As I sat here and sought to find a blog topic to discuss on, I resorted to the "vault." Which is my little pile of blog ideas that you all have so kindly e-mailed to me on things you'd like to learn about and hear about. After reading a very, very lovely e-mail from one of my friends mother full of encouragement, which made my day, I looked at a previous e-mail she sent me and decided that I am going to dedicate this blog to Mrs. P. I am going to talk about how a Christian can grow and learn and desire God more and more.

I want you all to first and foremost know that Rick Warren once wrote a book on the Purpose Driven Life which I am not a huge fan of. I want to make it clear that man has one purpose in this life, and that is to glorify God in all we do. I would make a book called "The Purpose of Life" into a one page book with the simple sentence saying that "The purpose of the humans is to glorify God in all we do, and acknowledge Him in all we do," ultimately, because there is no greater purpose.

Today's blog is going to possibly be a bit longer than yesterdays, it is going to incorporate an idea by John Piper called "Christian Hedonism" which I will evaluate further in a later point. Today is also going to be humbling and contrary to what the world and your peers of the world are going to want you to think.

As I was sick last week, I lied on the couch and saw a commercial I think for lotion, and the opening line was "Reveal your inner goddess." And even while I had a fever and was shaking uncontrollably, I shook my head, facepalmed, and looked at the idolatry and self serving taking place. I want to clarify that taking care of yourself is perfectly 100% fine in every way. However, when we get to the point where we are calling ourselves "goddess'" we are entering into heresy, false teaching, graven imagery, and idolatry. We are not god's and goddess'. There is but one God and anything other than that God is satanic.

Now, with the society we live in, believe it or not, we are surrounded by false idols and temples for these idols. As I have mentioned before, look around in a restaurant and question if you are in a temple for idols or not. Look at the people who live in informal gluttony, stuffing their faces with ribs or steak, and worshiping their god which is their stomach. Look in clothing stores at how people live to please and serve themselves spending absurd amounts of money for clothes because they see themselves as a beautiful goddess. There is nothing wrong with steak, ribs, or clothes. What people do, is take a good thing, make it a god thing, and ruin it doing so by having it become a bad thing. This happens all the time, everywhere, every day, constantly.

Anything apart from God can be an idol. Even worship can become an idol, where you are obsessed with worshiping to the point where you worship worshiping and don't worship the One who is supposed to be worshipped. Martin Luther concluded in his commentary on Exodus and the Ten Commandments that if you obey the first two commandments you will not sin.

It has been suggested that all sin amounts down to one thing, and that is pride. All sin is sourced and rooted in pride, and all idolatry is rooted in pride. Any time you lie, you are being prideful, anytime you steal, you are being prideful. It is the exact opposite of humility and it is the exact opposite of worshiping God as Lord, Savior, and Hero.

Now what does this have to do with the topic for today? All I have done is banter about idols, but the point is that when we aren't desiring God, it is because we are desiring something more than God. Think about this. What on Earth keeps us from desiring, knowing, and seeking God other than our interests, our desires, and our prerogative? It's selfishness. Now don't take this to some extremist view. God gave us sleep, so we need to sleep. God gave us food, and we need to eat. Sleeping and eating are wonderful things I enjoy a lot (and sometimes too much). But there are times, that my image means more than God, there are times, my identity means more than God. There are times that my amusement and entertainment come before God. There is nothing wrong with enjoying ourselves in the things God has blessed us with, but there is something wrong with continually putting it before God, and this is what keeps us from desiring God. When we start skipping church to do our activities we love, when we put off reading our Bible to watch a movie continually, and more.

My desire, is that we enjoy the things we do, but that the things we do do not become so huge, so important, so tied into our lives that if we lost them we would not know what to do with ourselves, and this is true for everything. If you lost your job in ministry at church, how would you react? If you lost your ability to write books, how would you react? If you lost the ability to use the internet forever, how would you react? Believe it or not, these things can very easily become idols. Even church music, where we idolize this type of music, and if we don't have this type of music, anything else is demonic and we aren't pleased because our idol isn't being worshiped and fed.

I want to tell you some profound statement a pastor once told me.
"God is most glorified in you, when you are most satisfied in Him." This is the concept of Christian hedonisim.
All things given to us are accounted to grace, (at least in my mind) and thus all things which are gracious in nature, should only in return be used to thank, bless, or glorify God for His goodness and His graciousness. When you are a professing Christian, and you find your satisfaction in drugs or alcohol, and not Christ, you are not most satisfied in Christ, which means you are not glorifying Christ as much as you can be, and you are depriving Him of the worship He deserves.
The expression that God deserves all worship, every moment, of every day, is inadequate to the worship He still deserves. Consider this. Read the book of Isaiah, read the book of Revelation, angels, people, on their knees proclaiming HOLY! HOLY! HOLY! HOLY! HOLY! HOLY! endlessly, eternally, and the King is only deserving of this praise!

If you wish to desire God more, seek pure, 100% satisfaction in Him and Him alone. To do this, you must cast down idols, you must destroy their place in your heart, and replace it with God. This means you practice humility, this means you aren't gluttonous, crewd, lewd, immoral, adultorous, full of lies, slander, gossip, and aren't crafty in your words. This means if need be, you spend more time off the computer, this means if need be, getting less cable channels, this means getting an internet filter if you so need.

Our need for God is endless, and consequentially, so should our desire be. We should never be satisfied in our need for God while we live on this Earth, because achieving that perfect state would require being perfect. Because I am quite positive that no matter what you do, there will always be something that will compete for the place God holds in our heart. Whether it is inside of us, outside of us, or in the world around us. We should always desire more, and more, and more, and more, and more. Even when our cup is overflowing desire MORE! Anything less means you are opening yourself to satisfaction to another degree, because in this war of spiritual sorts things are constantly wanting this place! And thus we must seek God more, and more, and more until our cup overflows without any ceasing.

In summary, to desire God in a stronger passion:

• Search for idols
• Destroy the said idols
• Replace the idols with Christ
• Seek Christ to fill all voids
• And glorify Christ in all you do

When you are satisfied in Christ and Christ alone, you will be so fulfilled, that everything will be pale in comparison, apart from being in heaven with Christ.

This is why I have named my blog 'To God be the glory!' for He is deserving of it all.

Any questions, concerns, thoughts, comments, prayer requests, please send an e-mail to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it I check that e-mail almost every day.

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