I Want Jesus to Be My Treasure — Is the Wanting Enough?
00:00:00.000 | I want Christ to be the treasure of my life.
00:00:06.680 | In fact, I often find the wanting of him to be my treasure a more common reality in my
00:00:11.960 | life than the actual act of treasuring and enjoying him as my treasure.
00:00:18.360 | Is such an experience normative?
00:00:19.960 | It's a really important question, and this time it comes from a podcast listener named
00:00:24.560 | Kai.
00:00:25.560 | "Hello, Pastor John.
00:00:27.200 | I keep hearing your answers on this podcast talking about how we need to enjoy God's glory
00:00:32.120 | and be satisfied in Jesus and embrace him as our treasure, but I cannot seem to manage
00:00:37.080 | it.
00:00:38.080 | I always want Jesus.
00:00:39.240 | I always want to glorify God.
00:00:41.960 | It is always my ambition to do so, but I almost never feel as though I actually have Jesus
00:00:46.600 | or love the glory of God.
00:00:48.560 | I feel like I'm always wanting and recognizing my lack without being satisfied by him.
00:00:54.720 | Is this normal?
00:00:55.960 | Is my experience normal?"
00:00:59.080 | Back in the '80s, 1980s, when I was thinking about writing a book—actually, they were
00:01:06.160 | sermons first on Christian hedonism, what would become my life passion and ministry—I
00:01:14.320 | wondered what should I call it?
00:01:17.240 | J.I.
00:01:18.240 | Packer had written a book called Knowing God, and Charles Colson had written a book called
00:01:24.720 | Loving God.
00:01:27.360 | So I decided on the title Desiring God.
00:01:32.400 | I liked the ring of it.
00:01:34.280 | I liked lining up behind those two guys.
00:01:40.200 | But there was something oh so much more significant behind that title.
00:01:47.560 | I can remember in those early days of my pastoral ministry walking to church seven minutes from
00:01:54.920 | our house—I've done it 15,000, 20,000 times—regularly feeling in the early years
00:02:02.080 | insecure, a little discouraged, praying all the way to church for God's help, whether
00:02:11.320 | I was going to a staff meeting or a funeral or a preaching service or some tough counseling
00:02:19.160 | session.
00:02:20.160 | And I remember that two Bible passages dominated my mind for an important season in the mid-80s,
00:02:33.680 | maybe even longer than that.
00:02:36.040 | They were like the music on the answering machine in my brain.
00:02:44.160 | If I called in for help, this would be the message of my mind.
00:02:50.640 | One of them was Psalm 42, 5.
00:02:52.920 | "Why are you downcast, O my soul?
00:02:56.840 | Why are you in turmoil within me?
00:03:00.720 | Hope in God."
00:03:02.480 | And we put that on a big sign so I could see it.
00:03:05.840 | It was a big sign on the old sanctuary.
00:03:09.000 | It's torn down now, but for a decade or more we had this big "Hope in God" sign so that
00:03:14.880 | John Piper would take heart as he's walking to church.
00:03:18.280 | So the psalmist says, "Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my help and my God."
00:03:25.520 | And you can see that this is the prayer of a man whose heart is not as full of God as
00:03:33.840 | it should be because he says, "I shall again praise him," meaning praises are not spontaneously
00:03:41.520 | welling up joyfully from his heart, and he knows it.
00:03:46.520 | He's preaching to himself that God is infinitely worthy of being trusted, and he's declaring
00:03:52.780 | confidence that praises are going to return.
00:03:57.120 | In other words, this is the prayer of a man who has tasted and known the satisfying preciousness
00:04:05.360 | of God is better than anything else, and he's not experiencing it to the degree that he
00:04:11.520 | knows he should.
00:04:12.520 | Now, that was one of the texts.
00:04:14.160 | Here's the other one, namely Psalm 73, 24.
00:04:18.760 | I can remember being called on to pray in many situations where I wasn't expecting it,
00:04:24.460 | and I pushed the button.
00:04:26.140 | I called into my brain, and this is the music that came out.
00:04:31.580 | You guide me with your counsel; afterward you will receive me to glory.
00:04:35.660 | Whom have I in heaven but you, and there's nothing on earth I desire besides you?
00:04:41.820 | My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
00:04:48.500 | Now, probably, if there was one text that I could trace the title of the book Desiring
00:04:57.060 | God to, that would be it.
00:05:00.380 | Whom have I in heaven but you, and on earth there's nothing I desire besides you?
00:05:10.560 | When he says there's nothing I desire besides you, I think that is the psalmist's way of
00:05:17.260 | saying what Paul said in Philippians 3, 8, "I count everything as loss compared to the
00:05:25.340 | surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord."
00:05:30.140 | Technically, there are other desires.
