The Everyday Gospel Christmas DevotionalSample

Your body always moves toward what your heart has been longing for.

If I could eavesdrop on the longings of your heart, what would I hear? Maybe you’re single and long for the lifelong companionship of marriage. Maybe you have a job, but what you long for is a satisfying career. Perhaps in the midst of extended family chaos, you long for the sweetness of family peace. Maybe you’re sick and long for physical health and strength. Perhaps you long for enough money to pay your bills or to afford a dependable car. You may be a student who longs for success in your upcoming exams. Our hearts are never free from longing and, as the Bible reveals, our bodies follow after the longings of our hearts.

Psalm 42 is about the beautiful and life-giving longing that God designed to rule our hearts and shape how we live. What is this longing? It is longing for God himself. Longing for God involves longing for his presence, his fellowship, his wise rule, his rescuing grace, and the gathering of others who long for him as well. But in order to long for God, grace must first inspire and empower that longing. At the center of what sin is and does is a longing to be God. This desire goes all the way back to the fall in the garden of Eden. And because we are born in sin, we are born with idolatrous longing. Rather than naturally longing for God, we long for his position, power, and rule. We all need grace to rescue us from idolatry of self, so that our hearts may reach up to the one who first reached down to us.

Psalm 42 is both convicting and encouraging:

"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? My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?” These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival." (Ps. 42:1–4)

Be honest today: Do you hunger after and long for God? Are you like a parched deer, panting for water? Does longing for God propel your devotional life, your relationships, and your participation in public worship? Longing for God will always produce love for the people of God and joyful participation in the public worship of God.

If you lack that longing, remember that Jesus came to restore what sin robbed you of. Pray that God would place longing for him in your heart. God delights when his people long for him, so he delights in answering our prayers for that longing.

Prayer:

Precious Savior, my soul is often cast down. But I rest in your steadfast love. And may I long for it more and more. Thank you for comforting me with your presence, night and day. In Jesus’ name, amen.