Life Principles for Living Out the Greatest Commandment预览

He Waits for You

The King waits for you. He holds His plans for you in His hands. He tenderly speaks to you, but He will not push you out of complacency. Your God, the lover of your soul, waits for you to want Him.

We will not find our souls panting feverishly for anything other than ourselves in a rushed fifteen-minute “quiet time,” in a frantic completion of our group studies, or in a prayer life consisting of our own concerns and the concerns of the ones we cherish. The glorious enlightenment experienced by those whose souls pant for God (the kind that illuminated the very face of Moses) resulted from the discovery that God does not have to conform to our fractured understandings resulting from our limited engagement.

In the movie Galaxy Quest, Tim Allen plays an actor in a TV series mimicking our Star Trek. Allen portrays a character similar to Captain Kirk. The movie opens with Allen and his co-stars attending a Galaxy Quest convention crowded with people dressed in costumes associated with the series. Allen meets an attendee in space garb who asks for his help. Allen misinterprets the request as a public-speaking gig and agrees to go. He finds himself in outer space on a spaceship identical to the one he pretends to navigate, fighting alien enemies. When he returns to earth, he hysterically reports to his undaunted crew, “It’s real! It’s all real!”

At some point in time, those whose souls panted feverishly after God came to this conclusion: He’s really real! And there is nothing on this planet that can compare to the thrill of Him! Their lives began to take on a dimension I can only describe as spiritually derived passion.

The signature of those who leave lives of complacency in exchange for the lives God dreams them to live is passion. Intensity, fervent devotion, and inexplicable joy, even amid adversity, exude from a passionate follower of Christ.

Both Nehemiah and Paul accomplished greatness for the kingdom. Their compulsion came from within. One simply possessed an acute awareness of God and His promises for His people. The other experienced a face-to-face encounter with Jesus. Both allowed God to change the direction of their lives, putting aside previous dreams to pursue something bigger than themselves.

Spiritual encounters with Jesus continue to have the same effect on people today.

Let’s not keep Him waiting to be wanted.

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