Desire for God

Early this week, I started re-reading "Passion and Purity" by Elizabeth Elliot.  I first read it during my freshman year of college.  

There's a little snippet I want to share that really challenged and encouraged me and my thinking:

"What kind of God is it who asks everything of us?  The same God who, "...did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all; and with this gift how can he fail to lavish upon us all he has to give?

He gives all.

He asks all.

I wanted to be loved. Nothing unusual about that, nothing to separate my generation from any other...  

But I wanted something deeper.  Down among all the foolishness in my diary, thoughts like chaff which the wind of the Spirit can drive away, there was some wheat.  There was an honest-to-God longing for the "fixed heart" that the collect speaks of.  (Collect: Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.)  A thousand questions cluttered my mind,...But the question to precede all others, which finally determines the course of our lives, is What do I really want??

Was it to love what God commands, in the words of the collect, and to desire what He promises?  Did I want what I wanted, or did I want what He wanted, no matter what it might cost?

Until the will and affections are brought under the authority of Christ, we have not begun to understand, let alone to accept, His Lordship.  The cross, as it enters the love life, will reveal the heart's truth.  My heart, I knew would be forever a lonely hunter unless settled "where true joys are to be found."

me: "Amen to that Liz!"