somebody a week, and they are down in the dumps. “How are you doing, brother?”
At some point, after receiving counsel, such a melancholic person, a discouraged person, a downcast person—they usually go to at least twelve people for counsel, receive twelve different prescriptions to take to the apothecary, and receive no help at all.
Until they hear a voice from within saying, “Why are you cast down, soul? What right have you got to be all cast down? Has God forgotten you? Hope in God.”
Suddenly, you realize you will yet see. Hang in there. Be patient. The Lord is coming.
Now, you need to speak to your soul.
One of the most wonderful passages that I like in the Old Testament is right at the end of 1 Samuel, where nothing could be bleaker. Saul is dying, Jonathan is dying, and everything is just falling apart at the end of Samuel, just before David becomes king.
David and his band of mighty men had gone off to fight. While they were gone, the Amalekites came to Ziklag, where their wives and children were staying, burned the city down, took the children and their wives, and ran off.
When David and his soldiers came back, they saw what had happened. They saw all their children and families gone, and it says that the mighty men thought about killing David. They were so angry.
Here they were actually serving David, and as a result they had lost their families. David did not know but what that was the truth, which meant he had lost his wives as well.
But what does it say there in 1 Samuel 30:8? “And David strengthened himself in the Lord.”
How on earth do you strengthen yourself? This is not one of these jingles from Broadway: “Pick yourself up, brush yourself…” This is, how do you strengthen yourself in the Lord?
You do some talking with the Lord. “Now, Lord, I have been serving You, and we have come to this. But I trust You, Lord. I have gone this far with You. I am not going to quit now.”
Somehow he strengthened himself in the Lord, and sure enough, they found their families miles down the road. The Amalekites were all drunk and having a party. They got them all back.
Sometimes you need to strengthen yourself in the Lord, or you just get discouraged. That longing is in your heart for the Lord, but you get so discouraged that you do not realize what is there.
But the Spirit within you, Christ in you, is that hope of a rebound, of a buoyancy.
There is an important principle here which I will just underscore for a moment or two, and then I am through. The important and great principle is this:
Longing, even longsuffering, needs to be sublimated—turned into faithful service and worship.
No more, “Why are you cast down, O my soul?” When you realize your soul is cast down, here is what you say: “Praise God. Glory to God. You are altogether worthy. I will not allow my soul to speak bad of my God.”
You take a step of faith, and you find the Spirit restoring you.
Longsuffering can get maudlin. It can get nostalgic. It can get melancholic. It can drive you into paralysis and make you think you are a failure, and you might as well wait for the three and a half years, and then you will get your—after the gnashing of teeth, you get a new set and go.
All the time, there is One in you who can overcome. There is One in you who can overcome your melancholy and your discouragement and all that, but you need to turn it, actively turn it.
I know this may sound trite, but sometimes you just have to speak words of faith with your mouth. Sometimes you have to stand up in your living room and say, “God, You are on my side, and I side with You and bow before You as my Lord, right over this issue.”
It is a fight, turning these things into faith. But thank God we have the Holy Spirit within us.
To me, there is no better example than the song that we just sang from our brother Nee. You could get frightfully morose with such thoughts. But actually, what Brother Nee was doing was turning his longings, his sense of lack, his void, his sense of being an exile, and all of those things—the stripping of the cross—into a song.
He turned all of those things by faith into a song. You understand that?
He did not keep it in a minor key. He sang it like “Danny Boy,” that great old Irish song. After talking about the lonely vigil and the exile and the stripping and the tears and the suffering, he says, “But I am seeking a better country. I am going to join with others who are crying as well.”
We are going to take this. We are going to change this attitude from passivity and hopelessness. We are going to stand together and say, “Lord, we realize there is no full fulfillment in this world until You come back.”
The happiest of days has a cloud because You are not here. Your happy marriage, your happy children, your successful job, the blessings that you have, that wonderful vacation—whatever it is—there is still a void. Do you sense it?
Then say, “Lord, it is You that I want. Thank You for all these things. I want You.”
That is what Brother Nee did.
Do you sense in that song he is suffering? Absolutely. Absolutely.
Do you sense in that song that he was stuck suffering? Absolutely not.
I do not know why the Lord likes to do this, but it is often in a discouraging moment, when things have not gone well, when we feel like the world is getting darker and darker and there is not much plan or purpose and our families are even falling apart—it is in moments like that, when we seem to be discouraged, that the Lord says, “My son, do this for Me.”
Some little thing. Call somebody. Talk to somebody. There is some little obedience.
