What You Really Want Won’t Make You Happy.

I used to think it was true that if you want something so much that it makes you miserable to not have it, that the reason you are miserable is that you want that thing too much. I suppose in part, that is true enough, but I think that sentiment actually falls short of the full truth.

We are designed by God to know God and enjoy being known by God. The way we do that is only through casting off hope in anything and everything else in the universe to look upon Jesus for salvation from sin and redemption to relationship with God, and to keep looking His direction forever. So it should suffice to say the one who pursues happiness need look no further than to Christ Jesus for the rest of his days and there find the rest, happiness, and fulfillment he has longed for every day of his life. A single hope to know God and enjoy Him forever is the only Hope we shall ever need. But we are left with a lot of other desires that must be dealt with.

What I have found, though, is that securing that as one’s single hope is not easy to do by any means, and I do not intend here to try to answer how to sufficiently look to and hope in God and there find happiness. Rather, it is my aim to expose a truth about people and our fickle desires and our feeble ability to be truly pleased when we get them. One of the most basic truths of people is that we have the peculiar ability to fix our desire and attention on most anything and expect it to solve the mystery of our discontentment and satisfy it fully. However, I have found that the times I most truly enjoy something is when that thing is not what I had presently set my heart upon. I am a decent musician, but have no hopes of gaining attention or reputation for my abilities. I simply enjoy making and listening to music, and sometimes, often when I expect it least, I am swept up by the most beautiful or invigorating music. In those moments, though I was not looking for them, the only way I can enjoy those sounds more is to either bask in their glory with eyes shut or join with them and sing or play or drum along. I love music, but I know that if I were to set my hope upon being recognized as a great musician, and respected and known for my ability, music would become a means to an end, and I would grow to either hate it in my failure, or love it only insofar as it points to my glory in my success. But I would not actually enjoy music any more.

I believe this is true of most anything a man could desire in life: his work, a relationship with a woman and marriage, a new possession, the best of foods or comforts, a well-ordered home life. It is admirable to work at seeking these things out. We have been commissioned of God to “work and till the earth,” to cultivate culture and our homes and hone our abilities and do with excellence anything we would set our minds to. But we must distinguish for ourselves whether the chief end of our pursuit is for God’s glory or for our own. We must beware humbly what our hearts would hope in and pray diligently for such an awareness. It is no wonder that Buddhists seek to eliminate desire altogether. They rightly identify that behind every evil we perceive in this world lies human desires. They rightly see that they are very dangerous, but their conclusion is misdirected. Desire is not an enemy to be destroyed, but rather a gift from God that must be redirected by Grace to motivate us to pursue those things we would pursue with a passion and energy for God’s renown that puts Christ on display as the only worthy End of our pursuits.

Quiet Enough to Hear the Voice

“Religion has accepted the monstrous heresy that noise, size, activity and bluster make man dear to God. But we may take heart. To a people caught in the tempest of the last great conflict God says, “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10), and still He says it, as if He means to tell us that our strength and safety lie not in noise but in silence. It is important that we get still to wait on God. And it is best that we get alone, preferably with our Bible spread out before us. Then if we will we may draw near to God and begin to hear Him speak to us in our hearts.” – A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

I think I do not consciously believe this lie that my spiritual or religious activity make me close to God, but functionally I live it out almost every day. When I survey the often shallow landscape of my walk with God, I look at my Christian activities—my small group leadership, my service on the worship team at church, my morning devotions, my volunteer work—and conclude that “I’m doing well in my relationship with Him”. In truth, my feelings about “how I’m doing” are often just quick things I make up to make myself feel better about how much I actually ignore God and am more focused on the next hobby session or the next trinket or book I buy from Amazon.com.

I believe it is this self-focus that keeps me from regularly having meaningful time with Jesus. My approach is wrong. I look at my life, and then take the Gospel, the proof of God’s Great Love for me and desire for my good and the good of this world through Jesus, and spread a thin layer like spackeling putty over my life to fill in any knicks or holes I notice I’ve created in the past few days. The Gospel becomes a tool to patch up my conscience about my sin, in particular my deep selfishness, so that I can get back to what I really want to do.

