Blustery, rainy days like today always put me in the mood to read but since Winter break began I haven’t been able to settle into a good piece of fiction. Every novel I pick up quickly agitates me. Since it is a Sunday, and I didn’t go to church because my parents’ church service was canceled due to a power outage (their church is 45 minutes away, so we still have power), I decided to attempt The Pleasures of God: Meditations on God’s Delight in Being God by John Piper. One of my friends gave me the book for Christmas because she knew that this summer I had listened to some of Piper’s sermons and appreciated them.
So far, I have only read the Preface and the Introduction but I believe I’ve finally begun a book that will be able to sooth my agitation. It struck me as I read how serendipitous my friend’s choice was in selecting this particular book for me. Though I feel that I finally made my peace with God this summer, after a two year wrestling match, my relationship with him since then has lacked consistency and depth. Recently, it struck me that I had lost my delight in God and, subsequently, my hunger for Him. This struck me most as I was reading an entry from 'Am-ha'aretz Press, which is a blog that was recommended to me the weekend before Thanksgiving break. The author Isaiah Kallman wrote:
A good friend of mine told me that he wanted to become more disciplined in spending time with God. Then just a few weeks later, he confessed to how little time he had spent in prayer or reading his Bible. He said, “It’s not that I don’t have the time, but when the opportunity comes to spend time with Him, I make up excuses to do something else. I think the reason is that I don’t desire God enough.”
I told him, “Dude, please, I know you. You desire God. You’re hungry. You just don’t know how hungry you really are. I’m not going to pray that you become more disciplined. I’m going to ask God to show you just how desperately you already want Him. If you want something bad enough, you’ll do whatever it takes to get it.”
I feel very much like Isaiah’s friend, I desire God but I just can’t feel how hungry I am for Him. When I have time to read my Bible I usually call a friend or put in a movie.
In that same entry, Isaiah articulate something else that I have been thinking about a lot for the last four years, but especially throughout this last semester.
This is at the heart of the gospel [that] we must want His presence so badly that we’ll do anything to get there and stay there. We have to love the gospel so much that we can’t help but tell other people about it. We have to need God’s presence like the deer needed water in Psalm 42. We must feel our need to drink the living water Jesus offered before our thirst is quenched.
I’ve said a lot this year that the distinguishing feature of a Christian should be our love and delight in God. Not our love for Jesus as a famous humanitarian, or our love of our own knowledge about theology but a deep love for who God is. Quite a few people have asked me what I mean by that and how to do that. Answering their question has been difficult if not impossible for me this year since I have not been seeking God out or delighting in Him. I have known that to love God I need to be acquainted with Him. I should be seeking to get to know Him like a seek to get to know my friends. To me, that means reading His word and looking for His heart in every page. That means actively participating in His Church, which is Christ’s body, and looking for His face in their presence. Also, it means not being ashamed or reluctant to talk about Him. Occasionally, it even means reading a book that will draw out His character.
What I appreciated about listening to John Piper’s sermons this summer is that he focuses on delighting in God. His book that my friend bought for me, The Pleasures of God, is supposed to be a study of God’s character. In the Preface he summarizes the book by writing that it is based off of the “foundational truth” that “We will be most satisfied in God when we know why God himself is most satisfied in God.” More precisely, the book was birthed out of Piper’s reflections on a quote by Henry Scougal, “The Worth and Excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love.” Reflecting on that Piper sought out to know more of the excellency and worth of God’s soul by studying where God’s “delights and pleasures and joys” are mentioned in the Bible. He states, “I saw that the pleasures of God were in fact a portrait of God.” In The Pleasures of God, Piper seeks to illustrate that portrait. Hopefully this will be an encouraging read that compels me to delight more in God and to seek Him out more.
