Mike Bickle discusses 'The Seven Longings of the Human Heart,' emphasizing that these longings are divinely designed cravings within us that reflect God's personality. He explains that while these longings can lead us to seek fulfillment in unhealthy ways, they ultimately point us back to God, who can satisfy them. Bickle highlights the importance of understanding these longings to deepen our intimacy with God and live fully alive in our spirits. He encourages believers to pursue these longings through prayer, worship, and a revelation of God's beauty, assuring that they will be fully satisfied in the resurrection.

Thank you in the name of Jesus for your word. And I ask you to bless the hearing of your word. And I ask you to strengthen this spiritual family and the subject of intimacy with God on these Friday night meetings. In Jesus' name, amen. I wanna talk about the seven longings of the human heart. And these seven longings are part of God's genius in the way that he designed our spirit. We have cravings. And these cravings have been purposefully built into our spirit. I call them a divine design. These are designer cravings, if you will. And these cravings in our spirit, they leave us very empty. Very empty until they're touched, until they're satisfied, at least even a little bit. I mean, with a gnawing pain, a gnawing emptiness. Except the spirit of God touch us. And of course, he touches us in measure in these subjects. And sometimes more measure than another. And these longings are in our human spirit forever. Forever, we will long for these things forever. And each one of these longings has a counterfeit that has something that's fallen and dark that we wanna go into the kingdom of darkness to satisfy these longings. Or the Satan's luring us or tempting us. Or the values of our culture or the paradigm of a secular world is beckoning us to satisfy these longings outside of the grace of God. And another thing I wanna say is each one of these longings have a, they are an expression or I would rather say they are a reflection of God's personality. These longings reflect realities in God's personality. And we're made in his image. And that's why we have these longings because he made us like him. And there's a corresponding dimension of God's personality. They're not all longings in God, but they're realities in God that correspond to these longings in our spirit. And as I have found out over the years, as I have defined these seven longings, then I begin to go after them. I begin to understand my plight and my struggle better. And I have a clarity about what my life's about. I wanna go after these seven things that make sense of these beating desires in our spirit, in our hearts. I mean, these longing, panging desires. And we'll never have them fully met in this age. But we'll have them, a little bit of God touching us goes a long way. But these things, God will touch us with forever. These things will be in our spirit. This is glorious. This is life fully alive. These seven longings describe life. I mean, when satisfied, and they're only partially satisfied in this age. But again, a little bit of this goes a really long, long way. But they're fully satisfied in the resurrection. And this is the description, my description of being fully alive at the heart level is living in touch with these longings and eagerly seeking God's touch of our heart as these longings are fulfilled in our spirits. First, just a little bit more introduction. In Roman numeral one, the bridal paradigm of the kingdom. My, if you're looking for a life verse, John 17, 26, you know, you get to have lots of them. You don't have to pick just one, but this has just been the one I've had for years. And if you're looking for one, I offer it to you. It says this, Jesus is preaching, is praying. And he says, I will declare, Father, your name. And when I declare your name, here's why, so that the love with which you love me will be awakened in them. So Jesus's desire is to see the love that the Father has for Jesus to be supernaturally imparted into our spirit. That we would love God in the way that God loves God. We would love Jesus in the impartation of how the Father loves Jesus. And the way that the Father, the way that Jesus works this, he said, Father, I will tell them what you're like. I will declare your name, I'll tell them your personality. So to declare what God's name is, is to declare the nature of his personality and what his heart is like. He says, when they come into understanding of what your heart is like, it will awaken your love inside of them back to me. They will love me in the spirit of what you love me in. And so when we wanna love God more, we fill our minds with the understanding of God's name or the understanding of God's personality. It moves us, it shifts our emotional chemistry. When we know the passion that God has for us, it awakens passion in us back to him. Next passage, Romans 5. The love of God is supernaturally poured into the human heart by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit pours love for God into our spirits. Paragraph A, God will bring forth a bride that will love Jesus in the way the Father loves Jesus. When I say God, I didn't mean God, the Father, God, the Son, the Holy Spirit, they're working together in unity so that the church on the earth will love Jesus in the way the Father does. That is so staggering. I've preached on this verse for 20 years and I can't even get to the first base on this verse. This verse is so big, I'm still, I haven't made first base yet. I'm still running down the line going, what, to love God like, who loves God like God does? Like, what, this is beyond exaggeration. I can't get my mind around this. It might be my life verse, you know, a thousand years from now, a million years from now. I mean, I just don't know how you can do, go beyond this. Anyway, God's bringing forth a bride. I