Longings

Pr 13:12 says "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life."

The subject of longings is one that seems to be coming up in my conversations on a regular basis right now. People longing for their dreams, people longing for their mates, people longing for a change, people just longing...

The Lord began to speak to me about longings. Sometimes in the midst of wanting to avoid hope deferred or to avoid the attacks of the enemy, people avoid the longing. It seems easier to squelch the longing, push it down, and pretend like it doesn't exist. We believe that we are helping ourselves function, but there is a slight problem. We begin to live in denial......denial of our heart's longing. Instead of learning how to embrace the longing, we avoid it.

So I may be talking in generalities so let me talk a little more specific. Say you are a single young woman who would one day like to be married and have a family. It's a longing that is very real and very true. But sometimes the enemy attacks and makes you feel undesired, undeserving, and everything else in between. So the easiest way to live is to push down the desire and wait. But in the waiting it can seem so hopeless and like there is nothing you can do. So many swing to the opposite. The flip side of the coin is to engage the longing in an improper way. By dwelling, worrying, and fantasizing. 

Obviously the correct answer is to "take the longing to the Lord." But sometimes cliche' statements seem to hold very little power. They don't seem to convey a practical way of handling the age-old truth of taking it to the Lord. Maybe I am just speaking for me, but I tend to take the longing to the Lord, let go, and then if it arises again, squelch it.

I think the kingdom way is not to avoid it.....not to fantasize, but to embrace it with purpose. I am learning that I have not done this very well in the past. I believe there has to be a healthy way to engage heartfelt full longing without wavering to and fro.

There is a place in the psalms where David says, "All my longings lie open before you, O Lord; my sighing is not hidden from you." 

To have your longing open before the Lord means you can't hide it or manipulate it. You allow yourself to feel the raw emotions that are evoked by such a place of yearning.

So what does this look like. Instead of having a longing but being too scared to feel that deeply for something you don't have....why not take a healthy amount of time to embrace that longing. Now, I'm not talking about dwelling from it, but take some time to feel deeply what you want, let it drive you to fasting and intercession for what God has for you. Truly embracing it and leting it lie open before the Lord.

So for me..right now.....I am in a season of letting my desires rise to the surface. Letting my longings truly be that....something I long for. Letting my sighs not be hidden, and being determined to long rightly. With purpose and vision for the "PROMISE" from the Lord. Because for me, that is the key. Living from faith for what God has for me coupled with the understanding that in the "now" I must embrace that which seems overwhelming.

A thought fulfilled doesn't produce a tree of life... .....An idea fulfilled doesn't produce it either. BUT a longing fullfilled does.  So I am now determined to long, that I may be fulfilled.