What I need to do, and this is where Tozer’s insight is helpful, is learn “that our strength and safety lie not in noise but in silence.” If I regularly experience anything like a tempest in my life, it is the normal drumbeat of life that, like a Siren, draws my attention away from Jesus and serving others and bends my thoughts inward trying to constantly answer the questions, “What do I want? What do I need? What would make me happy?” I sinfully want to be able to both answer those questions finally and go fulfill the answer to them. That is the noise of my life that I try to find strength and safety in. It is the lie that I scream to myself all the time, “I can acquire for myself that which will fulfill my soul!”

God says otherwise. And Tozer is practical in his application of this verse: “It is important that we get still to wait on God. And it is best that we get alone, preferably with our Bible spread out before us.” I cannot expect to hear from God and learn to fix my eyes upon Jesus and be deeply thankful for the Cross and even more deeply transformed to be like Jesus if I never truly stop and listen. The point of daily devotions is to do no more than this. Yet how often have I forgotten that. I have too many times turned personal worship time into theological analysis time. I sit and read a few verses and then write pages of stuff about it, rarely letting it weigh heavily upon my soul and change me. God would have me sit before him in silence until I hear from him. Instead, I sit down and rush through a few verses, make a few notes, and say a quick, routine prayer (mostly for myself) before rushing on to the next thing.

Tozer says the intention of my heart should be to “draw near to God” so that I may then hear Him speak to me in my heart. This is personal worship. I sit down and open the Scriptures and then simply ask to see and hear. The point of it all is to know God in personal experience, the way Jesus intended us to know him when he saved us: a foretaste of what we are promised to experience forever with Him in heaven. So my hope is to learn to experience God through personal worship in the progression that Tozer describes:

“First a sound as of a Presence walking in the garden. Then a Voice, more intelligible, but still far from clear. Then the happy moment when the Spirit begins to illuminate the Scriptures, and that which had been only a sound, or at best voice, now becomes an intelligible word, warm and intimate and clear as the word of a dear friend. Then will come life and light, and best of all, ability to see and rest in and embrace Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord and All.”

We are all fools if we think we met and experienced Jesus enough once in a moment of conversion. The goal of the whole Christian life is to know God deeply and trust Him fully as we “see and rest in and embrace Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord and All.” None of us have done that perfectly. I certainly haven’t. I’ve been too preoccupied with my hobbies and pity parties about how life isn’t exactly how I want it to be. But I want the sight Tozer is talking about here. I want to be discontent with not yet having enough of Jesus, which would drive me to Him, rather than discontent with other desires, which so often draw me away from Him. I want to rise each morning and seek Him out in His Word, the Bible, and to be unwilling to move on until I have heard his Voice. I want to learn to finally listen to the voice that always whispers, “That isn’t really what you want” whenever I am tempted to sin. And I am convinced that will never happen until I am ready to sit in silence and wait until I hear the faintest sound of a Presence walking in the garden.

Volunteer PHP Web Developers Needed for Non-Profit Organization Web Site Rebuild – PlayForHope.org

The Organization

I am currently rebuilding PlayForHope.org, an organization that serves children in Rwanda by helping transform their lives through sports mentorship, education, and in some cases, food and shelter. Here is the description from the current site:

“Play For Hope dreams of a world where every child, every street kid, and every orphan can have positive adult mentorship and can be given a chance for the future.  We use sports, like basketball and soccer (football), to create opportunities to change lives.   We believe that AIDS and genocide do not have to define Rwanda or Africa.  Hope and peace are possible.  Sports provide an outlet for children to learn about themselves and their passions and to learn that they can make an impact in the world.”

This is a Christ-centered organization that uses its platform in Rwanda to gain an audience for the Gospel as well as serve impoverished and often neglected children.

The Project

The new site is already designed and a lot of development has been completed. Now the project is in the state of feature and admin upgrades that the organization Director wants to add.

The new PlayForHope.org is a CakePHP-based, mobile-responsive web site with a custom admin interface. You can preview the development site at http://pfh.cameronlockey.com.

The code for this project is managed in a private Git repository, so you can work remotely when you have the time.

Compensation

This is completely a volunteer opportunity. I do not work for Play for Hope, I just love what they do and want to find someone else who is willing to put in a few hours each week to help provide them with a powerful platform for fundraising and outreach.

How to Get Involved

Email me via the contact form and lets set up a time to get coffee. Also, in your email, please include a description of your skillset and some examples of your work (describe your contribution to each).