don't wanna spend too much time on my introduction. I gotta get to the seven longings here. So, she will be empowered with the grace of God until she overflows with love sickness for the Messiah, for the bridegroom God. It takes God to love God and we understand that. It takes the power of God on the human spirit to love God back. We can't love God by gritting our teeth in our own religious self-determination. Yeah, we can make decisions. We have to make decisions. We have to make quality decisions to say no to sin and yes to God. But those decisions, if there's not an inspiration of the spirit that mixes with that decision, all we have is a decision with no power. There has to be power on our heart. It doesn't work. And God wants, and God has committed to release the power, but the vehicle of which he releases the power is the revelation of his personality. When we understand from the word what God's heart is like, it actually awakens our heart and it causes our heart to receive the power of God in a greater way. Our desire for God is God's gift to us. I love Jesus a little more than I used to, but not near as much as I want to, the same as you. But whatever measure I love him with, that's God's gift to me. My desire for him is his gift to me. He's saying, I put that gift in you, and even the panging. I was talking to someone just today, and they said, oh, I'm sick. I'm not breaking through, it's not happening. My tongue is unbridled, my this and my that. Oh, my time is wasted, and oh, I'm in pain. I go, I love it. She goes, what? I go, I love it. I said, that's the gift of God working in you. I said, there was a day when you lived the same way, but far less scattered, and you didn't think a thing about it. You're in anguish. That's the work of God in you. I said, that's the rough side of it, but it's glorious. You're in pain. That's called blessed are they that mourn. That's the work of God in your spirit. And our love for God, I'm gonna say this, our desire for God is actually an expression of his desire for us. The very fact I'm longing to get somewhere in God that I haven't got to yet, the longing is part of his longing for me. He goes, I put that in you, because I want you to feel that way, because I'm lovesick over you. I want you to feel this way, because I want you to want me like this. It's an expression of his desire for us. Paragraph B, before the Lord returns, the church will have a fierce and determined spirituality. We will have a depth in God before the Lord returns. Passion for Jesus with extravagant obedience will be the norm. This passionate love is imparted most effectively, here's a sentence that's real familiar to most of you, but this passion love will be imparted most effectively in context to what we call the bridal paradigm of the kingdom. Paragraph C, that's why we want to study the bridal paradigm. You don't have to use the term bridal paradigm, it's just a term we use around here. It's paragraph C, that's not a precise theological term, but it's a practical term, and it communicates a body of truths that are related to Jesus' heart as a bridegroom God, and it's related to our experience before him as a cherished bride. So it's truths that are related to who Jesus is as a bridegroom, he's more than a bridegroom, and it's related to who we are as a bride, and we're more than a bride. There's other dimensions to our spiritual identity. But when we talk about the truths related to him being a bridegroom and us being a bride, that's what we mean by the bridal paradigm of the kingdom. It's a view of the kingdom of which the heart is empowered through these truths. We're still in paragraph C in the middle. Our experience of Jesus as a bridegroom can be described, our experience can be described according to seven longings that are common in every human heart. Here's the seven longings, I just put them all together. They are the longing for the assurance that we are enjoyed by God. We have to have the assurance. Not a guess, we have to be assured that we are enjoyed right now even in our weakness by God. When we have that assurance, our spirit is alive, we were created to long for this. Number two, we have a longing to be fascinated by God. We have a longing to be beautiful. There's a craving in every human spirit to possess beauty. That was put in us by the beautiful God and it must be answered, and God, by the Spirit, will answer that in our spirit. There's a longing to be great. If you don't wanna be great, you're out of touch or you're completely doled. Now maybe you don't call it great, maybe you have different language for it. You might call it destiny. The Bible calls it great, longing to be great. That is a biblical longing. What's unbiblical is to pursue it in a wrong way. There's a longing for intimacy without shame, to know as we are known, to know as we are known, to know and to be known with no shame involved but full disclosure, we long for this. We long to be passionate, we long to be wholehearted, and we long to make a deep and laughing impact. These are seven longings that were built into our human design by God, and they are reflections of his own personality, and we'll have a deep and laughing impact. We'll have these longings forever. Now these seven longings, the last sentence in paragraph C, they comprise the theological core of our experience in context to the Bridal Paradigm. When I talk about the Bridal Paradigm and our experience, I'm talking about these seven longings, and these seven longings have many implications. These aren't the sort of thing where you, well, tonight I'm giving a little overview. These are the sort of thing where we could spend a couple weeks on each one of them, and now that I just kind of got this freelance Friday night thing, I'm just gonna a little here, a little there, and just develop them. I'm pretty excited about this. Because at the end of a meeting, I get