A Longing

I guess I just need to write and say, there's such a longing in my heart. I suppose you all are like: Well...Duh. But, it's something so deep and so coming from my gut. I was just riding along in the country today and it felt like I could hear all of creation groaning in travail. Nothing satisfies me. Nothing.

I just have this longing...for God. Just God. Everything else in life just seems so empty. I just want to cry all the time. Quite often, I find myself fighting off tears, in the grocery store, at work, just riding along running the usual errands. I just feel a longing for God. I can't put it to words. It leaves me feeling quite alienated from this world. Most folks just seem satisfied, you know, like...dum de dum dum.

My heart aches. It really bugs me sometimes. This world just seems so foreign.

I am in a similar state. As I have been reading Ezekiel, and the other Prophets, my soul is beginning to yearn for GOD. It is strange, I have read them before, but now they are so poignant and cutting, and it seems as if they were just written today.
Tears sometimes start to well up in my eyes as I think of the disservice done to GOD's name and HIS SON. I search my heart and cryout "only by you grace Lord", and "how long Oh Lord!!".
Insatiable would not be a fit word, for it is more, words cannot describe it.
I believe GOD is birthing something, and that we are on the edge of something beautiful!

Hi Spitfire,

I have had a strange felling for about a month and a half that God is preparing something. When I've prayed to see what it might be I get the same feeling that whatever it is, its going to impact the church. I don't feel that this "thing/things" are going to effect the unsaved as much as it is going to transform the deadness in the body. I think that the Lord may be getting ready to act in the liberal movements and churches. A fire is in my bones for them. I feel pity when I look at my old brethren that are going the path of conformity. I pray that God will cleanse His church.
The only way I can figure that He will do this is through a persecution. I could be vary wrong so put little into what I say. :-(

In Christ, bro Doug

I just feel a longing for God. I can't put it to words.

"I spread forth my hands unto thee;
My soul thirsteth after thee,
as a weary land." (King David) Ps. 143: 6

This world just seems so foreign.

All I can say is... Praise God! I know the same longing. I feel like such a stranger, even in Church lately. I love this site because it's a place where the Bride can come together and relate our deepest and most intimate desires for HIM and HIM alone!! Praise God because it's here that I can really see the move of the spirit!!! It's in the hearts of men and women who have no agenda, but just love JESUS with every fiber of their beings.

I left church today feeling so discouraged (as I often do) but I see such hope and glory among the saints here!! Praise God!!

As soon as we began to worship, this brokeness came over me that overwhelmed me. I cried like I had lost a loved one.

I have experienced this oft times lately. It is a rush of emotion which comes from somewhere deep inside. I would certainly love to believe that this is true:

I have had a strange felling for about a month and a half that God is preparing something.

because sometimes I wonder if I'm going crazy. I've tried to psych myself out of this emotional storm, and it ain't workin'. I've tried everything I know...it only gets worse.

Psalm 42:1
As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.

Psalm 42:7
Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and billows are gone over me.

Revelation 22:1
And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.

BE STILL MY SOUL!

J-bird wrote

As soon as we began to worship, this brokeness came over me that overwhelmed me. I cried like I had lost a loved one.....I was allowed to get a glimpse into the heart of Jesus

The Lord led me to read out Eph 6:10-18 on Sunday last but something of God happened and I could not finish. As I got to the putting on of the Christian's armour I was overwhelmed with sobbing and brokenness. I felt as if the Lord was actually present in the words I was speaking.

"Allowed to get a glimpse into the heart of Jesus"...what a wonderful explanation.

Linda

You know, I'm pleasantly surprised to find that there are others joining me in crying. Thank you all for sharing. I feel encouraged that, perhaps, we are just experiencing God in a fresh outpouring. Isn't it neat how a simple adjustment to our perspective puts things in a new light? I appreciate you all. Dian.

Tinluke, I thank God for the encouragement you shared. It is good to see and I am glad for it and I pray all our hearts could be knit togther in the Lord :-)

I thank God and am glad too for the several testimonies that have been shared. I pray we could all share more together in these things.

I think, perhaps, I should say one more thing for the sake of clarity. The tears I'm crying are not tears of joy. I had a PM and I think I may have presented myself in a way that portrayed something that isn't true.

The tears I am crying are tears of sorrow. I've been in a deep depression since January, but really it was coming on way before then. Now...you ask...why am I depressed? This is the dilemma, see if you all can follow me:

I grew up believing I was born again at age,10. Our family was psuedo-Christian. We went to church and talked about being Christian in name only. Everything else about my life was worldly. I grew up with the hopes and dreams of the world. I wanted to marry a nice, handsome guy who thought I hung the moon. I wanted to get rich. I wanted to travel and take nice vacations and own a beautiful home and send my kids to nice colleges...I wanted my husband to cherish me and take care of me and live happily ever after. Fast forward to today...

