Have you ever looked back on heart-felt, yet "dangerous prayers" you've prayed in the past and realized you had no idea what you were really asking for? Back in December I wrote an entry entitled Hungry for God, in fact, this entire blog is intended to be all about the pursuit of a hungry heart after a loving God. While the path I've walked since writing that entry in December has included many rich times with the Lord, there have also been significant challenges... a mini-crucible, if you will.
In the midst of this season I have been increasingly convinced that the Lord is pursuing my heart infinitely more than I am pursuing His.
While praying for me recently, one friend said she felt as if God had a big bullseye on my heart and I just needed to sit still and allow Him to hit the target. In God's wisdom and love toward me He seems to be using some testing to increase my spiritual hunger and dependence upon Him... perhaps right on target in answering my very own prayers.
Reading Bob Sorge's Pain, Perplexity, and Promotion A Prophetic Interpretation of the Book of Job, has helped me gain perspective on how and why God uses the crucible to refine those who are pursuing Him. I've found Sorge's principle true in my own journey: gaining understanding of God's purposes for the trials we face helps us respond with a trusting and open heart toward Him. "If you will cooperate with Me... I am giving you the opportunity to discover what extravagant love is all about."The following excerpts are what prompted my writing of this post today. I pray that they will encourage you on your own journey of growing in hunger for God.
"Perhaps you've prayed. 'Lord, make me hungry for You,' or perhaps you've asked God to make you desperate for Him. I believe those are good things to ask, but we're rarely prepared for how God answers them.
All of us instinctively collect comforts around ourselves to make our lives as free of stress and pain as possible. That's normal and not necessarily wrong. However, some of us have become so comfortable with the good things of this life that we don't feel a compelling need for God's help and intervention. Often it takes sovereign acts of God to pull out from under us the props that keep us comfortable. We pray, 'Lord make me desperate for You,' but then when He removes our support system, we say, 'That's not what I meant, Lord!'
God knows how to make us desperate for Him. He knows how to place a cry deep within our souls. He puts the cry there with the intention of answering it.
I have defined grace as 'God reaching out to man.' Grace is God taking the necessary initiative to draw man unto Himself. It is grace and grace alone that causes man to raise a desperate cry to God, and then it is grace that empowers man to respond and take hold of God. In other words, our coming into the higher things of God is totally His initiative. All we can do is express our need and cry to Him for help. How He answers that cry is all of grace."
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