The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we drink in every night.
But it would be a great mistake to think that the awakening of desire for the Bridegroom would produce a wave of monastic withdrawal into the fasting and prayer of passive waiting. That is not what the awakening of desire for Christ would produce. It would produce a radical, new commitment to complete the task of world evangelization, no matter what the cost. And fasting would not become a pacifistic discipline for private hopes, but a fearsome missionary weapon in the fight of faith.—John Piper1
I want deliberately to encourage this mighty longing after God. The lack of it has brought us to our present low estate. Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people. He waits to be wanted.
To have found God and still to pursue Him is scorned by the too-easily-satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart.—A. W. Tozer2
When I was doing this study on having a hunger for God’s Word and I came across the two preceding quotations, they affected me deeply. Right then I felt the tug of the Spirit on my heart and I knew the Lord wanted me to stop and do some good old-fashioned soul-searching, self-evaluating, and bookkeeping with my soul to see how I was doing.
I asked myself, “Do I hunger and thirst after God’s Word and God’s Spirit like the ‘hart pants after the water brook’? Would I or could I call myself ‘a child of the burning heart’? What does it mean to have a ‘burning heart’?”
Almost instantly after asking myself these questions, I got the following, based on Bible passages. I tried my best to record them as they came. Here’s what the Lord gave me in answer to my questions:
“The children of the burning heart” hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they know that they shall be filled. Their soul thirsts for God, for the living God, and cries out, “When shall I come and appear before God?” Their flesh longs for Him in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is. As the hart pants after the water brooks, so pants their soul after God.3
They know that when they draw near to God that He draws near to them, because He loves them that love Him and they that seek Him early will find Him. They also count it all joy when they fall into diverse temptations, for they know that the trying of their faith is more precious than gold, even much fine gold.4
Daily they count not themselves to have already apprehended, but this one thing they do: they forget those things that are behind, and reaching forward to those things that are before, they press towards the mark of the high calling of God which is in Christ Jesus, that they may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His suffering.5
They are those who desire a better country, that is, a heavenly, whose builder and maker is God. In the past they have wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, and tormented, of whom it was said that the world was not worthy of them, and He (God) was not ashamed to be called their God.6
By seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, they know that all other things shall be added unto them. They esteem the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of the world. For this they are willing to suffer the loss of all things and to count them but dung, that they may know Him whom to know is life eternal.7
I'd like to share another quote from John Piper, which challenged me to want to drink deeply of the “water of life” and to desire to become a “child of the burning heart.”
“If you don't feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because you have nibbled so long at the table of the world. Your soul is stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great.”8
Bible verses on spiritual desire, hunger and thirst
One thing have I desired of the LORD, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to inquire in his temple.9
As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?10
Awake, my soul! Awake, harp and lyre! I will awaken the dawn. I will praise you, O Lord, among the nations; I will sing of you among the peoples. For great is your love, reaching to the heavens; your faithfulness reaches to the skies.11
Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will not be shaken. My salvation and my honor depend on God; he is my mighty rock, my refuge. Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.12
O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water. I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory. Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands. My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you. On my bed I remember you; I think of you through the watches of the night. Because you are my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings. My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.13
Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.14
How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord Almighty! My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the LORD; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. Even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may have her young—a place near your altar, O LORD Almighty, my King and my God. Blessed are those who dwell in your house; they are ever praising you. Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked.15
My soul is consumed with longing for your laws at all times. My soul faints with longing for your salvation.16
I spread out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land.17
My soul yearns for you in the night; in the morning my spirit longs for you. When your judgments come upon the earth, the people of the world learn righteousness.18
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.19
For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry.”20
Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation.21
Yesterday I came across the article below by A. W. Tozer that I never knew existed.
Formula for a Burning Heart
(By A. W. Tozer)
Any Christian who desires to, may experience a radical spiritual renaissance, and this altogether independent of the attitude of his fellow Christians.
The important question now is: How? Well, here are some suggestions which anyone can follow and which, I am convinced, will result in a wonderfully improved Christian life.
1. Get thoroughly dissatisfied with yourself.
Complacency is the deadly enemy of spiritual progress. The contented soul is the stagnant soul. When speaking of earthly goods, Paul could say, “I have learned ... to be content”; but when referring to his spiritual life, he testified, “I press toward the mark.” Stir up the gift of God that is in thee.