Experience with CakePHP or other MVC framework is a plus, but I happily invite anyone with any of the following skills to join me. If you are passionate about web development, I want to work with you:

• PHP
• HTML5
• CSS3 (and Twitter Bootstrap)
• JavaScript (and jQuery framework)

Contact Me

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Snare or Safety.

“The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the LORD is safe.”
-Proverbs 29:25

The fear of man is like a snare because if I repeatedly give in to the opinion of others in order to please them, I forfeit my own convictions and preferences. And this kind of laying down my life is not a loving kind (as Jesus suggests in John 15:13 ), but a selfish one. It is designed to win the favor of others, but it is a false win. If people like me because I bend over backward to please them, it is a lie because what they like is not me, but a fabricated version of me that I think they would like.

This verse contrasts fear of man with the safety of trusting in the Lord. This suggests that what fear of man wants is to find refuge in the eyes and opinions of others. Yet it makes very clear that such safety and security of identity is found in trusting the Lord. Trust in what others think is a trap that keeps you in an endless cycle of trial and error, success and failure. It is a never-ending battle to make it to the inner circle of which we deem worthy to be part.

This verse screams out “You have a perfect identity as one beloved of God! You need not do anything else! You need not be other than that which you are in Christ! He is your refuge and strength! He is the rock upon which the foundation of who you truly are is laid. Don’t build your life out of the flimsy materials of the opinions of your peers! Take up the truth and rejoice in the reality of who you are in Christ Jesus! You are not great! You are not mighty. You are not beautiful or smart or wealthy – EXCEPT as you stand in Christ, a new creature, a re-created worshipper, a son of the most High God!”

That is true safety worth trusting in!

A Proper Pursuit of Holiness

Psalm 141 is a bold prayer of David’s. He cries to the Lord for help to resist temptation and pursue holiness. This psalm is a great picture of a humble, worshipful pursuit of God.

1. Worship

First, his prayer is placed in the context of worship: “I call upon you…let my prayer be counted as incense, the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice!”

Before we can learn to, hope to, try to resist sin and put it to death, we must first pursue worship and the fear of the Lord. For resisting sin is either worship or sin in itself, for Romans 14:23 reminds us that whatever is done apart from faith is sin. Thus, if we try to kill sin apart from both a desire to please God and a trust in the promises of the gospel that ultimately motivate my pursuit of holiness, then my pursuit is sinful. This rules out a religious mindset that seeks to accomplish our own righteousness apart from an awareness of our great need of Christ.

But here, David’s orientation is “I cry to YOU;” he is not hoping in himself. Rather, he is actively turning from himself and to God. This is the heart disposition the Proverb means where it says, “in all your ways acknowledge him,” and then one can hope that the Lord will keep straight and direct his path.

Here, then, we have a practical application picture of that. David acknowledges the Lord in worship, then proceeds to his request in which he hopes the Lord will graciously direct him.

2. Guard My Mouth

“Set a guard over my mouth…watch over my lips!”

David knows that one of the most dangerous parts of our bodies for sin is the mouth. James builds out this idea in James 3:6-8, “the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life…no human being can tame the tongue.”

If this is all true—that our tongue is so easily taken up by our flesh for sin and that we, on our own, cannot reign it in—then we must not try. Rather, like David, we must acknowledge the reality of our weakness to control our words and throw ourselves at the mercy of God to forgive us where we have sinned with our lips and to set a guard over our mouths that our evil might be restrained and put to death by the Holy Spirit working within us.

3. Guard My Heart

“Do not let my heart incline to any evil, to busy myself with wicked deeds.”

Here again, the key is to begin by acknowledging my own iniquity—the evil bent of my heart that inevitably leans me toward doing wicked deeds. David’s saying, “Lord, I know my heart will want to go here or there and do evil! Please don’t let me. Keep me close and don’t let me wander and believe lies and worship created things rather than you, Creator God!”

Paul speaks here as well regarding what we busy ourselves with saying, “If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not things are on earth.” (Col 3:2) When you recognize that your tendency is to busy yourself with wicked, you have to also, like David, acknowledge that such deeds spring out of where your heart is and thus where your mind is. So killing sin begins with being “raised with Christ.” If you have become a Christian, you’ve been given a new heart and have the Holy Spirit and no longer have to set your mind on things that are on earth. You no longer have to busy your mind and heart with earthly things, earthly pleasures, earthly preoccupations. By the Spirit, you can set your mind on matters of the Kingdom, of righteousness, of salvation for yourself and others. You can busy yourself with good deeds (Eph. 2:10).

