Andreas Latossek
Church at the train station, September 17, 2023
Longing for God –
Connected to God
You can find the video of the sermon here
Longing for God.
That’s the name of our worship series. I don’t know what you’re longing for. Last week we discovered that each of us has a longing and that all of our longings ultimately point to God, that only He can deeply satisfy them, that we often look in the wrong places, but that, thank God, we also long for us and has therefore created a path to him and that it is about getting to know this God more and more, understanding what he is like, how much he loves us. This will fill our longing and at the same time, like a couple in love, awaken a deeper longing for each other. Maybe that’s exactly what you experienced last week.
Today we want to look at the question of how we can live in such a way that God feels at home with us, both personally and as a community, and next week we’ll talk about what actually happens when we don’t have this longing it hinders and how we can fan it.
We confess that we personally and as a church often do not have this strong longing for God, we do not yet have this intense spiritual life with complete devotion, we are often lukewarm and not passionate about him, we are often oversaturated with so many things from this Live and urgently need renewal!
Maybe you’re thinking, what’s wrong, it’s going quite well. Yes, to be honest, a lot of things are going really well at the moment. I’m really grateful for that. But at the same time we hear Jesus telling a church in Revelation:
You say: I am rich and have enough and need nothing!, and you do not know that you are miserable and miserable, poor, blind and naked.
It’s always a question of who I compare myself to. We want to be grateful for what God gives us while also being open to what God has in store for us and reaching out for more of Him.
That’s why I would like to start by telling you about another revival that can show us what is possible when God works so that we long for more and then we want to look into the Bible to see how we can live so that God is with us too feels at home.
Revivals are movements where God has worked through His Spirit in a special way.
Awakening has something to do with waking up, waking up, and it almost always started with the believers and then it spread and many people became believers.
Last week I told you about Asbury, where something like this happened this year. In 1904 it began with inconspicuous evening services in the Moriah Chapel in Wales. God’s word was preached, people were gripped by God’s love for their fellow human beings and by waves of intercession.
People laughed and cried, danced for joy and were deeply broken. Often these events lasted well past midnight, sometimes they lasted until early morning, while crowds of people were already waiting outside to take part in the 6 a.m. prayer. The movement soon spread across the entire country and changed it forever.
- Over 100,000 people became believers, documented by local newspapers.
- Ten years later, 80% of them were still in the communities.
- Walls between individual denominations collapsed.
- Political events were canceled.
- Players and spectators were missing from football games.
- Bars and cinemas had to close.
- Former prostitutes began leading Bible study groups.
- Police officers had to be fired. They no longer had work.
- People publicly confessed their guilt and put their lives in order.
- Bookstores kept running out of Bibles.
- There were large processions and spontaneous prayer meetings on trains and buses.
- At that time, this was an area where many people worked in coal mines. But the horses they use for work suddenly no longer obeyed them because the animals only reacted to a certain language used by the miners, to the cursing, to the kicking, to the hitting, and these people suddenly worked differently.
Historians say the tender beginning was in a church service when a preacher, Joseph Jenkins, concerned about the youth, addressed them with the question: Who is Jesus Christ to you?
Silence, no answer. And the second time this question comes up that can move us too, and a young man answers: Jesus is the hope of the world. Jenkins replies: No, no, I asked, who is Jesus Christ to you.
Finally a young girl who was converted just two weeks ago stands up and says:
I love Jesus with all my heart. This simple answer moves the audience. You start to think, God’s spirit begins to work.
The face of this revival was Evan Roberts, although many different people were certainly involved and the church had already prayed for revival.
Even as a young man he was moved by the question: What would Jesus do? And he kept asking himself: What have I done for Jesus? He read the Bible, memorized verses, he took his Bible with him to his work in the mine, stood at the entrance at the beginning and gave each of the workers as they passed a selected scripture to ponder.
Sometimes he forgot his dinner by meditating on God’s Word.
Dr. Roberts Liardon writes: His fervent hunger for God compelled him to pray fervently and devote himself to intercession, to such an extent that by the time he was twenty years old he was described by some as an insane mystic.
He was a simple, rather shy young man and it is said that he was not a leader of people. He even hid behind the pulpit at one point because he wanted people to see Jesus and not him. HE wanted them to pay attention to what he said and do what he told them. In one of the first services, when one of the preachers at the front had prayed: Oh God, make us humble, exciting prayer, he went very quietly to the front and prayed: Lord, make me humble.
Maybe there are some of us who don’t have much use for it.
