How do we come to desire Him more? How do we bring our church to a point where we are so hungry for the Lord? While we should preach, and exhort, and warn and encourage all around us to seek God and desire Him, at the end of the day, it is between them and God. To say that is not to abdicate our responsibility, but ultimately we can only stand still and let God take over. This is where it gets very very serious. For this is where God gets serious.
The Lord showed something tonight. I do not know if it is a message for me personally or for our ministry as a whole. The issue of His people turning away from Him is not anything new. The nation of Israel turned from the Lord many times. No nation had been privileged to see the greatness and the wonders of God like the nation of Israel. Yet time and time again, they backslidded. Very soon after seeing the fire and the glory of God on Mount Sinai, they turn to their golden calfs of idolatry. We, our churches, are just like that today. We are apathetic second-generation Christians who have tasted the goodness of God, and yet our hearts remain cold and our desire for Him non-existent. The question is how does God deal with that? The answer, the fire of His chastisement. This is where is gets frightening.
In Hosea chapter 2, God speaks about how He will bring an adulterous people back to Him. We His people are adulterous because we have forsaken our first love and pursued other loves. And such grieves the Lord. It is like a knife into His heart. In Hosea 2, the Lord does several things. In verse 3, He warns that He will expose His people, make them like a wilderness, set them in dry land and slay her with thirst (vs 3). The first thing God does is to remove every source of satisfaction from His people. Everything that gives us pleasure and satisfaction and meaning apart from Him, He will strip away. Till our souls are parched, our mouths excruciating in thirst. Then He will set our way with thorns (vs 6)The next He does is to bring us to a point of despair. Every way we move is met with thorns till we have no where else to go but back to the Lord. Then, He will withdraw His blessings from our lives. He will return and take away His grain and new wine (vs 9) He will destroy our vines and our fig trees (vs 12). This is a progressive chastisement and breaking of everything we hold in our hands. For then, when we are brought to a place of abject despair, our every earthly reliance taken away, when we are starving and thirsty and naked and in tears, the Lord will come to allure us once again (vs 14). He will speak comfort to us (vs 15) and once again, we will acknowledge and love Him. Once again, the church will return like a bride to her Husband.
You see my friends, we cannot cause others to desire God. Only God can. If we do not heed His warning, He will remove everything we love such that we have only Him to love. He will break our every boasting, and remove every idol. For it is when we are truly in need that we will turn back to the Lord, and desire Him, and appreciate Him, and love Him. My friends, if we truly desire the Lord to bring us to a place of desiring Him above all else, then we must be prepared for what we pray. And we must be prepared that He starts with us. I sense the purging fire of the Lord has been lighted in our midst. The fire has been set in Zion. And it will burn and burn until every knee is bowed before Him.