I recently saw the movie Jesus Revolution. Being a part of that Revolution, the film brought back many good memories. Karen and I laughed and cried throughout the movie. However, I found two critical scenes in the film especially touching.
The first was when Lonnie Frisbee sitting alone by the fire, in turmoil, cries out, “God use me!” A very noble and genuine desire. The second was where Greg Laurie, having an identity crisis, says, “I want my name to mean something.”
Nothing is wrong with desiring to be used by God or for our names to mean something. At one time or another, every follower of Christ might have had these desires. But as C.S. Lewis says in The Weight of Glory, “Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak… like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
When we assume our desires, as noble and virtuous as they might be, to be the object of our longing, they can become a barrier to having a deeper relationship with God and develop into idols.
In his treatise On Love of God, Bernard of Clairvaux, whose works profoundly influenced Martin Luther and John Calvin, calls the second degree of love: Love of God for Self’s Sake.
The above is the stage when God makes himself to be loved by blessing us with fulfilling our desires to live free from troubles and consequently be happy. In this stage, we love God, but for our own sake. And this is the stage where I spent most of my Christian life—loving God because He could satisfy my wishes and longings. But if faith is a journey, our ground and scenery change over the years.
As I have matured in my walk with my Creator, I’ve added experience to my original “deposit of faith,”which has changed me. It’s changed the way I think, speak, act and pray. And as my faith scenery has changed, there has become a growing distance from earlier concerns and desires. So, the more I have distanced, stripped, and emptied myself from seeing the above yearnings — a passion for God to use meand for my name to mean something — fulfilled, the more I’m drawn to Bernard’s third stage of love, Love of God for God’s Sake.
John of the Cross, who coined the phrase “Dark Night of the Soul,“ was a sixteenth–century friar of the Carmelite order. As a summary of his work on, The Ascent of Mount Carmel, he produces a simple drawing of Mount Carmel with what appears to be three paths toward the heights. One path is that of the “goods of the earth (possessions, knowledge, and…)“ and another the “goods of heaven (glory, joy, and…,)“ which are both marked with, “the more I desired to seek them, the less I had.“ Both seemed to be dead ends. Finally, a third way leads to the “honor and glory of God.“ Here John has simply written “nothing“ seven times.
At the base of the sketch, John writes,
To reach satisfaction in all desire, satisfaction in Nothing.
To come to the knowledge of all, desire the knowledge of Nothing.
To come to possess all, desire the possession of Nothing.
To arrive at being all, desire to be Nothing.
There was a time that I desired God to use me mightily among the Iranian community in the Los Angeles area so that I could have a large church and for my name to mean something. And the Lord was faithful. My wife and I saw many Iranians, both Muslim and Jewish background, become followers of Christ. I wanted to become a famous speaker for the sake of the Kingdom of God, so I wrote a book and wished it to become a best-seller to the glory of my Lord. Well, that didn’t happen.
Today, I acknowledge how for many years, like an ignorant child who made mud pies in a slum because he couldn’t imagine what was meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea, I was far too easily pleased with other paths. But, after 52 years of following Christ, at 72, I want to LOVE GOD FOR GOD’S SAKE by seeking his face above all, PS. 105:4.
