So he humbled you, allowed you to hunger

Funny cause I was considering fasting this week but instead God had been teaching me about the hunger of my soul...
It's cool I was just reading back through the last few posts and its really awesome how he has answered some of my questions or is just beginning to open up some of these things that I feel or wonder about.  Most of the time I don't even know what is on my heart or how I really am feeling until I start writing about it. And then I don't really understand it all until I read back over it like that and its like woa, really clear question or need or idea and then the next time is like aha, answer!
Anyway, lately i have been realizing that there is a emptiness in me. Just now, reading through, I see it in the spoken word poem, I read it in the last post even, this desire and craving for more real life. And now I see all around me ways that God is showing me how to fill that space.
Everyone has heard about the "God shaped hole" in your heart and I do know that my whole heart can be filled and satisfied only by the person of God. But I think that means SO much more than the narrow view I have had about it.
 Because Im still hungry.
The other day I was standing in the kitchen at my parents house and Debbie, Christina, and mom were talking about the funeral they had just come home from and just praising God for this mans life through their conversation/ processing what they had experienced. I had gone to gateway instead of the viewing just because I didn't feel like I really knew the family in any direct way like they did and had been wanting to go to gateway and spend time with God anyway. I had felt filled, in no specific way, while I was there but when I got home and was listening to their comments I felt a deep, intense, unexplainable emptiness/ longing. I guess it was noticeable because they asked if I was okay but there was no reason for me not to be okay so I said yea, and really I had nothing else to say, no explanation. I was kinda confused by this feeling or lack of feeling or whatever it was and went to bed without really knowing what it was. But during the week I started to understand, it was the feeling or deep awareness of emptiness and need. Its a deep deep ache and aloneness. An emptiness I know can only be filled by God. But not just my idea of God, not just my understanding of how to interact with him or who he has been in my life, I mean I need Him, all of Him.
After seeing this a little clearer, I can think of a lot of times in my life where this feeling has washed over me, sometimes just for a moment and other times it lingers around until its filled. Right now it comes strongly like that every now and then and the rest of the time I can see it in what I described before, just that like inability to even have answers for "how are you?" or "how was your week" I don't know, I just was, it just is. So I think its this:


"Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me."
Revelation 3:20


"I sleep, but my heart is awake; It is the voice of my beloved! He knocks saying, 'Open for me, my sister, my love, My dove, my perfect one...My beloved put his hand by the latch of the door and my heart yearned for him."
Song of Solomon 5:2 and 4

You won't relent until you have it all, my heart it yours. 


I think it's Jesus, knocking on another door of my heart. I don't know if there is a lot of doors in hearts, psalm 24 and john 10 make me think there are at least gates and stuff. But either way I know there are things Ive given to him and things I might still be hiding from him, or things I don't even know about yet. By "things" I mean all kinds of things... the gifts he has given me, dreams I have, ideas, fears, hurts, weaknesses, strengths. I think our hearts hold the very essence of who we are, the center of our being, the "things" there are only quite what they are in my heart, they are unique to me and tell the story of who God created me to be and all the the course of my life giving or taking from that. I think each time I sense this huge gaping emptiness it is his knock on a closed door in my heart, him asking for a "thing" im trying to hold onto or hide or run away from. Although its a painful awareness of my pitiful attempt to rule my own heart, I love the Song of Solomon picture, because its not an angry father pounding on the door, forcing me to change something I have no power over, its the voice of the one who loves me just as I am and wants all of me, asking me to let him in to do the fixing and healing and transforming.

But just who is this who knocks on the door of my heart? Who is it who asks for all of me? Who is it who wants to be one with me? Who has given his all for me?
My heart yearns for him. My heart yearns. It craves, it needs, it cries out.
My soul thirsts and my flesh longs for you, the living God.
If there is an undeniable craving in my heart, in every persons heart, then it points to an undeniable One to fill it.
But the question remains, who is this One? Because I am not filled by my idea of who he is. Im not filled by my ideas of how to please and serve him, Im still hungry.
This is where I mean there is SO much more.

Because God is not just a a thought or a figure or a face even. He has a character, he has other parts; three in one, He is the King of a kingdom. My heart doesn't just crave a prayer I said one time when I was little so that I wouldn't go to hell, my soul doesn't just long for a good conversation here and there, I will only be satisfied in abundant life, the one he gave everything to give me.
I will be satisfied when I awake as a lover of You.
The One knocking on my door wants to move in. Not just stay for tea. And he wants to bring all of himself with him. That means everything he stands for, community, peacemaking, healing, saving, creating, serving, beauty, family, wholeness, justice, mercy, patience, passion, LIFE. Which is great because that is EVERYTHING my whole being craves. But he wants to bring it all into everywhere. He wants to open every locked door, find every hidden treasure, sweep the whole place clean and make his home in my heart.

All the heavens cannot hold you Lord, 
How much less to dwell in me?
I can only make my one desire, 
holding onto thee



"Every commandment which I command you today you must be careful to observe, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land of which the LORD swore to your fathers. And you shall remember that the Lord your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. So he humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man does not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the LORD."
Deuteronomy 8:3

I always think of the "promised land" as that abundant life Jesus promises in John 10. Right now I would describe it with the phrase "all I want is just to know your heart, would you keep me here until were one." The land I think of is one where all of me is truly all His and all of Him is truly all mine. Meanwhile, He reminds me to remember that He is the one who leads me through the "wilderness", to see what is in my heart. I feel like Im not going far and it might not be as exciting as my hopes and dreams right now; while i seem to be standing still, he is very much alive and active exploring my heart, searching it through to see if there is any anxious way in me, to lead me in the way everlasting. He is testing and trying to see if I will love him deeply, with my whole heart, soul, mind and strength, to see if I will obey and follow. So he humbles me, he allows me this empty, strong hunger and then he feeds me. With what? Manna. Which means literally, "what is this?" haha! That is EXACTLY  how I feel! What is this God?? what are we doing here? what are you teaching me? I hear and I see it, I go out and collect it each day but what in the world is it??  And all for what purpose?
that I might know that I don't live on bread, on what satisfies me here and now, with my ideas of ministry and activity and productivity and life; alone, but on EVERY WORD THAT PROCEEDS FROM THE MOUTH OF GOD.
My flesh is failing me, my trying to get it, figure it out, nail it down, make something of myself, save my life, its a losing battle.
All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass, The grass withers and its flowers fall away, But the word of the Lord endures forever.

The word God spoke that I keep going back to when I see this^....
 Jeremiah 24:24
"Then I will give them a heart to know Me, that I am the Lord; and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart."


Jesus,
I know you won't take it from me, I know you won't force me, you won't break down the door, but you will stand and knock and keep knocking, and all I ask is that you bring me to the place where I can give my life to you, where I can open this door and the next door and invite you in, and we can dine together, forever, and you can fill me up and Ill pour you out and we'll do it as one, You in me and I in You.

Whoever tries to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.

We always seem to be looking for God, trying to find him somewhere. He is so close, why don't we stop and listen to his patient knocking at the door of our hearts. Why don't we acknowledge the hunger and the emptiness instead of trying to push it aside, ignore it, or try to fill it with what does not satisfy. Why don't we take it to him.

Ho! Everyone who thirst,
Come to the waters;
And you who have no money, 
Come, buy, and eat.
Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.
Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy?
Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good,
And let your soul delight itself in abundance. 
Incline your ear, and come to Me.
Hear, and your soul SHALL live
And I will make an everlasting covenant with you-
The sure mercies of David. 
Isaiah 55