longing on Sin

Pastor: O LORD, rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath! For your arrows have sunk into me, and your hand has come down on me. All: There is no soundness in my flesh because of ...

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...

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...

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...

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...

O Lord our God, grant us grace to desire you with our whole heart, that so desiring we may seek and find you; and so finding you we may love you; and loving you we may hate those sins from which you h...

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...

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...

Martin Heidegger said that being is presence. Whatever else this means, it suggests that in some way presence is a basic property of simply being. Everything that exists has presence by virtue of its ...

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...

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...

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...

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 ...

I recently found, hidden in plain sight, the secret formula for writing a bestselling book. Yes, you read that right. My discovery created a surge of power that I could hardly handle. It felt like lea...

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 ...

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

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 ...

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...

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... ...

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...

Something deep within us is unsettled, and we want to appear to the world as better, more dignified, or more desirable—someone more beautiful or clever than the mope we see in the mirror.

In a letter to his son, J. R. R. Tolkien famously wrote, “We all long for [Eden], and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most humane, is...

"What is it you’re looking for in this endless quest? Tranquillity. You think if only you can acquire enough worldly goods, enough recognition, enough eminence, you will be free, there’ll b...

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.

The desire is thy prayers; and if thy desire is without ceasing, thy prayer will also be without ceasing. The continuance of your longing is the continuance of your prayer.

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

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.

Tony Reinke does a great job capturing the deep ambivalence many of us feel about our smartphones in this short excerpt: This blasted smartphone! Pesk of productivity. Tenfold plague of beeps and ...

In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart.

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...