4. Embrace Rebuke

“Let a righteous man strike me – it is a kindness; let him rebuke me – it is oil for my head; let my head not refuse it.”

The most loving thing our fellow worshipers can do for us sometimes is to call us out in our sin, to not hold back what might be offensive or hurt—it is a kindness—it is real love. David adds, it is an anointing thing, a blessing, a consecrating thing to be loved so well by a friend that they will not let you continue unquestioned, unrebuked, in your sin.

So again, the prayer is: “I know that I need to be rebuked: 1) Please send someone to call me out and 2) please give me a heart of humility that realizes what a gift it is to be loved like this that someone else would desire my holiness and a healthy relationship with God for me.

Of course, this doesn’t mean we have to like rebuke or that it feels good. But what is comfortable and feels good is rarely what is actually good for us. Yes, it’s painful. But, yes, it’s also good for you.

5. Gaze & Refuge

“My eyes are toward you…in you I seek refuge; leave me not defenseless.”

Only the man whose eyes are fixed on God, whose refuge is God, can request that he not be left defenseless. Yet when God is his refuge, he has chosen the strongest defense there is.

Our gaze must continually be turned to Christ. There are innumerable things that will attempt to steal your gaze and cause you to hope in them for satisfaction, identity, joy, peace, fulfillment, and all of them but Christ will lie. Our hearts will even affix themselves to good things like family, work, friendships, success and security, but these things cannot keep their promises if we hear from them that they will satisfy, keep, protect and save us. When our gaze drifts from Christ alone for these things, idolatry is close at hand.

There is a close connection between where our gaze lies and what we count as our refuge. What you think about, dwell on, long for and enjoy most is where you will run for security when trouble, frustration, fear, stress and weakness arise. If your gaze isn’t upon Christ, then he will not be your refuge and you will be defenseless.

Now we’re back where we started, for truly gazing upon Christ and taking refuge in him is Christo-centric, God-honoring worship.

God’s Sovereignty and God’s Love: For You And for His Own Glory (Part 1)

People often talk about “The Problem of Evil and Suffering” and many try to use it to disprove the existence of God. While I don’t think that the existence of evil disproves the existence of a sovereign, loving, Creator-God, I think that it does prove the fact that every person has a sense that something is not right with the world. Our world seems broken. The strong consume the weak. The whole worldview of Naturalistic Evolution is built around the principle of the “Survival of the Fittest.”

If you read the news, watch TV or even just look around at all, all the pain, destruction, and oppression of the weak in our world, both from natural and human causes, is hard to miss, and it’s distressing. Our world is broken. The Bible attributes the pain, destruction and breakdown of human relationships we deal with each day to a result of sin entering the world; and sin is defined as anything that humans do in rejection of God and God’s authority over our lives. We reject God and exalt ourselves instead. He has designed the world to work in a certain way and when we as the human race rejected that way (beginning with Adam), all our relationships – with God, with each other, and with the created world itself – broke down.

In Psalm 73, Asaph observes these truths and is heartbroken over it. He begins by acknowledging God’s character and faithfulness to his people (1), but quickly admits his difficulty with what he sees in the world. From his perspective, people bent on greed, selfishness, malice and cruelty are prosperous and have little difficulties in life; while those who reject their old, sinful patterns in pursuit of God’s way suffer and are beaten down, poor and afflicted. Asaph “nearly stumbled”, when he observed that the ungodly increase in wealth, become fat with fine eating, and are ever-increasing in their pride, arrogance, violence, boasting, and rejection and cursing of the heavens (3-9). He also mourns the fact that Israel, God’s people, are sympathetic to them as they “turn back to them, and find no fault in them.” (10) Asaph admits, upon seeing that this is the way the world seems to be going, that he feels his godly efforts have been in vain—that he is wasting his time and effort: “All in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. For all day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning.” (13-14)

Next time, we’ll look at how Asaph responds once he gets alone with God and considers the reality of their prosperity and how God is really treating them.

A History of Faithfulness and Its Result.