ready for my other meetings, but the week starts, and I start thinking, oh, the next passage, and I just rather flow with whatever. So anyway, I'm just like a kid in a candy store with this new mandate from Alan. How's that? I put it back on him. Okay, paragraph D. The redeemed across the earth will one day see their Messiah as the heavenly bridegroom. One day, the whole redeemed across the earth are gonna see Jesus as a bridegroom. Right now, most of the church does not see him as a bridegroom. They might technically know that term. If you ask a normal believer, I mean, a believer, anywhere, they might go, yeah, yeah, I've heard that, but I don't know much about it. But before the Lord returns, that's going to be the predominant revelation of who Jesus is. Paragraph F. The Holy Spirit will satisfy our hearts with what I call the superior pleasures of the gospel. The superior pleasures of the gospel, and they are related to these seven basic longings. Now, the superior pleasures of the gospel is what happens in our heart when God reveals God to our spirit. When God touches our spirit, there is a pleasure that's superior to the inferior pleasures of sin. Sin is pleasurable. Sin is pleasurable for a season, but it's inferior to when God, the Holy Spirit, touches the human spirit, that is the greatest pleasure in the human experience is right there. And that's a fact. It's not like it ought to be. It is a fact. Anybody that has a little touch of God in their spirit, and that's why we long for that. That's why we pray and fast, because we like this touch of God touching our spirit. I remember when I resigned the church and told my sons, we went out for a lunch, and I said, I've resigned the church, and I'm gonna do this IHOP thing we've been talking about. You know, over the years, I'd mentioned it, and we had a big sign, you know, 24-hour prayer. One of these days, we're gonna do it. I said, and that's now we're gonna do it. So I shared it with them before we made any, and I told other folks, and my two boys go, now, what are you doing? And I said, I'm gonna resign the church 100%. I got this little trailer, and I drove them by it, and the trailer was still getting fixed, and they went, huh. And one of my sons said, Dad, you've been there 18 years. Are you sure you wanna do that? You know, he was counseling me, like, Dad, don't be impetuous. And they said, why don't you just stay and be the pastor and go do that, you know, it's good to have some prayer times. Go on down. They go, no, no, no, I'm gonna go all the way. And they said, why? One of them said, why? And I said, because I love pleasure so much. They said, what? I said, I love pleasure. You know, here they are, you know, 18, 20 years old. I go, I'm not like you. I have way stronger pleasure, appetite for pleasure than you do, and they looked at each other, you know. I said, I have, my appetite for pleasure is so intense, I have to go for this thing all the time. We're turning you into mom quick. You gotta get help. This is what I was talking about. Is that there is a context. We can focus on it. It's not all pleasurable, but we touch it here and there. I will touch it a little bit, but beloved, a little bit of this is superior to the other. I don't touch it that much, but when I touch it, it fascinates my spirit. It's a little bit of that really carries, even the memory of it. If you haven't had a fresh touch for a little time, the memory of it continues to empower you to press on. This thing is powerful. It's like Holy Spirit soul ties in the most positive way. The memory of it will push you forward. I mean, the actual, the memory of it keeps you going. Let's go to paragraph G. Why is the bridal paradigm necessary? The generation the Lord returns will be filled with emotional brokenness. Unprecedented in history. Perversion and the woundedness of the human heart will reach proportions unknown in history. Sinful perversions, occult, the judgments of God, martyrdom will reach the highest intensity ever seen in human history. And this is the context when the people of the earth, many of them, the unbelievers are bitter. It says the next sentence, they are offended. It says, Jesus said, many will be offended. They will betray one another, their hearts will grow cold. Pornography and the occult will explode in its number and its depth of evil. This is the hour where the most righteous, largest group of people and the deepest experiences of holiness in history will dwell in this context of darkness. And the great weapon in God's arsenal, it's always the word and the spirit, but in a more particular way, it's the revelation of Jesus as a bridegroom coming as a lovesick bridegroom, fascinating and exhilarating the heart of his bride. And so the bride is exhilarated in this reality and could stand before the darkness that's mounting up without wavering, going right and left. Paragraph H, God's gonna have a people in victory and the coldest, most lawless, demonic generation of history, there will be a people, a large number of people. I'm believing God for a billion new souls. I mean, a billion new ones. I don't mean a billion plus the ones that are now. There's gonna be a great falling away, but there's gonna be a great ingathering as well. A great falling away, but a greater ingathering. The numbers will be bigger after the falling away, actually. When those that we've lost and those that have gained, the number's far larger. And it says in Ephesians five, that when the Lord returns, he's coming for a church that's clean. Beloved, we're talking about pornography far worse than it is now. The technology, pornography and perversion is so deep out there and people are getting addicted to it at 10 years old. In the next 10 or 20 years, if the Lord tarries, it will get so deep and so pervasive and the occult and murder and anger, there will be more demonized 10 year olds than we can imagine. I