A PASSION FOR PASSION!

“Do not be slothful in zeal; be fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.”
Romans 12:11

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.”
Matthew 22:37

“But what do I love when I love my God? . . . Not the sweet melody of harmony and song; not the fragrance of flowers, perfumes, and spices; not manna or honey; not limbs such as the body delights to embrace. It is not these that I love when I love my God. And yet, when I love him, it is true that I love a light of a certain kind, a voice, a perfume, a food, an embrace; but they are of the kind that I love in my inner self, when my soul is bathed in light that is not bound by space; when it listens to sound that never dies away; when it breathes fragrance that is not borne away on the wind; when it tastes food that is never consumed by the eating; when it clings to an embrace from which it is not severed by fulfillment of desire. This is what I love when I love my God.”
Augustine

“I have one passion, it is He!”
Count Von Zinzendorf

Nobody wants heartburn. Drug companies make millions on heartburn prevention medications. You have got Alka-Seltzer, Bromo-Seltzer, Tums, Maalox, Mylanta, Tagament, Pepto Bismal, Pepcid AC, Prilosec and probably a dozen more I am not familiar with. They all claim to help with heartburn because nobody wants it. But as you read this book I am praying that every one of you would desire to get heartburn! No, not the kind that nobody wants, but the kind of heartburn that could be described as “burning hearts”.

I long for each one of you to have the “hearts burning within us” experience of Cleopas and his companion on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24:13-32. These two were dejectedly trudging toward Emmaus talking with each other about all the things that had happened to Jesus. The risen Jesus joins them, but they do not recognize him. He opens the scriptures to them and explains how it was necessary that the Messiah should suffer and then enter into his glory. They invite him in for supper and when he blesses and breaks the bread their eyes were opened and they recognized him. He vanished from their sight and they said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” I don’t want your hearts to be lukewarm in your relationship with God. I want your hearts to burn with passion for the Lord. I hate heartburn, but I long for a burning heart.

Passion is another word for “burning hearts”. A passion is a strong feeling, an emotion that is packed with intensity. At times it carries a sense of urgency that something great is at stake. Passion is the driving force within us that motivates us to action and focuses our life's attentions in such a way that we have an impact on those around us.

I love reading the journals of David Brainerd who was an obscure missionary to the Indians in New England. He lived a short life: twenty-nine years, five months and nineteen days. Only eight of those years as a believer, and only four of those as a missionary. He was not well known. He was extremely vulnerable to depression and was perpetually ill. But his life has inspired the modern missionary movement perhaps more than any other life since the apostles. Why? One reason that stands out is that he was utterly aflame for God. He wrote,

“Oh, that I might be a flaming fire in the service of the Lord. Here I am I Lord, send me; send me to the ends of the earth ... send me from all that ­is called earthly comfort; send me even to death itself if it be but in Your service and to promote Your Kingdom…When I really enjoy God, I feel my desires of him the more insatiable, and my thirsting after holiness the more unquenchable; ... Oh, for holiness! Oh, for more of God in my soul! Oh, this pleasing pain! It makes my soul press after God ... Oh, that I might not loiter on my heavenly journey”.

David Brainerd's life is a vivid, powerful testimony to the truth that God can and does use weak, sick, discouraged, beat-down, lonely, struggling saints, who cry to him day and night, to accomplish amazing things for his glory. It is amazing what God can do though a life; albeit short, ablaze for His glory. The key to making a difference for God is a flaming zeal, a burning heart for God.

The apostle Paul was burnt-up with the passion of God. He burned up the pages of the Bible with his burning heart for Christ. He said in Acts 20:24: "I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may accomplish my course and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.” Or in Philippians 3:7-8: "But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ." His zeal and sense of purpose eminent qualified him to write these three commands in Roman 12:11, “Do not be slothful in zeal; be fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.”

So we see that God commands us to have a passion for Him, to be on fire for Him. Another word for passion would be love. Jesus said in Matthew 22:37, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.”

In my own experience, I have found it impossible to obey this commandment for many reasons. perhaps you can resonate with me in your own experience.

1. Because of the smallness of my own affections for someone of such worth and glory as Jesus. I live with an almost constant awareness of the breach between the low intensity of my own passion an d the staggering realities of the universe around me.