Can God touch me like he did in this revival? And doesn’t everything have to be civilized and controlled?
Richard Wurmbrand spent 14 years in Romanian communist prisons and in one of his books he uses the following image:
I once saw a violinist who played so beautifully that everyone present began to dance. But a deaf man, who didn’t know what music was and couldn’t hear, but saw these people dancing, thought they were all crazy. I think that’s how it is sometimes, when some are moved by the beauty of God and his heart and others cannot understand it. And I hope that you too experience this touch of God if you have not already done so.
How can we live so that God feels at home with us – personally and as a community?
I would like to look at two men from the Old Testament with you to answer this question. And we will discover in them 5 points what we also saw in Evan Roberts and in this Welsh revival movement.
Of the one it says in 2 Kings 23:25 : There was never another king like him. Neither before nor after him had a king turned to the Lord as he did – with all his heart, with all his devotion, and with all his strength, in order to live according to the law of Moses.
And about the others it is said that God has found in him a man after his own heart.
The second person is King David and the first is King Josiah.
David is already relatively well known, Josiah less so, so here is some background information about him in excerpts from 2 Kings 22 and 23 :
Josiah was 8 years old when he became king […] In his 18th year of reign, Josiah decided to renovate the temple. […] When Shaphan, the court secretary, came to Hilkiah, the high priest showed him a scroll and said: “I found this book of the law in the temple of the Lord.” He gave it to Shaphan, and he read it. […] Then Shaphan read it to the king. When the king heard what was written in the law, he tore his clothes in dismay. He commissioned the priest Hilkiah, the court secretary Shafan and his son Ahikam, and Achbor the son of Miciah, and Asaiah, his most trusted court official: “Go and ask the Lord what we should do. For no one in all Judah, neither I nor the people, did what was written in the book that was found. The Lord must be very angry with us for this,
He went to the temple of the Lord, where a large crowd had gathered. All the men of Judah had come, the entire population of Jerusalem, the priests and prophets, everyone from the humblest to the most distinguished. The entire book of the covenant that had been found in the temple of the Lord was now read to this assembly. The king stood in his place by the pillar. After reading the book, he made a covenant with the Lord and swore: “We will obey the Lord again! We want to live according to his law with all our hearts and follow his commandments and instructions. We want to comply with all federal regulations written in this book. The entire people agreed to this promise. […] Josiah followed everything written in the book of the law that Hilkiah the priest found in the temple of the Lord.
Here we are in approximately 630 BC.
The young Josiah, this young king, wants to live with his God. In 2 BC, the two books of Kings and Chronicles deal with the events of Israel more or less in parallel and it is quite interesting to get the complementary information. This book says: In the eighth year of his reign, although he was still young, he began to seek the God of his ancestor David.
The interesting thing is that Josiah’s father wanted nothing to do with God and met his destruction. But Josiah didn’t let that stop him. And the message here is: We are not defined by our family history. Almost all of our teens and young people are on leisure time, but what potential there is in this Josiah, who is still so young.
And my first point this morning, how can we live so that God feels at home with us, is:
- Filled with longing for God
Josiah longs for God.
He is looking for God, he is trying to understand what God is all about, because he couldn’t find out from his father. This search is a path and the worship evening on Saturday will also be about this search. What we see here is that Josiah probably understood so much that he decided he wanted to live with God in his life, but he still didn’t understand everything. The law book was only found later. But he opens his life to God.
To everyone who does this, God promises: To all who received him and gave him faith (their trust), he gave the right to become children of God. John 1:12
They belong to God’s family, they are at home with him.
Josiah’s longing is expressed in the fact that he wanted to have the temple renovated, the place for the presence of God at that time, which had previously fallen into disrepair under the kings who wanted nothing to do with God.
Back then, God tied himself to the temple so that his people had a visible sign of his presence, but actually he is independent of it. We don’t need a fixed place to search and find God. He promised that if we look for him, he will be found.
King David recommends exactly this to those around him shortly before his death:
So set your hearts and minds on seeking the LORD your God. 1 Chronicles 22:19
We also feel this longing for God again and again in the Psalms:
Psalm 27: 4 : One thing I have asked the Lord; That’s all I want: I want to stay in the house of the Lord as long as I live.
So in his presence.
This longing for God is expressed in the fact that David continually seeks his presence, no matter the situation and no matter what concerns him.
