Although we discussed this issue a week ago in my cell group, I felt that the conversation was helpful, and I thought I’d open up the topic here in hope that it will be beneficial to others.
Almost every day my mind and heart does battle with a strange emotion – a nagging feeling in my soul. It’s a bit difficult to explain, but it’s an unsettled feeling. It usually expresses itself in my mind as something like “I wonder if God wants me to do more for Him?” or “My relationship with God and my family is great, so why does it feel like there is still something missing?”
Can anyone else out there relate to these feelings? Do you think it’s because I’m a perfectionist or because I’m insecure, or do you think it’s something else?
The founding pastor of my church is often quoted as saying “God has yet greater things for his people” and I think that may explain the feeling. I sometimes feel that way — as if there’s something bigger and greater and more important coming… like this is so much bigger than I am and I just have to be prepared for when God is ready to use me.
I believe God is continually at work in and through us and does use us for his kingdom purposes and its vital that we seek to grow in every dimension of our being and in relationship with God. We are told in scripture to serve others but our human nature tendancies can lead us out of balance. Throughout scripture we are told to wait upon the Lord and to be content and to be faithful in the small things and God tells us that before we were born(before we did anything-good, bad,HE LOVED US). So it could be that uneasy feeling is coming as a result of the pressure of the world to do more, have more bigger, better whatever. “Be still and know that I am the Lord.” And be faithful and obedient to do the things that come before you one day at a time. Praise God for the blessings and gifts you have before you now big and small. Those small things are very often the mundane, non-flashly, behind the scene things nobody really sees but its these small acts that add up to true deep contentment and show us God is faithful and will never leave us of forsake us.
I’m becoming increasingly convinced that the main reason I feel this way (apart from perfectionism and accidentally placing my identity in things other than Christ) is clearly seen in Philippians 3:12-20:
“I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in death…. I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. …Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. …our citizenship is in heaven.” (Phil 3:12-20)
A couple of things stand out to me:
1) Paul has an insatiable desire to be made like Christ and join him in his work.
2) Paul relates this desire back to his eternal destination and reminds the believing reader that this world is not our home.
So I think a big part of the reason I feel this way is because there is a driving desire in my heart to be made like Christ, and at the same time there’s an ongoing realization that his world is not my home. God has placed a longing within the hearts of humanity to be with Him in heaven. This world is nice, but it never satisfies that desire, because we were created for another place.
I came across this in Watchman Nee’s “Let Us Pray”. I thought it was applicable. “When the Holy Spirit is urging you to pray. You should do so. If you do not pray, you will feel suffocated within as if there is something left undone. In the event you still do not pray, you will feel even more weighed down. Finally, if you do not pray at all, the spirit of prayer as well as the burden of prayer will be so dulled that it will be difficult for you to regain such feeling and to pray the prayer according to God’s will afterwards.”
This whole conversation reminds me of a wonderful quote from C. S. Lewis (The Weight of Glory):
“In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each of you – the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence… the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. …Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. …The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things… are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols…. For they are not the thing itself; they are only… news from a country we have never visited.”
I was reading, “I Saw the Lord” by Ann Graham Lotz. A section in it reminded me of one of Kyle’s previous posts. In her book, Lotz talks about the deep love she has for her mother. She says, “And as passionately as I love my mother and long to be with her, I love Jesus even more. I talk with Him from time to time in prayer, although I know I don’t pray as much as I should or as much as I want to. I love the sound of his voice when He speaks to me through His Word. And I feel torn between where I am — here — and where I want to be — there, with Him.
I long for ….
the wind of His Spirit to breathe calmness into the chaos of my life.
the fullness of His wisdom to order the thoughts in my mind.
the sufficiency of His strength to undergird the weakness of my body.
the abundance of His blessing to saturate the poverty of my spirit.
the joy of His will to give rich pleasure to my journey.
the refuge of His arms to shield me from my fears.
the gentleness of His touch to reawaken the feelings of my heart.
the compassion of His heart to enfold me and hold me close.
I long to see Jesus … again.”