mean, for real. In the midst of this darkness, there will be a company of people on the earth, a billion strong plus. I mean, they'll have bright righteousness. There is no blemish. This is no spot of blemish. They're not talking about the gift of righteousness and when they stand before God, they're not blemished. That's true, of course, but that's not talking about what they're talking about here. They're talking about a people whose character while they're on the earth, God looks at them and says they are mature and there's no compromise in the whole lot of them worldwide. This is not just the justification by faith. Obviously, that's the foundation of it and we stand before the Lord because of the finished work of the cross, but this is talking about a living condition, not just a legal position before God, a living condition. And what's gonna bring the church? I mean, the church in the West is so filled with compromise right now. What is going to happen where a billion plus people are gonna live with no spot or wrinkle, nothing in their garments, they're tainted with the spirit of darkness and I believe, I don't wanna be simplistic, but one of the major tools or weapons in God's arsenal is the bridal paradigm, the revelation of Jesus as a bridegroom. Paragraph I, basically what I say here is that we need divine strength, we need divine might on our spirit to walk in this and God's gonna give us this divine might, but he's gonna give it to us by giving us truth. It will be truth, number one, enters our heart, truth. Then we say yes to it and we agree to obey and the spirit moves on us and the whole combination of that. Okay, paragraph, I mean, Roman numeral two. Longing, number one. We're gonna do this just real brief, but just give you an overview of it. The longing for the assurance, the longing for assurance of being enjoyed by God. Now, you could say the phrase that some might use and it's a great phrase called the love of God. I'm talking about the love of God, but the love of God, people go, yeah, I know God loves me, I know that and they kinda disconnect. I wanna break it down. I'm talking about the assurance that you are enjoyed by God, even in your weakness. Enjoyed, not the possibility, the assurance that we are enjoyed. I tell you, when we have that assurance, even in our weakness, not just when we go to heaven and not when we outdo Paul the apostle in maturity. Some guy says, I think God will enjoy me on the earth, but when I'm so mature, I go, how mature is mature before God starts enjoying you? This is absolutely fundamental to the revelation of Jesus' heart as a bridegroom and who we are as a cherished bride. This is the beginning point right here and this is absolutely a struggle to most believers to break through on this point. But my point isn't to put anybody down for that, but rather to identify it so it becomes a focused struggle that we're going after a breakthrough in this area. And the way that we get a breakthrough is by feeding our spirit on the subject of intimacy with God. That's why we do it every Friday night. We've been doing it for years now, every Friday night, intimacy with God, feeding people's spirit on this subject. But beloved, it's not enough to hear teaching. You gotta take, not in my notes, but I'm pointing, this means the Bible, you gotta take these verses, I'm pointing at a good verse here, I am lovesick. Take these verses and you gotta go over them and you gotta speak them to God and you gotta pray over them. You gotta take the truths and do something with them, not just hear them and underline them. You gotta take the truths and work with them in your heart. There's a craving in every heart to be pursued. It's godly. It's a craving in every heart to be delighted in. You wanna be delighted in. Of course you do. You know why? You're made in God's image. God put that as part of the design of your spirit. There's a desire in you, a craving in you to be enjoyed. First by God and then by loved ones. Someone says, I don't care what man says. I go, absolutely, that's a false statement. You absolutely care what man says. I'm positive because God created you and he created a longing to where you do care. You just gotta live with, you gotta walk that out in an appropriate way. You don't wanna be enslaved to it, but if you're human and you're alive, you care. You can't get rid of that. You just get rid of pursuing it the wrong way. Understanding God's affection and God's enjoyment of us is where we begin our journey into the romance of the gospel. I love to call it the romance of the gospel, when our heart is exhilarated in God, exhilarated in the love of God, the beauty of God. Our spirit is alive so much that we would walk fearlessly into martyrdom if the opportunity was there. We would not shy away in fear. Our hearts are exhilarated in love. We're fearless to obey the Lord. Some folks use the term romance of the gospel to mean something else. I mean a exhilarated heart that's radical in its pursuit in obedience. It's fearless because a lot of obedience is related to fear. If I obey, I'm gonna lose out. If I obey, I'm gonna miss out on pleasure, I'm gonna miss out on the fun, but a love-sick heart that's exhilarated has no fear that they're missing out by saying no to darkness. Paragraph B, we are emotionally drained and sometimes devastated if we feel rejection and shame from God or the people we love. The sheer feeling of rejection could knock the wind out of our emotional lungs. Even if the rejection's not real, there's a lot of people that feel rejected by God and God says, I'm not the one telling them that. But the rejection, the feeling of it's real nonetheless. There's an accuser, he's called the devil. He accuses us night and day and his accusation, it says you've gone too far and it's too late. And that is an accusation. And just our own natural, our darkened mind has that accusation. And even from