He pours out his heart to God. We read psalms of lament where David laments to God all his suffering, all his despair, psalms of vengeance where all of David’s anger comes through without a pious veneer. David wrestles with God, wrestles with his doubts, also wrestles with his own guilt, his character, and prays for change.
God, you see all the crap in me, I can’t handle it. Help me with this, give me a heart the way you want it. And he praises God, he rejoices in him and thanks him for his help.
In order to be so open before God, it is important that we get to know God’s nature.
David did exactly that. He recognizes that God created him with his thoughts and feelings, his longings and desires, his strengths and weaknesses, his limitations and struggles. He realizes that he is safe and protected with God and that God is for him and will not let him go. And I think it’s very important that we understand that. Because only then can we come to God with everything and not have to fool him.
If we have the impression that God is strangling us and that we have to pretend, then we always remain at a distance and this longing for God can never fully develop. But I don’t have to pretend before God. And so Jesus also invites us: If you are weary and burdened, come to me. Whatever is bothering you, come to me.
In the Welsh revival movement we see exactly this.
A longing for God that leads people to seek His presence. There is brokenness over one’s own condition, there is rejoicing and joy in God’s nature and what He does, there is sadness and intercession for those around them. Because they know that God hears prayer and acts, they come to him. And when we have our 24-hour prayer next week, that’s exactly what we want to do. That’s why I invite you to register and be there. Do we expect God to answer our prayers?
A second point on how we can live so that God feels at home with us is:
- Let God speak
A scroll is found in the temple.
It is the scroll with the books of Moses. And Josiah has them read to him.
There is a study that found that studying the Bible is the most important factor in a Christian’s spiritual growth. And at the same time, people are spending less and less time reading the Bible.
God’s word is living.
It has power, God speaks to us through it. How do we want to get to know God, his nature and his will better if we don’t read it or read it only a little?
David writes:
Blessed is he who delights in the law of the LORD and meditates on his law day and night! He is like a tree planted by the streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season, and its leaves do not wither. And what he does works well.
This is what a person is like when he reads God’s Word and thinks about it. He is like a tree by the water that grows and blossoms.
Last week we talked about the living water that Jesus gives, which fills us and allows us to flourish. And this causes us to bear fruit, for God to act in and through our lives because he feels at home with us. When, we cannot determine, at his time. But he does it, because he has promised it.
Do not conform to this world, but change by allowing God to completely realign you. Only then can you judge what is God’s will, what is good and perfect and what pleases him.
This change happens because God is allowed to shape me.
Because what I deal with shapes me. In our world, where things go haywire and the question is what is truth, what counts, what gives stability, it is all the more important that we deal with and know God’s Word. Society and the media shape us anyway and they will shape us more and cause us to understand and live God’s thoughts less and less the less we deal with his word. That’s why it’s so important that we let God speak
The third thing, how we can live so that God feels at home with us, is directly related to this:
- Be willing to be corrected
How will King Josiah react after the scroll containing the Law of Moses is read to him?
That will always be the question in your life and in mine. How do we respond to God’s words?
Almost 20 years later, another role is read before a king. Jehudi, an official, reads one column at a time to King Jehoiakim. It was winter, it was cold, they were sitting around a fire and then it says: As soon as Jehudi had read three or four columns, the king cut them off with a knife and threw them into the fire until he burned the whole scroll.
And then the comment:
Neither the king nor his dignitaries were horrified by what they had heard; no one tore his garment in mourning. You can read this in Jeremiah 36
And what does Josiah do? He tears his clothes. This tearing of clothes is a sign of horror and sadness. And of course I can only do this purely externally, God sometimes even accuses his people of just pretending, but with Josiah it is real. He looks to God for advice on what to do.
At that time this happened through prophets and the prophetess Hulda sent word to him
2 Kings 22:19 : Because your heart has softened and you have humbled yourself before the LORD, and you have torn your clothes and wept before me, therefore I also have heard, says the LORD.
I hope that our hearts will also be soft when God speaks to us, when he shows us what is wrong in our lives. Maybe it’s that God is showing us that he is real and that we have excluded him from our lives. Or maybe it’s when God confronts us with something that doesn’t fit with our life with Him, when there’s sin in our life, like David who committed adultery, and a prophet confronts him about it in the name of God.
I think we all have a reflex.
This is already described on the first pages of the Bible. When we fail, when we do things we regret, we are running from God. Adam hides from God because he is ashamed and says to himself: I cannot come to God like this, as a failure, as a sinner. There’s a bit of comedy in this situation because I mean, how are you going to hide from God. And yet I keep noticing myself that I do the same thing. Another way is to talk your way out of it.