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. Because your steadfast love is better than life my lips will praise you. So I will bless you as long as I live; in your name I will lift up my hands. My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips, when I remember you upon my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night; for you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy.” (ESV)

Such beautiful words of worship! I want to pursue a heart like David’s here, “earnestly I seek You; my soul thirsts for you.”  He is just engulfed in desire for God’s presence and overwhelmed with with an awareness of his need for it.

“as in a dry and weary land, where there is no water”: He compares his need for (and present lack of) God’s presence to dying of thirst in the desert. God’s presence is essential to his soul like water is to the body. But moreso, his spiritual need transfers also to a physical need, “my flesh faints.”

His praise of God is rooted in a history of God’s faithfulness.

“because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you”

The only way he could say that is if he experienced that love in the past, and it gives way to future worship; “my lips will praise you.”

“So,” — Therefore — on the basis of that confession of God’s steadfast love, he resolves to do something. Lifelong worship ensues. And not just quiet, inner, contemplative, unexpressed thankfulness, but public, body-involved, hand-raising, loud worship – “in your name I will lift up my hands”!

“My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips”: This is my favorite verse here. He declares with such certainty the outcome of his disposition toward God, of his faith in and love for God:  To paraphrase,“my soul will be satisfied, as with the best food in the universe, and  it will bubble up out of me into praise!” Oh how I want to be that kind of worshiper! To be so consumed with Jesus, with gratitude for my salvation and awe at his glory that I can confidently proclaim that my soul is satisfied in him alone and finds rest and assurance nowhere else! Isn’t that the big problem with us as humans. We constantly scrape and yearn and desire something to satisfy our souls. We relentlessly, tirelessly set the hope of our souls on things that do not satisfy. They make us happy for weeks or months at best (but sometimes only minutes), but ultimately fail, fade and break—disappointing us at best and devastating us at worst. Isn’t God the only one who can satisfy? Wouldn’t we do well to seek having our hearts stirred up and our hopes and dreams met in Him?  Yet, this isn’t something you can simply set your mind to do. You can’t demand that your soul be satisfied in and treasure God. It has to be rooted in something, some awareness of who He is for you, some certainty that he will be something for you.

That’s what we find in the gospel. God became a man—the God-Man, Jesus. He lived a perfect life and died a sacrificial death in our place and for our sin, and only belief in that history of his love, faithfulness, and devotion to you can save you. And this isn’t just some cognitive affirmation of historical facts, but a vigorous dependence on those historical facts, and a vigorous trust and hope that the same God who worked that in history will work it for your future.

David’s sentence didn’t stop with “my soul will be satisfied…” The structure of the whole sentence is this:

“My soul will be satisfied…and my mouth will praise you…when I remember you…FOR you have been my help“

And there is the ground for all this worship. It’s rooted in a history of God’s steadfast love and faithfulness in the past. John Piper calls this kind of future-affecting, faith-producing reflection on God’s faithfulness and goodness toward you in the past “Faith in Future Grace.” I think he’s on to something. This seems to be David’s way of stirring his affections up for the Lord, and I feel it must also be mine.

Cross-browser Support Woes: :last-child Pseudo Class in IE

So the world of CSS design continues to change rapidly and the arrival of CSS3 has brought us many new CSS pseudo classes, including :last-child, which selects the last element that is the last child of it’s parent element. This is useful when, for example, you’re creating a horizontal navigation list and want to add in a separator between them, such as a right border or graphical separator. You don’t want an extra border hanging out on the end, so with this you can just tell the last one to have no border.

So you might do something like this, which sets your border on the left of every ul li a and removes it off of the last a in your list.


ul li a { display:block; padding: 0 10px; border-right: 1px solid #fff;}
ul > li:last-child a { border-right:none; }


Anyway, all is well until you check your other browsers and realize that, you guessed it, Internet Explorer (the bane of every front-end web developer), even the beloved IE8, does not support many of the new CSS3 specs and pseudo classes, including :last-child.