You are just so totally discouraged, you are thinking, “How could I possibly help somebody when I need so much help?” Have you ever been in that place? It is totally dry. You have gotten to a place where you have pretty much summed up: things are pretty hopeless. “I think I am going to die before the Lord comes back.”
And the Lord says, “Just go do that.”
Just like Elijah sitting in the cave: “Oh Lord, I am so zealous for You. That is why I am sitting here.”
The Lord says, “No, no, no, get down the hill.”
“No, no, no, I want to complain a little longer.”
Now, isn’t that us? Doesn’t Elijah catch us in the old cave mood? The Lord says, “Go down there and anoint that guy.” Elijah does it, and he comes out of his mood.
There is a longing in our hearts. What are you going to do about it? Sometimes there are some people who really love the Lord so much, and this world has really beaten them up so bad. What are you going to do?
There is a life within you that wants to cry out, “Lord, I see that this world will not satisfy my heart.”
I am sorry for the wives who believe that marriage was going to satisfy them. Marriage is a wonderful thing. This year, my wife and I have been married fifty years, and it is a wonderful thing.
But you know, my wife found out a long time ago that I do not completely satisfy her.
Now, can she make that shift and say, “Lord, it is because that final topstone is You. I have a marriage, but it is not perfect. You are the perfect marriage.”
You see, to admit that everything on this earth falls short because of our corruption, and because it is just the way it is, is not enough unless you transmute it and say, “But Lord, that is what I learned today: You are my everything. I am running after You.”
When we take just one final look at Paul, there he is in Philippians 3. You all know the story. He is in jail and does not know whether he will get out in the future or not.
But here is what he says: “I may be in jail. I wish I could be out and see the saints. How I love the saints. I wish I could visit you there in Philippi. I do not know if it is going to happen or not. This is what I do: I forget what lies behind me. I set my eyes on the goal. I am running for what I know will fulfill my life.”
“I was an apostle, and a lot of the apostles, while I was in jail, they left me. Some went into the world. Some thought I was too fanatic. I do not know what happened here.”
Sometimes Paul was left all alone. He says, “That is okay. That is what men do. But I can run after Jesus, and He will never leave me alone.”
Now, there is somebody who has learned.
I remember I was really touched by a good preacher who has passed away now. His name was Paul Billheimer. He wrote a wonderful book, Destined for the Throne, but he wrote another little book for those who were grieving.
My wife and I lost our son when he was eighteen years old. It really helped me make that change, sublimate my crushed heart. The name of the book was Don’t Waste Your Sorrows.
Have you got sorrow? Do not waste it on yourself. Turn it into hope.
Pray, “Lord, I will see my son one day face to face.” Set that hope and that longing in the right direction. Do not let your things turn in on you all the time—your sorrows and your struggles and your failures. Do not let those things turn in on you. They will kill you.
But there is a Spirit who dwells within you who says, “Turn that around. Turn that around. What is it telling you? What is it telling you?”
It is telling you, “I only have my satisfaction when I am with the Lord and with the saints in the holy place, and I see my son again, and I see my mom again, and I see my sister again.”
Yeah, now that makes me happy. So I can live today.
You never get over the emptiness, do you? The sense of loss. But for you to burn your life out in soul despair, there is no excuse for it. So I say one final time: repent.
Christ in you, the hope of glory.
It is true, we need to repent. It is true, we need to deal with ourselves. It is true, we need to turn from sin. It is true, we need to turn our backs on the world. All of these things are exercises of self-denial and exercises toward holiness.
But in the end, that is not what is going to keep you.
Do you have that burning life within that is saying, “Dana, go home”? Do you long to be with your Savior?
That longing lives within you. Especially those of you who have come to know the Lord—know the Lord—you know you have got that longing.
If you will let that Spirit fan it into flame in practical ways in your life, turn discouragement and problems into an upward direction, you will find yourself in that party who gains the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Brothers and sisters, it is so good to be with people who love the Lord and know the Lord and long for the Lord. It is so wonderful to hear people sing a song with conviction in their hearts.
Fan that into flame by the Spirit who dwells within you. That Christ within you longs for Christ in fullness—Christ uninhibited, the Spirit free to be Lord in the body of Christ—and to cry out, the Spirit and the bride together, “Come.”
What a wonderful prayer that is. May the Lord quickly answer.
Lord, we do pray. Thank You so much that You have turned us and taught us, and You have given us a longing in our hearts. It is really not our own.
We are so thankful that the Alpha and the Omega lives within us, and He intends to complete that which He has begun, if we will listen and respond to that life within.
Oh, how we thank You for all the work Your Holy Spirit has done this week. We do pray that the end result will be that that sound in heaven will be clear: “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’”
For Christ’s sake and the sake of His coming, we pray. Amen.