2, Because I have been unable to maintain any consistent intensity in my affections towards Him.

3.Because of the inconsistency and weakness of my own affections being directed towards other things instead of Him.

4.Because of my hypocritical love for His gifts rather than towards Him.

5. Because I get caught up in acts of love rather than my heart feeling love towards Him.

6. Because I believe that human love is inadequate in loving a divine being because Jesus commands us to love God with divine love. How can I love God with divine love when I am human, fleshly, and sinful? In short, my best efforts to obey the great commandment fail!

So what does it mean to have a wholehearted love and passion for God? I have discovered in the scriptures and in my own life and experience that if it is going to happen, God Himself must take the steps to kindle afresh in our hearts the flame of fascination and love for Him. Only God can awaken in our souls the marvel and wonder that He is worthy. God must restore the mystery, the wonder, the excitement of all that He is for us in Jesus. Only God can bridge the gap between the prosaic deadness of the human heart and the inexpressible reality of Him, the living God. This is the awakening of the heart into the fullness of what God has created us and redeemed us to experience. It’s an awakening to a passion for God and unashamed, extravagant affection for Jesus. It is a move of God to empower you, motivate you, and enable you to love God with all of your heart soul, mind, and strength!

Dear reader, God created you, chose you, and redeemed you to be a lover of God. What does that mean? I think it means to enjoy Him, to delight in Him, to be astounded and absorbed with Him, to be astonished, amazed, and awed by Him, to be smitten and stunned by Him, to be obsessed and preoccupied with Him, to be fascinated, captivated, intoxicated, and exhilarated with Him, to be enthused and entranced with Him, to be excited and exhilarated with the revelation of Himself in Jesus.

I envision what our lives would be like if this were an accurate description of our relationship with God. I suspect it would be more difficult to sin, easier to love, forgive, and accept people, that reading the Bible would never be remotely boring, fellowship with other Christians would be a delight, that I would display uncommon boldness and courage in sharing Christ with the unsaved, that I would be less attached to money and things and would instead find generosity far more easily, that my worship would be filled with passion and extravagance, that my serving the Lord would be a great joy.

What are the odds of a typical unbeliever using the above list of words to describe Christians? Something has to change! And if you and I are going to change, God Himself must take the steps to kindle afresh in our hearts the flames of passionate love for Him. God created you for the first and greatest commandment, to be a lover of God. And that is what He is up to in your life! With a resolute determination that cannot be thwarted He is arousing and stirring and wooing and beckoning the hearts of this church into a passionate and intimate love affair with His Son, Jesus Christ. Let me show you in my next blog how God is doing this.

Passionate for passion,

Pastor Bill

REFLECTIONS ON THE TRANSFORMING POWER OF BEAUTY Part 2

The supreme manifestation of God’s beauty is seen in the person of Jesus Christ. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:6, “For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” The beauty of Jesus has nothing to do with how He smelled or looked or the sound of His voice or the strength of His arms or the color of His hair or the way He dressed. Jesus is beautiful because He has a glory, an excellence, a spiritual supreme beauty-that can be self-evidently true. That is to say, when you see Him there is a direct and personal apprehension of the beauty that you see. It’s like seeing the sun and knowing that it is light, or tasting honey and knowing that it is sweet.

There is a direct apprehension and attraction once you see Jesus that affects your thinking, your will, and your feelings, it goes deep and does something to your very soul. It changes your life.

We see this illustrated in the story of the conversions of some of His disciples in John 1:35-49,
“The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God!" The two disciples heard him say this (Obviously seeing him as well), and they followed Jesus. Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, "What are you seeking?" And they said to him, "Rabbi" (which means Teacher), "where are you staying?" He said to them, "Come and you will see." So they came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour. One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, "We have found the Messiah" (which means Christ). He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, "So you are Simon the son of John? You shall be called Cephas" (which means Peter).The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, "Follow me." Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathaniel and said to him, "We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph." Nathaniel said to him, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" Philip said to him, "Come and see." Jesus saw Nathaniel coming toward him and said of him, "Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!" Nathaniel said to him, "How do you know me?" Jesus answered him, "Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you." Nathaniel answered him, "Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!"