However, thankfully, this one is not too hard to work around. Most applications of :last-child can also be done with :first-child, which is supported by IE8. You basically just have to swap sides – so that border we originally added to the right, we add to the left, and then set :first-child to border-left: none;.


ul li a { display:block; padding: 0 10px; border-left: 1px solid #fff; }
ul > li:first-child a { border-left: none; }


The Pursuit of God

It occurred to me this morning as I finished reading my four chapters of Scripture for January 20 in D.A. Carson’s For the Love of God, Vol. 1 and began reading chapter one of A.W. Tozer’s The Pursuit of God for the second time that it was this book that began for me a journey in August of 2007 that changed the way I live. I had just transferred to UNC Wilmington to finish a bachelor’s degree, in Film Studies, with hopes of moving to northern California and working for Pixar or getting some experience on set and making feature films in Hollywood. Either way, I considered myself a Christian, and a good one, too.

However, something had been changing for me recently. I had only months before discovered the lively, gruff, and direct, but very clear and gracious preaching of Mark Driscoll, and his presentation of the gospel was not like anything else I had heard before. As I continued listening to sermon after sermon, I became very convicted that I was one of the ‘religious people’ he kept yelling about, insisting that being religious and keeping all the rules doesn’t make you Christian.

That’s the backdrop of my Christian life prior to picking up The Pursuit of God off of my parents’ bookshelf before leaving home to go to Wilmington for the Fall semester. I remember reading chapter one and realizing in the quiet of my dorm room the reality that though I was a believer for sure, there was such a lack of affection for God in my heart. I read my Bible daily, but there was no vigor in it. I was rarely driven to deep, heartfelt prayer, yearning for the presence of the Holy Spirit. About the only time I really prayed hard like that was when I found myself in the midst of besetting patterns of sin with which I struggled, longing to walk in freedom and to be as clean on the inside as I appeared to be on the inside.

Tozer’s point in the chapter I was reading is that American Christianity has become so nicely packaged that we act as if there is no real work required to have a relationship with Jesus. We have so programmed our churches and our Christians that it’s commonplace for Christians to think that if they attend church, sing in the choir, show up for church workday and help mow the grass, do all the good things and avoid doing all the bad things and share their faith every so often, that they will have a healthy, vibrant relationship with God. Tozer commiserates the way that the pure and simple gospel and beloved, life-giving, refreshing doctrines of the faith have been replaced with pithy sayings (like ‘once saved, always saved’), and Christian versions of quasi-optimistic self-help books, saying:

The doctrine of justification by faith—a biblical truth, and a blessed relief from sterile legalism and unavailing self-effort—has in our time fallen into evil company and been interpreted by many in such a manner as actually to bar men from the knowledge of God…Christ may be “recieved” without creating any special love for Him in the soul of the receiver. The man is “saved,” but he is not hungry nor thirsty after God. In fact, he is specifically taught to be satisfied and is encouraged to be content with little…[and later on he says] We have been snared in the coils of a spurious logic which insists that if we have found Him, we need no more seek Him.

One cannot read that sort of thing, if he is serious about being a committed believer in and follower of Christ, and not be affected to the core of his being. Every pronoun Tozer wrote in those paragraphs, I was replacing with ‘you’ in my mind, feeling convicted that my own heart continuously fails to seek God with a great deal of fervor. Then I remember getting to the end of the chapter, having agreed with everything Tozer was saying about the lack of seriousness with which Christians approach God, and he included this prayer, which so expressed my heart at that moment, and did so again this morning upon reading it for the second time:

O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need of further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, that so I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, “Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.” Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

So my encouragement to you is to read this book. My hope in sharing my story with you is to create in you a holy discontentment, a desire to desire more of God. That is what God is doing in me through this book and through his Word (and you need both).

Buy The Pursuit of God

Life Goal: Memorize the New Testament

I normally am not this ambitious, but I decided that I want to memorize the whole New Testament before I die. My reasons why:

• Nothing is more worthy of my time and effort.
• Nothing is more excellent to have in my thoughts.
• Nothing is more helpful to others than to be able to speak truth into darkness, fear or pain at any time.
• Nothing else kills pride like the testimony of Scripture of my great need for a gracious and merciful Savior like Jesus.

I did a little research to see what I’m up against. In the RSV, there are 7,958 verses. I’m sure I have more memorized than this in various verses scattered about, but in terms of whole passages, so far I definitely have:

• Colossians: 95 verses.
• 1 Peter 1:1–2:10 : 35 verses.
• Matthew 6:25–34 : 10 verses.
• Ephesians 2:1–10 :  10 verses.

TOTAL: 150 verses.
% Complete: 1.9%