00:05:32.740 | We get hungry, we get thirsty, we have sexual desires, we get sleepy, but compared to God,
00:05:42.060 | compared to God and his fellowship, all that he is for us in Christ, these other desires
00:05:49.420 | fade.
00:05:50.660 | We know, we've tasted.
00:05:53.220 | But what kind of desire is this in Psalm 42 and 73?
00:05:59.340 | The key to its essence, I think, is found in 1 Peter 2, 2 and 3.
00:06:05.980 | It says, "Like newborn infants," it's a command now, "desire," that's an imperative of the
00:06:12.860 | verb "desire."
00:06:14.820 | "Desire the pure spiritual milk that by it you may grow up into salvation," and then
00:06:20.620 | comes this all-important "if" clause.
00:06:24.340 | "If indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good."
00:06:31.140 | Now, think carefully about that with me for a minute.
00:06:34.620 | There are desires that unbelievers have for something beyond this world that they can't
00:06:42.380 | name.
00:06:43.380 | These desires may lead them to God.
00:06:45.700 | They did for C.S. Lewis, for example.
00:06:49.420 | But until a person is born again, these desires are not spiritual desires.
00:06:57.720 | They are not the work of God's Spirit and are not based on true experience of the beauty
00:07:03.820 | and worth of God.
00:07:04.900 | They are simply expressions of the empty place in our heart that's made for God.
00:07:10.820 | What must happen for those desires to be spiritual and God-pleasing desires, the desires that
00:07:17.580 | really magnify God, is this, "If indeed you have tasted."
00:07:26.060 | So "desire God if you've tasted God."
00:07:30.900 | The difference between the desires of the non-Christian and the born-again person is
00:07:36.900 | the new desires of the born-again person are owing to a new taste, a new spiritual taste
00:07:45.180 | for God.
00:07:46.180 | They have seen something, smelled something, tasted something spiritually that is different
00:07:50.540 | than anything they had known before.
00:07:53.220 | So here's what I'm saying to Kai when he says, "I always want Jesus, but I almost never
00:08:01.800 | feel as though I actually have Jesus."
00:08:05.540 | I am saying that if by the work of God's regenerating Holy Spirit you have tasted the
00:08:14.940 | true glory or beauty or worth and greatness of Jesus, that taste is present in all your
00:08:24.820 | wanting.
00:08:27.020 | It's present in all your wanting, all your desiring, and therefore even your wanting
00:08:33.780 | is the kind of delighting, even your wanting is a kind of satisfaction, a true experience
00:08:41.860 | of satisfaction in Jesus.
00:08:43.820 | C.S. Lewis analyzed the relationship between desire and satisfaction as deeply as anybody
00:08:51.140 | I know.
00:08:52.400 | He said, "Joy is the experience," this is a quote now, "of an unsatisfied desire which
00:09:00.980 | is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction."
00:09:04.780 | Let me say that again, because that's pretty, pretty profound for somebody like Kai to come
00:09:10.380 | to terms with.
00:09:11.980 | Joy is the experience, and he's capitalizing joy, this is what he means by true joy in
00:09:18.660 | God, is the experience of an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable, in other words,
00:09:27.780 | the taste of the desired in that desire is better than any other satisfaction, end quote.
00:09:38.520 | And I think he's right when he says that on earth we will never have an experience of
00:09:47.100 | joy in God that is not composed mainly of desiring.
00:09:55.980 | In other words, only in God's immediate presence in heaven or in the new age, only in God's
00:10:02.740 | immediate presence is there fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore, Psalm 1611.
00:10:10.620 | For now, in all this fallen world, satisfaction in God will be in measure, not in fullness.
00:10:21.800 | And the most common way we will experience those measures will be in desiring and wanting
00:10:30.460 | and longing based on a true taste.
00:10:35.140 | If we have tasted the true goodness of the Lord by His Spirit, that desiring, as Lewis
00:10:43.040 | says, will be more desirable than any other satisfaction, and God will be honored in it.
00:10:52.720 | Yeah, very interesting.
00:10:53.720 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thanks for the question, Kai, and thank you for listening
00:10:57.720 | to the podcast.
00:10:58.720 | If you want to search our archives, read transcripts of episodes, or ask us a question of your
00:11:01.880 | own, go to our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:11:03.880 | Well, next time we talk junk food.
00:11:10.520 | Is it hypocritical to pray and thank God for a Big Mac value meal we know is not healthy
00:11:15.000 | for us?
00:11:16.120 | How should we think of gratitude and junk food?
00:11:19.000 | Wow, you all send in a lot of really interesting questions.
00:11:22.640 | Keep those coming in to us.
00:11:23.640 | I'm your host, Tony Reik.
00:11:24.640 | We'll see you back here on Friday.
00:11:25.800 | Bye.
00:11:26.300 | [END]