There is just something about Jesus! His beauty is such that when these men saw him, they left their lives and followed him, and passionately told others about what they had seen. John writes of his experience with Jesus in John 1:14, “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
When it comes to the beauty of Christ, who can adequately describe glory and beauty that is infinite and is therefore beyond description? There is no one like Christ in this regard.

Spurgeon said it well:
“Hope not, my brethren, that the preacher can grapple with such a subject. I am overcome by it. In my meditations I have felt lost in its lengths and breadths. My joy is great in my theme, and yet I am conscious of a pressure upon my brain and heart, for I am as a little child wandering among the stars. I stumble among sublimities, I sink amid glories. I can only point with my finger to that which I see, but cannot describe. May the Holy Spirit himself take of the things of Christ and show them unto you.”

What makes Jesus Christ so precious, so beautiful, and so glorious is what Jonathan Edwards calls in his profound sermon series The Excellence of Christ, “an admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies” Christ's attributes work together in harmony. And there is a glory in Christ that exceeds any of His individual characteristics. It is like a rainbow in which the individual colors are beautiful, but their combination heightens the sense of beauty. The effect of seeing these excellencies is described by Edwards in this way:

“The excellency of Christ is such, that the discovery of it is exceedingly contenting and satisfying to the soul. The carnal soul imagines that earthly things are excellent-one thinks riches most excellent, another has the highest esteem of honor, and to another carnal pleasure appears the most excellent. But the soul cannot find contentment in any of these things, because it soon finds an end to their excellency. Worldly men imagine that there is true excellency and true happiness in those things which they are pursuing. They think that if they could but obtain them, they would be happy. But when they obtain them, and cannot find happiness, they look for happiness in something else, and are still upon the pursuit. But Christ Jesus has true excellency, and so great excellency, that when they come to see him they look no further, but the mind rests there. It sees a transcendent glory and an ineffable sweetness in Jesus! It sees that until now it has been pursuing shadows, but that now it has found the substance. It sees that before it had been seeking happiness in the stream, but that now it has found the ocean.”

How do we see those excellencies? The Apostle Paul describes this path to discovery in 2 Cor.4:6, For God, who said, "Light shall shine out of darkness," is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” We can see the preciousness of Jesus through the portraits of Christ given to us in God’s word by reading it and hearing it proclaimed. This portrayal, accompanied by God’s shining in our hearts, appears to us what really is-“the glory of God in the face of Jesus.” Or to put it another way the beauty of Jesus Christ. God shows us that Jesus is beautiful through the word and the work of God opening our blind eyes to see His beauty.

John Owen was the greatest Puritan thinker of the 17th century. He outlived all eleven of his children. The last thing he prepared for publication was called Meditations on the Glory of Christ. It was his dying testimony and his way of preparing for the unspeakably great moment of meeting the Lord face to face. It is a 160-page exposition of John 17:24, “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory.” In it he gave five ways we can behold the glory and beauty of His mercy:

1. Fix it in mind that this glory of Christ in the divine constitution of His person is the best, most noble, useful, beneficial object that we can have in our thoughts and affections.
2. Diligently study the Scripture and the revelations that are made of this glory of Christ in them.
3. Having attained the light of the knowledge of the glory of Christ from the Scripture, or by the dispensation of the truth in the preaching of the gospel, meditates frequently upon it.
4. Let your occasional thoughts of Christ be many, and multiplied every day.
5. See to it that all thoughts concerning Christ and His glory are accompanied with admiration, adoration, and thanksgiving.

Oh reader, God invites us to do just what David desires. He has created the longings and satisfies the longings of our soul (Jeremiah 31:33). In Psalm 42:8 we receive an astonishing invitation from God, "You have said, "Seek my face.” My heart says to you, “Your face, LORD, do I seek.” God invites us to seek His face, to dwell, to see, to gaze, and reflect upon His beauty. How does that affect you? This is God’s desire for you: “SEEK MY FACE”!