David He doesn’t run away from God, but towards him.
He asks him for forgiveness.
Change my heart, please help me not to go there again. A man after God’s own heart, not by his perfection but by his response. He repents, which means he recognizes his guilt, he regrets it, he turns back. He fixes what he can fix with God and others.
And Josiah?
He bows before God, he tears his clothes and weeps. This is an unconditional surrender. And God: He says because you did that, that’s why I listened to your prayer. God feels at home where people allow themselves to be corrected by him.
A fourth point:
- Do what God wants
We read in Josiah how, after God himself touched him, he now confronts his people with God’s word.
He does not keep his knowledge to himself but rather he presents his people with a decision. And the people of Israel join him on this journey to follow and obey God. And what comes next is hard. Because everything that stood in the way of that, where they didn’t live like that, will be changed. This means that all idols will be removed, the necromancers and fortune tellers will be driven out. This is also a spiritual battle, what we see here, back to God.
Take him seriously, do what he tells us.
The idols are everything in our lives that is above God, that is more important to us than him. We are asked to lay everything before him.
I have shown you, brothers and sisters, how great God’s mercy is. The only appropriate response is to place your whole life at God’s disposal, offering yourself to him as a living and holy sacrifice in which he delights. This is true worship, and this is what I urge you to do.
This is it, dear ones.
And I’ll remind you again of Thomas Depner’s sermon from July, which made it so clear what this means in our lives. That we invite God every day to let him guide and use us with everything we are and have. That we give him everything and if God gives it back to us, wonderful. But that he can also speak into our lives where he wants to change something and the question is, are we ready or is something else worth more to us than he is?
Jesus says: You are my friends if you do what I tell you. John 15:14
For Jesus, as in every friendship, it is important that we take him seriously in what is important to God. The more we do this, the more God feels at home with us. Because Paul also writes that the Holy Spirit withdraws from areas in our lives if we do not listen to him. Conversely, we can always open our whole lives to the Holy Spirit if we are willing to listen to him and do what he tells us.
God wants his heartbeat to become our heartbeat too. And God’s heartbeat is that other people also hear about him and his offer to belong to his family. Just like Josiah didn’t keep to himself what God told him.
A characteristic of revivals is that the mission of Jesus becomes the highest priority and that people are moved by the fact that others will perish without Jesus.
Finally, a fifth and final point about how we can live so that God feels at home with us:
- Live humbly for God’s glory
We saw it with Evan Roberts, who didn’t care about making it big in the revival movement, but rather put God at the center.
We see it with David. This becomes particularly clear in a situation in which David arranges for the Ark of the Covenant, then a sign of God’s presence, to be brought to the capital where David lived.
- Samuel 6:14 : As the procession began to move again, David danced with devotion next to the Ark of the Covenant to praise the Lord. He was only dressed in a light linen apron, like the ones the priests usually wore. Later he comes home to his family and his wife comes to meet him. Listen carefully to what she says:
“Oh, how dignified the King appeared before his people today!” she mocked. »During your half-naked dance you shamelessly exposed yourself in front of the slaves of your court officials. Only the rabble do such things!” David replied: “I danced in honor of the Lord.
David wanted God to make it big. What the others thought about him was irrelevant to him.
We also see it with Josiah, who is not interested in making it big as a king, but in making God great and giving him glory.
He knows who he is and who God is. This is what it means to live humbly to know your status. Josiah does his part. And so we too are invited to do our part to magnify God and live to his glory. What God has entrusted to us, our gifts, finances, relationships, our time, whatever. It’s not about us, it’s about him.
God wants us to love Him with all our heart, all our will, and all our mind.
And so longing for God is on the one hand a feeling, but on the other hand we can take very concrete steps and live in such a way that God feels at home with us, filled with longing for God, letting God speak and ready be able to be corrected. Do what God wants. Live humbly for God’s glory.
The fact that spiritual awakenings can then occur in ourselves and in others, as I told you at the beginning about the revival in Wales, can only be given by the Holy Spirit, we cannot do that.
But that’s exactly what we want to pray for, because we know that the ultimate blessing depends on God.
God has promised:
Chronicles 16:9 The eyes of the LORD run through all the earth to faithfully support those whose hearts are fixed on him.
2 Chronicles 7:14 If my people, who are called by my name, humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their evil ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and their land heal.
Bible references with kind permission: ERF Bibelserver