should rather say, “just a doctrinal theologian” instead.
All of these factors help us understand why there has developed such a hunger to meet God. The form of Christianity that has controlled the mainstream of the church in the West has leaned too far toward the side of the cognitive, intellectual explanation of Christianity. It should come then as no surprise that many Christians, even lifelong believers, crave anything that will help them experience God. This also explains why the charismatic/pentecostal forms of Christianity are by far the fastest-growing parts of the Christian church. The very essence of this movement is that God’s Spirit is active in the world and the life of the believer, and thus people with an experiential hunger often find fulfillment there.
It also explains why more and more people in the West have sought a religious experience in belief systems other than Christianity. The Christianity that they have seen or heard about is often the mainstream intellectual sort that strikes them as dry, boring, and irrelevant. The latest guru or New Age teaching is very often primarily propagating an experience of religion rather than a doctrine about God. Increasingly, postmodern people and others hunger for the direct touch of the divine.
Is Seeking God Valid?
Is it proper for a person to desire deeply and to strive deliberately for an actual encounter with God? Or is this the aim of a lesser soul craving the latest excitement? Could it be a wish for an experience that avoids serious thinking? I have already suggested that spiritual hunger is universal. Is it right to try to satisfy it?
The reason I raise this issue is that many people have asked me this question in different forms. “Shouldn’t we just believe,” they ask, “and not try to experience God?” Some have gone even further and argued that the desire for an experience with God is the wish of an immature believer who can’t just accept things without seeing them. I suggest that to seek to experience communion with God is not wrong or immature, but is actually following a God-planned path.
For most Christians, perhaps the best way to deal with such questions is to refer them to the Bible. Do believers in the Bible meet God? Do they desire to encounter Him? Do they walk and talk with Him and interact with Him? The answer, of course, is a resounding “Yes!” Indeed, if you carefully read Scripture one of the amazing things that emerges, one that often shocks our culture, is the free and frequent direct communication between God and humanity.
When our family went as missionaries to the mountains of northern Thailand, one of the first major cultural/religious differences we noticed was this very fact—the people expected divine action. They saw God or the evil one at work in daily life. I found that I, the supposed religious teacher, was much more dubious about the Lord’s presence and action than those who supposedly needed teaching. Finally I concluded, to my chagrin, that the people I was living among were much more like the biblical saints than I was. While I do not agree with everything they thought, it was good for me to see that they, along with the Bible, truly believed that God acted and could be experienced.
Although we could say much, much more on the topic, I believe this is sufficient to make the basic point clear. The Bible story, both Old and New Testaments, expects that true religion implies an experience of God’s presence. Israelite and Christian faith was and is not just a philosophy based on ideas, but a religion based on an ongoing interaction with God. If He was not relating in a real way with His people, something was wrong.
The Double Longing
The hunger for God is not to be denied, squelched, suppressed, or reasoned away. God has placed it in us to be nurtured, cherished, and satisfied as only He can do. He meant it to draw us on a quest, a search, a pilgrimage to find Him, and to be surprised by the discovery that before we began to look for Him, He had already for a long time been seeking us.
As Thad Rutter put it so beautifully, we discover the double longing.7 We learn first that we have a longing—a deep hunger for God and a sense of His presence. As we begin to pursue that intense desire, we encounter a second even stronger longing. God’s heart desperately longs for us. That increases even more our desire for Him, and the spiral of communion continues to grow.
Greater understanding of this double longing came to me through our grandson, Noah. For a number of months, our son and his family, including three-year-old Noah, lived in our basement. Noah and I were friends, and every morning when he awakened he would come up the stairs calling for me. “Grandpa, Grandpa, where are you? I haven’t seen you yet today.” Usually I was in my study, and we would talk and play awhile before I had to go to work. As you can imagine I longed to hear that voice every day. I must admit that I even called my office assistant several times to say that I’d be late for work because of a situation at home. Noah had overslept, and I couldn’t face the day without that time together. I wanted to meet my grandson even more than he did me. I can only faintly imagine how much God, our heavenly Father, longs to hear our voice reaching out to Him, saying, “Father, Father, where are you? I haven’t seen you yet today?” That shows the divinely ordained “double longing.”
Conclusion
The only way to satisfy the deep spiritual hunger of our age is to pursue the “double longing.” That is what this book is about. It invites you in a practical way to cultivate the spiritual path of communion with God that can both meet your longing for Him and allow you to bask in His longing for fellowship with you. If that is happening, all other true religion follows. But if that is missing, all other religious practices are meaningless. Please join me for the journey.
1 Thomas R Kelly, A Testament of Devotion (New York: Harper and Row, 1941).
2 Henri J. M. Nouwen, Making All Things New (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1981).
3 Reproduced in Christianity Today, October 24, 1994, p. 75.
4 E.M. Bounds, Power through Prayer (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1961), p. 37.
5 F.L. Cross, ed., “Lutheranism,” The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (London: Oxford University Press, 1958). See also “Pietism.”
6 Bounds, p.48.
7 Thad Rutter, Jr., Where the Heart Longs to Go (Nashville: Upper Room Books, 1998), pp. 17, 18ff.
Chapter 2: Worship:
Gateway to Communion
“I need to express myself more in worship. I feel closer to God when I do.”
“I have learned to come before God’s presence with fullness of joy and humble adoration.”
— FELLOW SPIRITUAL PILGRIMS
I first “caught” the real spirit of the spiritual disciplines through worship. As I stood in the back of a darkened college church during a student-led worship, three girls led the worship chorus, I Love You, Lord. Their faces shone as from their hearts they expressed their feelings in song:
I love You, Lord,
and I lift my voice
to worship You, O my soul. Rejoice!
In
