longing on Faithfulness

Introduction There are two significant ways in which waiting is central to our passage today. First, there is the waiting to be reunited with the apostle Paul and the fledgling church in Thessalonica...

Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart. Audacious longing, burning songs, daring thoughts, an impulse overwhelming the heart, usurping the mind—these are all a dr...

God has come to us and revealed Himself fully to us Yet too often we hide ourselves from His love and salvation Instead of focusing on you, Lord God, we focus on ourselves Instead of trusting yo...

Leader: How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts! Our souls long, yes, faint for the courts of the Lord; our hearts and flesh sing to the living God. People: For the Lord God is a sun and ...

Almighty and Everlasting God, in whom we live and move and have our being, who has created us for yourself, so that our hearts are restless until they find rest in you, grant to us purity of heart and...

Your words and ways are Perfect Sure Right Clear Your words and ways are Pure True Righteous Every one Their value, beyond price Their goodness, beyond delight Their counsel, en...

Leader: Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever! All: Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom he has redeemed from trouble and gathered in from the lands...

When we are denied the very things our hearts long for, we learn to long for the one thing that will never be denied us, God Himself.

God has nothing against treasure; his concern is about its location.

Joy’s trick is to supply  Dry lips with what can cool and slake,  Leaving them dumbstruck also with an  ache Nothing can satisfy.

Leader: How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts! People: My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God. Leader: Blessed are ...

Prayer of Confession Jesus, we thirst We thirst for love and belonging We thirst for security and provision We thirst for truth and hope We thirst for healing for our wounds We thirst for mercy for o...

Good and Gracious God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: we come to You as an impatient people filled with a multitude of desires and needs. We yearn for simple things--the arrival of warm weather, enough...

Gregg Easterbrook wrote about this in a 2003 book called The Progress Paradox. Easterbrook’s subtitle was How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse. He describes how affluent we have become—​​​bett...

We come to this place seeking something ... something better than ourselves; something that gives life meaning; some relationship that reaches deep into our souls to fulfill us; maybe e...

O God, our resurrection and life, the promise of Your new life in Christ is like a breath of fresh air in a dry and thirsty land. We have gathered as believers, and as those who are honestly seeking t...

The engaged mind, illuminated by truth, awakens awareness; the engaged heart, affected by love, awakens passion. May I say once more - this essential energy of the soul is not an ecstatic trance, high...

Sin comes when we take a perfectly natural desire or longing or ambition and try desperately to fulfill it without God. Not only is it sin, it is a perverse distortion of the image of the Creator in u...

Many deceptions only appeal to us because there is something inside us that "wants" to believe them. They are seductive because of darkness and wrong motives in our own lives. We must search...

It is not your idea, not your understanding, not your thinking, not your reasoning, not even your profession of faith, that here can quench the thirst. The home-sickness goes out after God Himself... ...

We are made for God: for God’s glory, to worship God and reflect his likeness. That is our heart’s deepest desire, the source of our deepest vocation.

The Old Testament portrays the world as it is, no holds barred. In its pages you will find passionate stories of love and hate, blood-chilling stories of rape and dismemberment, matter-of-fact account...

Lord, Teacher, Savior, Friend: We need Your grace, which forgives our sins; Your truth, which anchors our lives; Your presence, which calms our fears; Your call, which gives us purpose; Your hope, whi...

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord! O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy! If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stan...

Pastor: As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. People: My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. Psalm 42:1 Pastor: I was glad when they said to...

In The Chimes, the second of Charles Dickens five Christmas stories, nine-year old Lillian Fern, orphaned and under the guardianship of her father’s brother Will, is taken in for the night by Tobias (...

You God, are my God. I earnestly seek you. I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water. I have seen you in your sanctuary and beheld your power...

We taste Thee, O Thou Living bread, And long to feast upon Thee still: We drink of Thee, the Fountainhead And thirst our souls from Thee to fill.

There was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he ...

The soul must long for God in order to be set aflame by God's love; but if the soul cannot yet feel the longing, then it must long for the longing. To long for the longing is also from God.