I'm 48 years old, and on my second marriage. I've spent my entire life battling depression (without medication), because nothing about my life has turned out the way I'd hoped. Then, about 4+ years ago, I truly got saved, or at least I think I began to get saved. Now, I know I'm saved. Then, 2+ years ago, I quit going to church and decided to seek God with my whole heart (that's how I found Sermonindex). So...for the past 2 years, God has been dismantling my theology and my whole way of thinking about life...

This has left me in a strange way. I'm not who I used to be, but I'm not who I'm going to be, yet. The hopes and dreams I used to live off of, are gone. Yet, here I am, not yet 50, and I'm not sure where to go from here. I still have to work a job I hate with no hope of retirement and no hope of having money to travel or do the things I want to do, all that is the same. Yet, I know God in a way that I never knew him before. This entire world system just seems foreign to me now. Yet...I'm just blah. It's as if all the color has drained out of life. Does anybody know what I'm talking about? There's a longing for God in a way that will lift me above all this, but I haven't gotten there yet.

I still have a failure of a life and no hope for the future (in this life), and I'm trying to figure out how to have peace, even though things may not get any better. I often don't want to wake up. I feel guilty about all this, but it's the truth. I spend countless hours begging God to help me and I [i]do[/i] have faith that he is going to help me, but, right now, I'm stuck.

If God doesn't come and bring me out of this place, I'll never get out. I can't psyche myself out in the old method that I used to use when I just believed "God's gonna bless me".

Ok, there! Now, you all know where I'm [i]really[/i] coming from. I hope this doesn't leave you disillusioned (with me or with God). Sincerely, Dian.

Beloved,

He wants your will to be His will.

Saint Augustine's "Confessions" helped me to see the condition of my heart and the battle for my soul.

www.sermonindex.net/modules/articles/index.php?view=category&cid=110

"Who am I, and what is my nature? What evil is there not in me and my deeds; or if not in my deeds, my words; or if not in my words, my will? But thou, O Lord, art good and merciful, and thy right hand didst reach into the depth of my death and didst empty out the abyss of corruption from the bottom of my heart. And this was the result: now I did not will to do what I willed, and began to will to do what thou didst will." - Book IX, Chapter I

Psalm 116:16,17
O LORD, truly I am thy servant; I am thy servant, and the son of thine handmaid: thou hast loosed my bonds. I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and will call upon the name of the LORD.

I will pray that by His love, He will set you fully free to love only Him. 1 John 4:19 - "We love him, because he first loved us."

"By loving Him more than them we shall love them more than we now do." C.S. Lewis - The Four Loves

Also, God designed us to be among the rest of the body - no matter how difficult it may be.

In His Love.

Yes sister I can understand where you are coming from. For the last couple of years I have been in both a time of struggle, and a time of blessing.
It began when I found this site and GOD began to challenge me on things I had held so tightly to. They all stemmed from self of course with the chief of these being that I wanted to be a pastor.
I was involved in ministry, and was jumping through all the hoops, doing all the right things, teaching all the ear tickling messages etc. etc. But to quote Reidhead,"GOD began to tear through the overlay of my heart."
So I began to see that I was serving GOD for what I got out of it, and I stepped down from being a youth pastor. Then I taught a message at a retreat that did not go over very well as it challenged all of our sin, and long held beliefs. Shortly after this, I was told teach and believe what we do or you cannot be in ministry here, and not in so many words " maybe this isn't the church for you".
This is after morre than two years of serving there from men who were brothers to me (one of them married my wife and I).
A couple weeks later my father passed away, and I hoped for restoration, but there was none. Oh how I groaned and wept as the wounds went deeper. Yet I realize these were layers being stripped away.
Then the sr. pastor called the church that my brother worked at and told them he should be fired because he did not agree with what they taught there, and that I was trying to destroy his church. That night I groaned and shook, and wept for hours on end, not knowing what was going on.
My wife stayed going there, and they began to tell her that I was rebellious, and unsubmissive, and in sin. So now life was like hell on earth. I knew I had been faithful to GOD, I knew I had done what He told me, but everything was getting worse! But He was working!
Some of the leadership of that church told my wife she should seperate herself from me so I would see the error of my ways, and come back. This is when she began to question what they were saying. It all came to a head when she let them know that she no longer held to a pre-trib view. She was told that she could no longer be in ministry there, but she was welcome to attend, but no ministering to any of the young girls as she had been doing.
There is more, but I think you get the gist of it. There have times where I have done nothing but weep, for the men who have done this and for my own heart. Some days everything was bright and beautiful, others were so dreary I did not know if I could go on. Yet even now, I see how GOD is purifying me the only way HE could.
Well enough for now, but may He bless you, and warm your heart with HIS prescence this day!