other people, we get very natural for us to feel rejected from other people and when the whole story comes out, I wasn't thinking anything about it. You thought, well man, all that wasted energy I put in that. Well, we all do that. It's common to humanity. My point isn't to say how bad it is. My point is to say God has an answer. God wants to touch our spirit and it's this longing for the assurance of being enjoyed. Paragraph C, I believe the most prevailing stronghold of the mind is related to the fear of rejection and the trauma of shame. That is the strongest stronghold in the mind. The fear of being rejected and the trauma of shame, those are devastating. I don't know of anything more devastating than those two things, which is really two sides of one coin. Our fundamental longing in our spirit is to be enjoyed. And God reveals this to us in relationship to his affections as a bridegroom and as a father. Okay, let's go to a paragraph E. It's not so difficult to believe that God enjoys us in heaven. It's not difficult to believe he enjoys us on the earth as long as we are mature. However, the scriptures says more than that. He enjoys us even now in our sincerity, but in our immaturity. He enjoys us even now. He doesn't just enjoy us when we grow up in the spirit. He enjoys us during the growth period. There's a big difference between immaturity and rebellion. Immaturity and rebellion, you get a rebellious person over here and an immature person over there, and some of the things they say and actually do might look the same externally, but the heart of the rebellious person says, I don't care at all what God has to say about it. I just don't want to get caught or get in trouble. The immature person says, I just said it or did it. I hate it because I want to walk with God. This is not who I am, and that's immaturity, and God says, I may even discipline you in that, but it's not because I've rejected you. It's because I actually delight in you. Sometimes he disciplines us in our immaturity. Sometimes he doesn't, but when he does, his correction is never rejection. That's the next couple sentences. When God corrects the immature, it's never because he fails to delight in us. That's not what it's about. He corrects us because he delights in us. There's no rejection at all. The Proverbs chapter three, whom the Lord loves, he corrects in the way a father corrects his son in whom he delights. God delights in the people he's correcting, so there's no rejection. When God looks at the immaturity of my life and there's times of discipline, I'm going, ouch, I'm in trouble, but the Lord says, yes, this is ouch, and yes, you are in trouble, but it's nothing about me not liking you. It's exactly the opposite, it's because I do like you so much, so I can have the assurance that I'm being pursued by God and enjoyed by God even while in a time of discipline because we naturally associate correction with rejection, so when we're under divine correction, we assume we're in the doghouse, so we say, in 60 days after the penalty time's up, after I get out of the penalty box, I'll come back and worship you again. The Lord says, no, I want you to worship me this moment. I love it when you worship me. How could you? You just gave me a whoopin'. How could you love it when I'm worshiping you because I like you, that's why. Okay, let's go to Roman numeral three, the longing number two, the longing to be fascinated. Paragraph A, there's a craving in every human spirit to be fascinated, to marvel. We love to marvel, we love wonder on our spirit. You know, the great scientists of history are men and women that are just captured by wonder, and that's the gift of God. Every human spirit has wonder and a craving, a longing to marvel and to be fascinated. We long to be awestruck. We long to be filled with endless wonder. You know, somebody says, you know, I saw this thing, you know, Disney World, or I saw this movie. Oh, it was incredible. You just, they could fill all the adjectives. It was like, oh, it was like, and what they're really saying is, it touched a chord in my spirit of marvel and awe, even a little bit, and oh, you gotta go. That's built into the human spirit. The secular entertainment industry has identified this human longing and targeted it commercially. They've exploited it to their profit and to our ruin because of our divine design, because we are made in God's image, because God built us this way. We have a sense of wonderment at the core of our being, and we don't wanna, I mean, I'm not making blanket statements about entertainment recreation. Some of it's appropriate, even too much of the appropriate then becomes a waste of time because it doesn't enhance our spirit in God, even some legitimate. And so there's appropriate and inappropriate. That's not my interest to go and define all that stuff because I don't have it perfectly defined in my own mind, but some of it's clear and some of it's not so clear, and that's not my point. My point is this, that God created this craving in us to be fascinated. He wants to answer it. He means to answer this craving in us, but we have to give ourself to the word. We have to give ourself to fasting and worship and prayer, and there's a labor in the natural, says, well, I'm a little tired today. Well, you've been tired for 20 years. I mean, you're always too tired to do this. When are you not gonna be tired? Yeah, now that you mention it, I guess it has been 20 years, you know? And what I'm saying is there's a certain labor. You know, you kinda gotta get focused, gotta get going. You gotta put it on your schedule. If I don't put it on my schedule, it doesn't happen near as much. If I put it on my schedule, it happens a lot more. Even though I don't do it always when it's on my schedule, I do it a lot more if I schedule it. I've been scheduling my prayer and fasting and worship time for 30 years in a very, very