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 Longing after God by Zac Poonen

Live before God's face in the secret place and let there be a constant cry in your heart after Him. Christianity becomes a dry, empty religion when this longing after God is gone. So, preserve that longing after God at any cost. That is the most important part of your faith. We must constantly long after God like the thirsty deer pants for water (Psalm 42:1).

God's education for us includes many things that the world calls "disappointments". But these are "His-appointments" for something better for us. If we don't face such disappointments, we will never be able to counsel others. Life's education includes failing as well, for failure is necessary if we are to help others in a world in which 99.9% of people are failures. Two purposes of failure are (1) to humble us (break us) and (2) to make us compassionate towards others.

Your spiritual battles are also part of your education. If you work so hard for temporal earthly degrees, how much harder you must be willing to battle for an eternal, heavenly one. The time is short, and the days are evil. We must keep the eternal perspective in mind, in all our earthly pursuits. Live in a constant judgment of yourself and in a pure inner walk with the Lord at all times.

Paul told Timothy, “Guard through the Holy Spirit Who dwells in us, the treasure which has been entrusted to you” (2 Tim.1:14). God has given us our bodies as a sacred treasure that we must preserve for Him during our earthly journey. We are to present these to Him every day so that they can be cleansed of all sin and preserved in holiness, until one day we complete life's journey.

To use an illustration: It is like a company having given us five million rupees to carry safely from one place to another. But we have wasted some of it and lost the rest of it along the way. Now we repent and come back to the Lord in failure. What does He do? He does not reject us. Instead, He forgives us and gives us another five million rupees and tells us to carry that safely till the end of our lives. How good God is.

Our testimony as Christians must be far above the standard of the world. We must not do anything that has even the appearance of evil. It is better when in doubt to err on the side of caution and discretion rather than on the opposite side.


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