Colossians 1:27-28 To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory: Whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that [b]we may present every man perfect[/b] in Christ Jesus:

The world? The so-called 'churches'? Forget all that..Our success or failure must not be governed or guaged by them, but by every Word out of God's Word. Christ is our security, Christ is our righteousness, The Living Word must rule our minds.

Don't listen to the devil's whisperings and lies to our minds, with the good or bad circumstances, come what may. Fill our minds with the words and knowledge of God the Father through faith until there's no space in our mind for anything else. God's words must be controlling us moment by moment.

Nothing else would do !!

Praying is great, mourning over sins is great, repenting from sins is great, but knowing Christ, and knowing who we are in HIM, is indispensible.

Do we really know WHO WE ARE in Christ? Do we?

Do we really know WHO CHRIST is and what HE had done for us?

If not, let's know Christ more and more through His Word:)

I spend countless hours begging God to help me and I do have faith that he is going to help me, but, right now, I'm stuck.

Dian, It looks like God isn’t giving you the luxury of vices that can keep the depression at bay – like wonderful circumstances, status, and worldly satisfactions. You are left stripped of it all, and so vulnerable. It’s been said that God’s love is like a river – it flows in the lowest places. And that is where you seem to be. You can do nothing but grab onto the “hem of his garment”, and cry out, “Lord, I need you!”

The story of Hagar in the desert after being “booted” from the Abraham household (twice) may be encouraging. (Gen 16, 21) Here is an abandoned woman - no hostel or woman’s shelter to run to. She is alone in a God-forsaken wilderness with no hope of a good future. Then, along comes an angel and says, “The Lord has heard of your misery”, and gives her a promise of a son. Some years later she is in the desert again with Ishmael. There is no water and her son is almost dead. She lays him down and walks away from him, not wanting to watch him die. Imagine her inner pain. Again an angel comes along and ministers to her and shows her the water. Her hope is restored.

I love this story because it reminds me that God’s love even reaches the “nobodies” – just a plain woman, not the special mother of promise, not a faith hero – just a desperate needy woman. It goes to show you that there is not one person who is “beneath” God’s dignity.

May God open your eyes and show you the “well of water” that can nourish your soul.

By the way, I adore your courage: sharing all this about yourself. You are made of good stuff.

Diane

Beloved, these have been near to me too, for some time now, these tears of sorrow. There was a period, perhaps a couple of years ago, that I noticed a pain in my chest around the area of my heart, though it was not physical. It is still with me and I have yet to know with any certainty what it is about, except that it is not physical.

At the same time, feeling called to share the Gospel and setting out to do so in earnest, the thought of everlasting punishment and the fate of the lost has weighed heavily upon me. I can not, it seems, speak to men and women about such dreadfull things and not also have the same thoughts weigh upon my own soul.

I think I've learned during this time that, at least for me, words just aren't enough in places of deep suffering and sorrow; sometimes they don't even begin to reach the point of touching the need. I say words, by themselves. I believe that unless God enlivens those words, so to speak, and imparts to us somehow a measure of whatever hope those words are meant to convey, then I do not think they profit much at all. It reminds me too of a message by A.E. Wilder-Smith on suffering: as I remember it he related some experiences in dealing with suffering and grieving people in the medical field and how, you cant just always go to someone with 'a cheap thought of the Gospel' or something along those lines. I know he did not mean anything blasphemous by putting the word cheap in a sentence with the Gospel. I think he meant that there is a real sense in which sometimes our attempts at dispensing the Gospel can be thoughtless and inappropriate, especially to people who, at that moment, may just need a friend, or more to feel love than to hear of it.

Since it seems appropriate for the topic, I looked up the message by Dr. Wilder-Smith

[url=https://www.sermonindex.net/modules/mydownloads/singlefile.php?lid=711&commentView=itemComments]Why Does God Allow Suffering?[/url]

Also, this brief word happened to come up in the random-article before I opened this thread

[url=https://www.sermonindex.net/modules/articles/index.php?view=article&aid=9326]School of Sorrow[/url] by Mrs. Charles E. Cowman

Peace be with you brothers and sisters and much love be with you too.

It goes to show you that there is not one person who is “beneath” God’s dignity.

Ohhhhh! This is good! Thank you all so much. Every one of you! Thank you. You are all so precious, and your words were not wasted on me. God bless you all! I love you. Dian.

And may HE bless you as well.
I thank our GOD that this site has been like a well of water to my soul at times it was cleansing, at times the torrents swept me away.
Oh but the one thing that has been such a help to my soul is the fellowship of the saints I have received here. It has been such a blessing, and I hope that I may in some small way be able to recipricate the blessing.
Love to you all.