2. Set your face like a flint toward a sweeping transformation of your life.
Timid experimenters are tagged for failure before they start. We must throw our whole soul into our desire for God. “The Kingdom of God suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.”
3. Put yourself in the way of the blessing.
It is a mistake to look for grace to visit us as a kind of benign magic, or to expect God’s help to come as a windfall apart from conditions known and met. There are plainly marked paths which lead straight to the green pastures; let us walk in them. To desire revival, for instance, and at the same time to neglect prayer and devotion is to wish one way and walk another.
4. Do a thorough job of repenting.
Do not hurry to get it over with. Let godly sorrow do her healing work. Until we allow the consciousness of sin to wound us, we will never develop a fear of evil. It is our wretched habit of tolerating sin that keeps us in our half-dead condition.
5. Make restitution wherever possible.
If you owe a debt, pay it, or at least have a frank understanding with your creditor about your intentions to pay, so that your honesty will be above question. If you have quarreled with anyone, go as far as you can in an effort to achieve reconciliation. As fully as possible make the crooked things straight.
6. Bring your life into accord with the Sermon on the Mount and such other New Testament scriptures as are designed to instruct us in the way of righteousness.
An honest man with an open Bible and a pad and pencil is sure to find out what is wrong with him.
I recommend that the self-examination be made on our knees, rising to obey God's commandments as they are revealed to us from the Word. There is nothing romantic or colorful about this plain, downright way of dealing with ourselves, but it gets the work done. Isaac’s workmen did not look like heroic figures as they digged in the valley, but they got the wells open, and that was what they had set out to do.
7. Be serious-minded.
The devil’s ideals, moral standards, and mental attitudes are being accepted by you without your knowing it.
You wonder why you can make no progress in your Christian life. Your interior climate is not favorable to the growth of spiritual graces. There must be a radical change in your habits or there will not be any permanent improvement in your interior life.
8. Deliberately narrow your interests.
The jack-of-all-trades is the master of none. The Christian life requires that we be specialists. Too many projects use up time and energy without bringing us nearer to God. If you will narrow your interests, God will enlarge your heart. “Jesus only” seems to the unconverted man to be the motto of death. But a great company of happy men and women can testify that it became to them a way into a world infinitely wider and richer than anything they had ever known before.
Christ is the essence of all wisdom, beauty and virtue. To know Him in growing intimacy is to increase in appreciation of all things good and beautiful. The mansions of the heart will become larger when their doors are thrown open to Christ and closed against the world and sin. Try it.
9. Begin to witness.
Find something to do for God and your fellow men. Refuse to rust out. Make yourself available. Take the low place until such time as God sees fit to set you in a higher one. Back your new intentions with your money and your gifts, such as they are.
10. Have faith in God.
Begin to expect. Look up toward the throne where your Advocate sits at the right hand of God. All heaven is on your side. God will not disappoint you.
If you will follow these suggestions, you will most surely experience revival in your own heart. And who can tell how far it may spread? God knows how desperately the church needs a spiritual resurrection. And it can only come through the revived individual.22
1 Hunger for God (Crossway, 1997).
2 The Pursuit of God (Christian Publications, Inc., 1948).
3 Matthew 5:6; Psalm 42:2, 63:1, 42:1.
4 James 4:8; Proverbs 8:17; James 1:2; 1 Peter 1:7.
5 Philippians 3:13–14, 10.
6 Hebrews 11:10, 37, 38, 16.
7 Matthew 6:33; Hebrews 11:26; Philippians 3:7–8.
8 Hunger for God (Crossway, 1997).
9 Psalm 27:4 KJV.
10 Psalm 42:1–2 NIV.
11 Psalm 57:8–10 NIV.
12 Psalm 62:5–8 NIV.
13 Psalm 63:1–8 NIV.
14 Psalm 73:25–26 NIV.
15 Psalm 84:1–4, 10 NIV.
16 Psalm 119:20, 81 NIV
17 Psalm 143:6 NIV.
18 Isaiah 26:9 NIV.
19 Matthew 5:6 KJV.
20 John 6:33, 35a NIV.
21 1 Peter 2:2 NIV.
22 A. W. Tozer, “Formula for a Burning Heart.”
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