Some of you perhaps are not accustomed to receiving an invitation to anything. You rarely get invited to lunch after church, to birthday parties, to weddings, or to share your opinion on an important topic. Also some of you are notorious for turning down invitations (like me!) but this is one you don’t want to miss. This is the greatest invitation to the greatest experience of all! God wants you and me to seek His face! We seek to behold his beauty, to be with him, to meditate on him.

This is the central business for your life- to see the beauty of God. To get your head into the heavens. To know him for whom he is. He is the main reality- not buildings, not Christians, not ministry, not missions, not heaven. God himself is what we seek. And David adds in Psalm 40:16, Let all who seek You rejoice and be glad in You.’ David did not dishonor this beauty by saying, "Ho hum." How could you possibly see the beauty of God and respond that way? No. This is God’s mission and our mission: to rejoice and be glad in him. To delight yourself in the Lord! (Psalm 37:4)

There is nothing beyond this. Nothing more urgent. Nothing more important. Nothing more satisfying. This is what moved Jonathan Edwards:

“The pleasures of loving and obeying, loving and adoring, blessing and praising the infinite being, the best of Beings, the Eternal Jehovah, the pleasures in trusting Jesus Christ, in contemplating His beauties, excellencies, and glories, in contemplating His love to mankind and to us, in contemplating His infinite goodness and astounding loving kindness…these are the pleasures that are worthy so noble a creature as a man is.”

Do you have a desire for that one thing? Here is what I mean by having a desire for the one thing. Here is what God had in mind when He created and redeemed you. Here is what God had in mind when He created and fashioned your heart and stamped His indelible image upon it. Sam Storms describes it in this way:

“You, we, were made to be enchanted, enamored, and engrossed with God; enthralled, enraptured, and entranced with God; enravished, excited, and enticed by God; astonished, amazed, and awed by God; astounded, absorbed, and agog with God; beguiled and bedazzled, startled and staggered, smitten and stunned; stupefied and spellbound; charmed and consumed; thrilled and thunderstruck; obsessed and preoccupied; intrigued and impassioned; overwhelmed and overwrought; gripped and rapt; enthused and electrified; tantalized, mesmerized, and monopolized, fascinated, captivated, and exhilarated by God; intoxicated and infatuated with God!

Does that sound like your life? Do you want it to? Do you find yourself desiring those “fruitless pleasures” of the world? “The One Thing” is what God made you for. Kierkegaard said it well, “Purity in heart is to will the one thing”. May we join David and from our hearts desire to see God’s beauty. Amen!

A Prayer
“Father in heaven! What is a man without You! What is all that he knows, vast accumulation though it be, but a chipped fragment if he does not know You! What is all his striving, could it even encompass a world, but a half-finished work if he does not know You: You the One, who are one thing and who are all! So may You give to the intellect, wisdom to comprehend that one thing; to the heart, sincerity to this understanding; to the will, purity that wills only one thing. In prosperity may You grant perseverance to will one thing; amid distractions, collectedness to will one thing; in suffering, patience to will one thing. Oh, You that give both the beginning and the completion, may You early, at the dawn of day, give to the young man the resolution to will one thing. As the day wanes, may You give to the old man a renewed remembrance of his first resolution, that the first may be like the last, the last like the first, in possession of a life that has willed only one thing.” Soren Kierkegaard

REFLECTIONS ON THE TRANSFORMING POWER OF BEAUTY

“The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? When evildoers assail me to eat up my flesh, my adversaries and foes, it is they who stumble and fall. Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war arise against me, yet I will be confident. One thing have I asked 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 gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple. For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble; he will conceal me under the cover of his tent; he will lift me high upon a rock. And now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies all around me, and I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy; I will sing and make melody to the LORD. Hear, O LORD, when I cry aloud; be gracious to me and answer me! You have said, ‘Seek my face.’ My heart says to y you, ‘Your face, LORD, do I seek’."

Psalm 27:1-8 ESV

“The personal attractions of Jesus are all inviting and irresistible! His love wins us.
His glory charms us. His beauty attracts us. His sympathy soothes us. His gentleness subdues us. His faithfulness inspires us. He is the "altogether lovely One!”