focused way. I've scheduled it. I don't wanna live without a schedule. I don't always keep my schedule, but my schedule is like a compass when I kinda like, well, what am I gonna do now? I'm going somewhere. I don't wanna just kinda be-bop around in life and just hope I turn up at the right place. I wanna be a man of purpose. I want clarity, and you can't do that without spending your time right. You get your, it takes, there's some labor because our natural mind is kinda dull when we first start sometimes. Our body's kind of, and our spirit's unfocused, but let's get ourself in the pathway of this because God wants to fascinate your spirit. He built fascination, a cry for it in your spirit in order to answer it. He didn't put it in you to disappoint you. He put it in you to answer it without having a sense of awe, even a little bit. I don't wanna exaggerate, even a little sense of awe. We live aimless. We live spiritually bored, and when we're spiritually bored, the church is weak and vulnerable to Satan. When we are spiritually bored, we don't live fascinated, we become so vulnerable to sin. When our spirit is fascinated, even a little bit, it keeps us so much more focused in the right way, and the way the Lord's gonna do this is by the revelation of the beauty of Jesus. King David said it. We passed the verse, which is fine, you already saw him, but King David talked about beholding the beauty of the Lord. We have it on the notes there earlier. This one thing, to behold the beauty. This was David's key. He was locked in, and beloved, our problem here at IHOP is that this is what we built IHOP on, this verse. This was the verse the Lord gave in 1983. He gave us Psalm 27 forward. This is what IHOP is about, beholding the beauty, and we would do all kinds of things of warfare and da-da-da-da, but this was the foundation because we've got it on everything. It can become a cliche instead of a living reality. We got this plastered around everywhere, which is okay, but the negative of it is that it tends to create dullness to this fantastic truth of this mighty king that was beholding God's beauty. He was more captured by that than he was running an empire. When David's hands were occupied, his heart was preoccupied. His heart was preoccupied with a man. Well, he hadn't become a man yet. Jesus, I'm getting ahead of myself here. He was preoccupied with God. He was preoccupied with God while his hands were occupied in the work God gave him. Isaiah 33, oh, I've already skipped the verse, says that our eyes will see the king and his beauty. God is committed to reveal this to us. This is not a cliche. This is a living reality. I'm not interested in writing the Bible verse on the wall. I wanna feel this thing on Monday afternoon and on Friday afternoon and Sunday morning. I wanna feel this thing. Sunday morning's real critical for me because I wake up and I'm dead from Saturday night and normally I feel like dead. It's Sunday morning. Oh, no, it's six o'clock. It's Sunday again. And so when I said Sunday morning, you were thinking the 10 o'clock service. I was thinking of that, you know, like oh, Sunday morning. I gotta feel God. Those of you that, you know, some of you know what I'm talking about. I say that's when I need Psalm 27, four, six o'clock on Sunday morning. I need to feel that. I want to. And the Lord whispers and says, this is your inheritance. This is your destiny to feel me like this. And so I don't want it to be just a nice Bible verse. I wanna feel God on Sunday morning when I wake up dead tired. Let's go to longing number three. It's not enough to see his beauty. He wants us to see our own beauty. That's different than his. I mean, it comes from him, but it's a different, it's a different facet of the diamond. It says here in Isaiah 61, God wants to give us beauty. God wants to give us beauty. Moses prayed in Psalm 90, let the beauty of the Lord be on us. King David said in Psalm 149, he will beautify the people of God. He will beautify us. Well, here's an, I can't skip this. He takes pleasure. That's the, that was longing number one we looked at. He enjoys us. God has pleasure. He really likes us. He really enjoys us. But he will beautify us. Paragraph A, every one of us long to possess beauty and to feel beautiful. Now, men, I don't use that term. I mean, my term is more like I wanna feel cool. I mean, I've never said I wanna feel beautiful. That just doesn't roll off my lips very good. Al, I know you think it does, but it really doesn't. You know, we got different ways to get around that, but we get to the same point. Every one of us longs to feel beautiful. The glorious news is the beauty that God possesses is the very beauty he imparts. The beauty he has, he imparts it to us in redemption. His beauty is transferable to humans. There's many dimensions of it, and that's why I just wanna kind of ebb and flow through the weeks on Friday nights to talk about his beauty, because God has an external beauty around his presence. God has an internal beauty of his emotions. God has a intellectual beauty of the design of his eternal purpose. It's beautiful. The works of his hands, the earth, and the human makeup is stunning. There's beauty all around God. God has many categories of beauty that relate to him, but God imparts dimensions of his beauty to the redeemed, and we see it more at the heart level in this age, although a heart that's fascinated has sparkling eyes. It has eyes that beautify the person. A person with a bright countenance, alive in joy in their spirit, has a beauty about them that is enhancing, but after a few moments on the earth, David called it a breath or 70 years on the earth, our physical beauty is absolutely stunning forever, forever. You will be beautiful, physically beautiful beyond anything you can imagine for billions and billions and billions of years, and that's the beginning. You're really in line to be really