Desiring God

I have been reading an excellent book by John Piper called Desiring God. It was originally written in 1986, but was updated in 2003. It's a huge book, about 400 pages, and I have been plugging through it bit by bit for the past few months. The subtitle of the book is "Meditations of a Christian Hedonist" When we think of a hedonist, we think of an evil person whose sole purpose in life is their own self pleasure. However, Piper takes this term hedonism and adds a Christian flair to it. I admit that this book has challenged me in a lot of ways & challenged my view of the Christian life. But as I began to dig into the Scriptures & search for myself, I began to see how Piper arrives at his position, which I believe is the biblical position.

The Webster's definition of hedonism is the doctrine that the pursuit of pleasure or happiness is the highest good. Hedonism is something that has ruined ancient civilizations empires & cultures because the rampant greed, sexual deviation & immorality were all tools used to satisfy one's own pleasure, no matter the cost. But Piper teaches in his book that a Christian Hedonists is one who pursues total joy and pleasure in God. One of his most famous quotes is "God is most glorified when I am most satisfied in Him." Let me ask you a question. Aren't you turned off by a Christian, who expresses no joy & pleasure in God, but who are simply going through the motions, serving God with no desire? To me, that is an oxymoron. How can you serve God effectively with no desire & joy? However, many within the world of Christianity have bought into this. They serve God out of duty alone & there is no pleasure or joy in their worship or their service. Please, don't get me wrong. We are to serve God not because we want to, but because He is God & we are His creation & He sets the rules. We are to worship & serve Him first because we are commanded to. From the very beginning, God in Genesis 1:28 commands Adam to fill the earth with offspring and to be good stewards of the land & animals. So because we are His creation, we are obligated to obey the Creator. I want to make that point clear.

With that said, I also think that we miss out on the joy & blessing in obedience & serving God. Piper uses the illustration in his book of buying his wife flowers for their anniversay. If he comes home & hands his wife the flowers in a very distant, non interested way, then his wife is going to ask him what's going on. If his reply is well it's our anniversary & I had to get you flowers because I know that's what you wanted & I felt obligated to get them for you, how do you think she will feel? Wouldn't she prefer that he got her the flowers out of his love for her & it caused him great pleasure to be see her pleased? We can apply the same scenario to our worship & obedience of God. Do you think that it glorifies God more when we just go through the motions, just doing the right thing because we feel obligated to or that out of our immense love & joy in Him, it is our desire to bring Him glory through our obedience & service? We are commanded to worship the Lord in several different passages of Scripture including Exodus 20:3-6; Deuteronomy 6:13; 1 Chronicles 16:29; Psalm 29:2; Luke 4:8 & others. Psalm 2:11 states: " Worship the LORD with reverence and rejoice with trembling". So here we see the command to worship the Lord, but we also see rejoicing being a part of worship. Somewhere, we have lost this component of rejoicing in the Lord. In fact praising & worshiping God is associated more with singing a few songs & then sitting down than it is just taking time to reflect on the extreme, heartfelt joy & fulfillment that we have in God. Psalm 16:11b states: "In Your presence is fullness of joy;In Your right hand there are pleasures forever".

So many separate their service & obedience & worship of God from joy & pleasure. But I am convinced that the two go hand in hand. Many feel that they are only pleasing God if they are serving Him in sort of pious, self-sacrificial way. Please don't miss what I'm saying here. There is sacrifice involved. In fact in Romans 12:1, we are told to present our bodies as a living & holy sacrifice to the Lord. In Matthew 16:24, Jesus instructs His disciples: "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me". This is a crucial passage & is at the heart of the gospel. We must die to ourselves in order to follow Christ. But I think that sometimes, we forget to read the next verse, which reads: "For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it". So in following Christ, yes we die to the old self-to our old fleshly desires and way of living- but that's not the end of the story.
It's only then that we find life! You see, there is new life in Christ. And this new life is meant to be lived out to the fullest. When one surrenders His life to Christ, the Holy Spirit takes residence within us & the Holy Spirit changes our heart & desires to be alignment with the will of God. So obeying Christ doesn't become something that you just have to do, but it becomes something that you earnestly want & desire to do. Ezekiel prophesied about this in the Book of Ezekiel chapter 36, verse 27 when he said: "I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances". Many people on the outside looking in, don't see & hear this enough. God is not a killjoy. He's not just about taking away our fun, but in Him there is a new pleasure & desire that only He can fill, that doesn't compare to anything in the world. I don't do the things that I used to do because through the power of the Holy Spirit working in me, I don't want to do those thing anymore & I delight in righteousness. So in essence, we can enjoy serving God to the point where it doesn't feel like we're sacrificing anything, but we are actually serving Him out of the overflow of joy that He has deposited in us.

You see, God is not looking for people who serve Him & worship Him because it's just the right thing to do, but rather He's looking for true worshippers who delight in Him, who love His presence & whose deepest desire is to glorify Him. So we can enjoy worshipping God. We can enjoy serving Him. We can enjoy obeying Him. I once talked to a missionary from Kenya. She described her poor living conditions & the heartbreak of seeing children dying from AIDS. I commended her on her sacrifice, leaving everything behind to serve God's people across the globe. What she said back to me caught me off guard. She said that she didn't feel like she had sacrificed anything. It was her joy & desire to serve the Lord. In fact, she added that she couldn't think of anything else that she would rather be doing. This precious woman of God taught me a great lesson that day. Rather than focusing on what she left behind, she delighted in the privedledge of serving God & as result, she didn't feel like she had lost anything, but had actually gained more joy.

You see, you can worship God in vain. Infact, Jesus accused the scribes & Pharisees (the religious leaders) of this very thing. In Matthew 15:8 He says to them: "This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. But in vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the traditions of men." It's a scary thought to think that one can worship God in vain. When we are just going through the motions of worship, could it be that we are worshipping God in vain? If we don't truly enjoy, treasure & take pleasure in God, can we truly worship Him? If we were not to express joy in God, that would be the equivalent of saying that there is something else that satisfies me more than God.

In John 14:15 Jesus tells His disciples: "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments". So here Jesus equates our love for Him with our obedience to Him. If we truly love Christ as He commanded us to in Matthew 22:37 when we are told to love the Lord with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our mind, then naturally we will obey Him. It will be our heart's desire to obey Him if we are loving Him in all of these areas. That's why behavior modification just doesn't work. It's easy to just throw Scriptures at someone & tell them not to do something. But obedience comes out of a deep love & desire for God. Ultimately, the truth is that those who don't walk in obedience, with an unrepentant heart, do not love the Lord no matter how much they profess to. They are like the scribes & Pharisees, who worshipped God with their lips, but their heart was far from Him. But for the one who truly loves God, he delights in obedience. He loves obedience. 1 John 5:3 states: "For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome".

You see we can enjoy being loving to others. We can enjoy seeking the good of others over ourselves. We can love extending grace & forgiveness to others. This can only be accomplished by allowing God to change our heart so that our desires line up with His. God doesn't just love to see someone giving, but He loves a cheerful giver (2 Corinthians 9:7). He doesn't just want us to extend kindness, but to love kindness (Micah 6:8). He doesn't want us to just endure persecution, but to rejoice and be glad in persecution (Matthew 5:12). I am so glad that Christianity is about more than a set of moral laws that we are to follow, but it involves a heart transformation by the living God so that we can continually live a life of joy & obedience in Him.