Octavius Winslow

In 2005 I spent eleven days right above Panama in the southernmost part of Costa Rica on the Osa Peninsula at a place called Cabo Matapalo. To get there you have to take a redeye flight on a very cramped and uncomfortable airplane. When you land in San Jose you then have to take an hour cab ride which is much like Mister Toad’s Wild Ride at Disneyland to get to another airport where you need to fly to get to Puerto Jimenez. From there you fly an hour of pure turbulence on a puddle-jumper prop plane. When you land in Puerto Jimenez, that is, if you survived the flight; you then take a forty five minute ride in a four wheel drive truck on a potholed, narrow, rugged road with numerous deep river crossings. Then you arrive at Matapalo and are utterly thrilled both to have survived the ordeal and to behold this place.

What is it about Cabo Matapalo that makes people go through all of what I shared to get there? There must be something about Matapalo that made the pursuit worthwhile? There has to be a reason that I would be willing to go through all of that hassle. The answer is that Cabo Matapalo is right at the top of the most beautiful places that I’ve ever seen. The pleasant tropical weather, the density and beauty of the tropical rain forest, the uncluttered and secluded beaches, the incredible surfing and warm 80 plus degree water, the variety of birds, monkeys, and wildlife, the solitude and quiet of only hearing the sounds of nature, are but a few of the things that attract me to this place and make me desire to go back again and again. To show you pictures, to try to describe it, will never impact you until you’ve actually been there and seen it yourself.

But as wonderful as Matapalo is, there is nothing as breathtaking as God! What is it about God that makes him so enjoyable? What is it about God that makes our pursuit of Him a worthwhile endeavor? What is it about God that is so fascinating? What is it about God that causes people to turn from all worldly allurements and diversions to focus on knowing and seeing and experiencing Him? What is it about Him that brings in our soul emptiness for anything less than His companionship and presence? What is it that caused a man named Augustine, who indulged in every form of earthly pleasure to say “How sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys which I had once feared to lose!...You drove them from me and took their place, you who are sweeter than all pleasure…Oh Lord my God, my Light, my Wealth, and my Salvation.”

There must be something about God that brings a pleasing pleasure, a longer-lasting joy, a fullness of joy, a turning from fruitless joys to finding the superior pleasure in God alone. There must be something that makes Him more appealing than what the world, the flesh, and sin have to offer. Do you feel like that this dear reader?

King David sure did? The answer to all our questions is found in his single­-minded passion and desire in Psalm 27:4. “One thing have I asked 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 gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple”. Throughout Psalm 27 David seems to be ransacking the Hebrew language for nouns to describe this desire: to dwell in the house of the Lord (verse 4); to inquire in his temple (verse 4); in His dwelling (verse 5); the shelter of His tabernacle (verses 5-6).

This desire spoken in all these ways is centered in one thing, the main thing: to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord, the incomparable, transcendent, all­ satisfying, awe-inspiring beauty of God.

David's resolution reminds me of a scene in the 1991 movie City Slickers. Mitch, played by Billy Crystal and his two friends from New York City are middle-aged, middle-class guys trying to rediscover the purpose of their mundane lives. Curley, played by Jack Palance, is a tough-as-leather trail boss who is not particularly reflective or philosophical. In one scene, Curley, the old crusty cow boy, is talking with the city folk about life. They are confused and have made a mess of their lives. They ask Curley for some advice on life. Curley: “You city folks…You spend 50 weeks a year getting knots in your rope and you think two weeks here will work them all out. You just don't get it.” Curley holds up one dirty, black-gloved finger to them. With a squint in his weathered old face and a cigarette dangling from his lips, he says to them, "Life is about one thing. It’s this," Palance says, holding up a single finger. "The secret of life is your finger?" asks Crystal. "It’s one thing," Palance replies. Mitch: “What thing?” Curley: “That's what you have to figure out.”

Christian, I have good news for you, you don’t have to figure out what is that one thing; it’s the very purpose and desire of God for your well being and happiness and His glory. Our “one thing” is to see and cherish the glory of God. That is God's design and that is our duty.

But wait a minute Bill; you’ve been talking about the beauty of God. Why did you say that the “one thing” is to see and cherish the glory of God? Well, let’s define the glory of God and I think you’ll understand what I mean. What is the glory of God? Glory is a word that we use in church life often times without having the slightest idea what it really means. When I speak of His glory I am speaking like David of the beauty of God unveiled.