good looking. Now go ahead and look at your neighbor and say, can you see a little bit of it by faith right now? How about a little bit, just by faith, can you see any of it? Well, we won't go there. Paragraph B, you can read some more of this, and we'll look at these different longings in detail over just the weeks ahead. These are essential. It's not just enough to feel fascinated with Jesus' beauty. Beloved, when you feel beautiful, your spirit is mighty. When you feel that God looks at you as beautiful. Our culture, B, is obsessed with physical appearance because it's seeking to answer this legitimate longing in a wrong way. There's nothing wrong with enhancing your physical appearance. There's nothing wrong with that. It's part of the cry of your spirit to do that. Some movements get into holiness, and they think the more whatever, the better. Whatever that, you know, whatever. And they get preoccupied with looking as drab as possible. The issue is not to be preoccupied. But there's a cry in your spirit for beauty, and there is a, it's part of, actually, it's a part of the dominion mandate in Genesis 1, to work with the things that are within your reach, to beautify life and yourself. That is actually part of the, some people get too carried away with that, but there is a biblical expression of not being obsessed with it, but attending to it in our physical lives, not being obsessed with it. But our culture's obsessed with it, and what they do, they end up giving themselves to it in an illegitimate way, and it distracts them, and it actually binds them with fear and anxiety. They get so much rejection and fear. It's one of the most amazing things with very little experience, but I think it's true anyway. I'm just gonna say something that I don't really have that much experience with, but I'm taking it from just one encounter with two gals that were beauty queens. They were like, they had all these magazine covers. They were like total beauty queens. I mean, like 50 magazine covers. I went to their big mansion, it's all, they were sisters. And they were, one thing, I'll just say this, at the end of the day, that a lot of folks in that world are more insecure. I mean, the beauty queens are often more insecure about their beauty than the non-beauty queens. People like me. Clearly a non-beauty queen, there you have it. I was taken back, I was taken back by not just the preoccupation, that I expected. I was taken back by the legitimate insecurity about beauty. Because I just thought, how could you be, win all these rule, I mean, these contests, and be so afraid that you're ugly? I said, this is insane to me. My point is this, here's my point, it's like money. Enough is never enough, that's the point. Enough is never enough. And so obsession, we don't wanna be obsessed with this, but what I'm really trying to say is there is a craving in the human spirit for it, and God's gonna fully, he's gonna answer it partially in this age, and fully in the age to come, but it is a God-given reality, and we are beautiful in his sight, even now, because he sees the end for the beginning. It's established, this desire is already a sure thing, and when we settle this in our spirit, it just, think, you know, this is something wonderful, and I'm really on track to really be all that God wanted me to be. You're gonna be beautiful for billions of years. Let's go to longing number four. The longing to be great. I have some Bible verses there. Jesus says in Matthew 20, verse 26, that is, whoever desires to be great. He doesn't say, whoever desires to be great, how dare you? He goes, no, no, that's good, that's good. If you desire to be great, just do it the right way. He did not rebuke them for their desire for greatness, because the great God put a desire for greatness in the human spirit, and there's different dimensions of greatness. There's, you know, there's nuances. There's different facets of greatness. We can't repent of wanting to be great. We can only repent of pursuing it the wrong way. Every one of these seven have carnal, sinful counterfeits to the authentic cry in our spirit, and this cry in our spirit is to drive us into God's presence to answer just a little bit of it, because we're not gonna get the full cry answered at this age, but a little bit of this answer really goes a long way. There's a cry to be great. Paragraph C. Well, I missed paragraph B. Let's go back to B. Just the verse, just the verse there. Revelation three. Jesus said to him who overcomes, I'll grant him, he will sit with me on my throne. Can you imagine what that sentence says? I mean, that's in that same sphere of you'll love God like God loves God. It's like, what? You will sit where? With me on my, what? Jesus is the one saying this. You know, he's appeared to John the Apostle on the island of Patmos. He says this. He goes, go tell them that. Tell them unashamedly. Don't apologize. Tell them it's real. They will sit with God on God's throne. Paragraph C. He meets this longing for greatness and nobility by granting his bride a position of authority that surpasses the highest ranking angels. In the embrace of our bridegroom, we will co-rule with him. Believers are at the very pinnacle of power of the whole created order. Human beings are at the very pinnacle of power. There's no other part of creation over humans. We're at the very top of God's order, under his authority, but over all the rest of creation. Beloved, you are the aristocracy of eternity. You are the ruling class. You are the wealthy class. You married into money and you married into power big time. Seriously, you married into serious money and serious power. That's cute, but it's real. It's real. You're part of the aristocracy. You're part of the ruling class. The upper class, the elite of heaven are the redeemed. We are sons before the father and we are the bride before the son. It's amazing, fantastic. When