In a previous podcast I said, Never accept any excuse whatsoever, under any circumstances, to do something you know is at variance with the deepest longing in your heart.
Have you identified what that deepest longing is beyond your daily needs or wants of food, clothing, shelter, and preferred enjoyments and pleasures?
Can you say, “Beyond having all these things, this is what I want my life to be all about”?
God has committed himself to care for you in meeting all these needs including your everyday enjoyments. We have Jesus teaching us that God the Father, who cares for flowers and birds in meeting their needs most certainly cares for us and will meet our needs. And in Psalm 103 we read that beyond our basic needs God “… satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” Ps 103:5
With all that taken care of what else is there? The most important thing: the deepest longing in your heart.
I believe that the moment we responded to God's call in our lives, he changed our hearts, and deep within that change a longing sprung to life that corresponds to his unique vision of who he created each one of us to be.
I’m persuaded that it’s going to be a uniquely precious expression of Jesus that arises out of our friendship with Him. It is something so exceedingly rare that no one will be able to experience it anywhere else but in friendship with you. In fact, no one will be able to fully grasp it because only you will know what you’re about.
Consider this from Revelation 2:17. Jesus says this of the one who overcomes what could compromise his faith, “I will also give that person a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it.”
Names in the Scriptures meant far more than a label. They were definitive of a person’s character. When we praise the name of the Lord, for example, we are praising who he has revealed himself to be. So I suggest that in bestowing a new name on the overcomer, Jesus is defining who that person is — his idea of that person — and only that person will know it.
To me the deepest longing in our hearts are intimations of the vision God has of each one of us. Hence the incalculable importance of searching it out and then relying on the Holy Spirit and his counsel to bring it about.