Augustine rightly insisted that God is beauty itself, referring to Him as “my Father, supremely good, beauty of all things beautiful.” Glory is all of God that makes Him God, and shows Him to be worthy of our praise, our boasting, our confidence, our trust, and our joy. Glory is the external manifestation of the internal excellencies of God. Glory is what you see and feel when God goes public with His beauty.

The wonderful thing about God is that He desires us to see His beauty. He wants us to not only see it, but cherish it, enjoy it. Jonathan Edwards shows that this is the root of worship. What he says has had deep and profound impact on my understanding of God and His glory.

“God glorifies Himself toward the creatures . . . in two ways: 1. By appearing to . . . their understanding. 2. In communicating Himself to their hearts, and in their rejoicing and delighting in, and enjoying, the manifestations which He makes of Himself. . . . God is glorified not only by His glory's being seen, but by its being rejoiced in. . . . When those who see it delight in it, God is more glorified than if they only see it. His glory is then received by the whole soul, both by understanding and in the heart.”

God is always manifesting His beauty in creation, in providence, in scripture, and pre-eminently in the face of Jesus (2 Corinthians 4:4). His purpose is designed to evoke breathtaking delight and incomparable and unspeakable joy. God’s beauty is what makes Him eminently desirable, attractive, and quickening to the soul that it was made for another world.

God has pulled back the curtain on His glory. “Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth” (Psalm 50:2). He has disclosed Himself on the platform of creation and redemption that we might stand awestruck in his presence, beholding the sweet symmetry of His attributes, pondering the unfathomable depths of His greatness, baffled by the wisdom of His deeds and the limitless extent of His goodness and mercy and grace. This is His beauty and glory!

Throughout the Psalms we read frequently of David’s insatiable passion for God’s beauty. Read and catch his “One thing” passion:

Psalm 42:1-2, “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God”. Psalm 63:1-3, “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory…Your steadfast love is better than life.” Psalm 84:10, ^“For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.” Psalm 16:2, 11; “I say to the LORD, "You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you… You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”

For David nearness to God in order to see Him in all his beauty and glory was the only experience that would truly satisfy him. Only God could satisfy a heart like David’s and David was a man after one thing: the beauty of God. This is what we were created and redeemed for! This is the essence of loving God –as John Piper says, “God is most glorified when we are most satisfied in Him”.

Jonathan Edwards understood about the one thing. That’s why he wrote: “God’s is glorified not only in His glory being seen, but by in His glory being rejoiced in.” God’s beauty satisfies the heart with joy and delight.

So what happens when we desire the one thing? As we have already seen; first, beauty satisfies the heart with joy and delight. Secondly, beauty transforms the soul. The encounter of the human soul with divine beauty, is more than merely satisfying and enjoyable, it is profoundly transforming. There is within it the power to change our lives into something radiating God’s own beauty! The apostle Paul alluded to this in 2 Corinthians 3:18 when he said, “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” The point is what we see is what we be! Or as Jon Piper puts it, “beholding is becoming.” We do not simply behold beauty: beauty takes hold of us and challenges the allegiance of our hearts.

Beauty calls us to reshape our lives and exposes the shabbiness of our conduct. It awakens us to the reality of a transcendent Being to whose likeness of beauty we are being called and conformed by his gracious initiative. Beauty has the power to dislodge from our hearts the grip of moral and spiritual ugliness. The soul's engagement with beauty elicits love and forges new affection that no earthly power can overcome.

Jonathan Edwards wrote of this transforming beauty in his sermon The Way of Holiness.

“Tis the highest beauty and amiableness, vastly above all other beauties; 'tis a divine beauty, makes the soul heavenly and far purer than anything here on earth-this world is like mire and filth and defilement [compared] to that soul which is sanctified-'tis of a sweet, lovely, delightful, serene, calm, and still nature. 'Tis almost too high a beauty for any creature to be adorned with; it makes the soul a little, amiable, and delightful image of the blessed Jehovah. How may angels stand with pleased, delighted, and charmed eyes, and look and look with smiles of pleasure upon that soul that is holy."

To be continued...