Longings That Lead To God Series

Continuing our focus on Becoming Friends with God.

> This morning I want to consider the value of our longings… and how they can connect us to

God.

Want to begin with a conversation I had last week…Conversation with a woman whose is a

fellow parent in my son’s football league… and who I had also met briefly before… because

her older son and my older son attend the same school.

We began talking about schools…as parents often do. She expressed the value in learning itself…

and then mentioned that she wanted to take a comparative religions class or something… to help

figure out what she may really believe.

Said her ex-husband quite antagonistic. I suggested likely a reason… perhaps something

threatening… She hardly needed much thought to see how deeply he held to control… and self

absorbed.

It was a picture of how longings can be fought or followed.

Asked why she thinks there is more. She said… good question.

Do you long for anything that has no corresponding reality.

I simply encouraged her that if she longs for the transcendent… she is likely on the right track.

As C.S Lewis wrote to a friend who expressed a desire to seek God…

“Continue seeking Him with seriousness. Unless he wanted you, you would not be wanting

Him.” (C.S. Lewis, Letters of C.S. Lewis, 13 June 1951, p. 233)

Such a conversation was a reminder that everyone is on a journey…

This morning I want to encourage us with the same truth.

Consider your own longings for friendship…. and what God has revealed of Himself.

Naturally many of us initially have a hard time thinking of God in the nature of a fiend. There

may be a number of reasons… but is the simple fact that his nature is not bodily.

So how good of a friend can God be?

Great.

• His doesn’t hare our human form… but He seems to recognize that difference. After

creating humanity… God said ‘not good that man be alone’… created a human partner

with the capacity to further create human bodily lives together. So he understands and

values our need for human bodied friends. He doesn’t imply that He is a substitute for

human friendship.

• But God knows that our nature is not simply bodily itself. We are spiritual. Relating to the

transcendent is every bit as much a part of our human nature.

What I want us not to miss is this.

We tend to think God can’t really be a friend in the ways we long for. But

actually He is the only friend who can.

Consider with me what you really long for in a friend… and what God has revealed of Himself.

I wrote down some thoughts this week and want to share with you what I see. Nothing new but

perhaps needed to be kept before us.

The nature of friendship which can be experienced most deeply in God

1. We long for a friend who really knows all we’ve been through and

“understands us.” (Understanding)

Each of us is the integration of a vast amount of experiences… especially those of our formative

years. This is why I believe that a deep and difficult crossroads is felt when a parent passes on. They

are one of the only reference points for our lives. Most of our lives go forward through transitions of

various places we live and people we know… and the natural result is that people know us only in

part. When a parent passes from our life we naturally feel we have lost the one of the only people

who have known us from the beginning…. who can understand the most formative part of us… and

who, at least ideally, we have a belonging that transcends the circumstances of life.

The reality may be that we haven’t felt that connected or understood by our parents throughout

much of our lives… but when they pass… we feel the ideal… the hope… disappear.

The truth is that no human life has shared even close to even half the experiences we have

had… nor can they really understand how they were experienced. The truth is that WE haven’t

even grasped all of what we have experienced clearly.

This can present the great existentialist crisis.

• How real is life if never really shared and experienced and validated by another?

• If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it does it make a sound?

• Or the similar question (jokingly) "If a Man Speaks in the Forest and There Is No Woman

Around to Hear Him – Is He Still Wrong?"

God is the only One who has seen and shared every experience you have had…

and with even far greater perspective.