this touches our spirit, we don't have to strive to be successful in the eyes of men because we're already successful in the eyes of God. Already we are. It puts a peace in our spirit. We can do crazy, reckless things with our life like fast and pray instead of trying to make a name for ourself. We can serve and pour ourself out for others because we already have the title deed of our beauty and our enjoyment and our greatness. It's already working in our spirit. Longing five, top of page five. A longing for intimacy without shame. And every one of these, I put them in an order without any specific. Every one of them are like number one. Probably I would say they all could be number two. I think the assurance of enjoyment would really be number one. That to me is the doorway into everything. Intimacy without shame. Paul said this, for now we see in a mirror dimly but then we'll see face to face. Now I know in part but the days are coming when I shall know in the way I am known. We will be fully known and we will know. This is two-way communication, two-way information. We will know profound. We'll never fully know everything in God's heart but because billions of years from now we'll still be fascinated by new things. But we will know in a profound measure relative to our experience now and we will be known. It's a two-way communication. Says in Ephesians five, for this reason a man will leave his father and mother be joined to his wife or shall the, one translation says shall cleave to his wife. Instead of joined, I like that word cleave. The two will become one flesh. Now those of you that are familiar with this passage you know that Paul is quoting Genesis 2.24, right? He's quoting Genesis 2.24 when Adam and Eve were cleaving to one another and Moses said, Moses was interpreting it years later. He said they are cleaving to one another and they're naked and unashamed. There is no shame whatsoever in their embrace. Fully embraced, fully knowing and no shame whatsoever. And then Paul the apostle comes along in Ephesians five and says, you know who that was really talking about? Yes, it was Adam and Eve but they were only a down payment. They were a picture. It's talking about Jesus and the bride of Christ forever. Cleaving with no shame. Fully unveiling their hearts to one another. Paul said, yeah, it was talking about Adam and Eve and yes, it's talking about marriage through natural history but that's not mostly what it's talking about. It's mostly talking about the great mystery. You could put the word secret. The secret of how Jesus, it's the plan of his heart to interact with the bride of Christ in eternity. There'll be no shame. Completely cleaving to one another. A, we each long for intimacy without shame and knowing and being known. Jesus will entrust to his bride the secrets of his heart. Look at that verse in Psalm 25. The secret of the Lord. He'll give it to those that fear him and that's not just for this age. That is for this age but beloved, this verse is gonna be operative a billion years from now. God will be giving secrets to his people forever. The secrets of his heart. Let's go on in paragraph A. Jesus will entrust to his bride the secrets of his heart but intimacy doesn't only involve our knowledge of his secrets but intimacy involves his knowledge of our secrets. He knows our secrets. People go, oh no, I don't mean just, I don't want to talk about just negative secrets. Beloved, he understands the secrets of your heart that you don't understand. I'm not just talking about a dark secret. He knows those but he knows all the other secrets. He knows the aspects of your life that are unknown and unnoticed and misunderstood by others and by you. You don't even know the beginning of your greatness but he knows your greatness. You don't know it. It says in Colossians 3 verse 4, our beauty, our glory is hidden from us. We only see it in part. He sees it fully, Colossians 3, 4. He sees the fullness of our greatness. He sees the passion you have to love him and when we love him and our love is imperfect, our love is weak, we stumble, we doubt the sincerity of it. He sees the secret longing clearer than we do about our own love for him. He sees the, he can, you know, somebody say, well, tell me what your real passion of your heart is. Well, I'm not that good with words. I know I like this, I like that. I don't even know how to say it. Jesus says, oh, I could say it. I know exactly the secret of your heart. I tell you, I could tell you exactly what makes you alive on the inside. I'm in terms of the passions of your heart. He knows all of our secrets. Paragraph B, we mutually share secrets of our heart with him. Paragraph C, he has many secrets he'll reveal to his bride that even the angels and the demonic principalities do not yet know. It says in Ephesians 3.10, look at this, this verse is in another one that's like way out there. The manifold wisdom or the many-faceted wisdom of God is made known by the church to principalities and powers. Those are demonic and angelic powers. The angels and the demons will find out what God's been up to by looking at the church. The angels, filled with glory, here they are. They still don't understand it. The Lord says, when my church embodies it, that's when both sides will understand it or see it. It's amazing who we are. In one sentence, we have it made, you guys. We really have it made. We have no reason to be, we have no reason to be squatters in the realms of darkness, you know, out there like beggars and squatters. We don't belong there. We belong in the way of the Spirit. We are pilgrims and strangers in this earth. We got a heavenly citizenship. Our hope is anchored there. We don't need to be living in the shadows. D, he has an intimate knowledge of our victory and our prosperity. He knows your true greatness. He knows the full implications of our spiritual identity. He sees the heights of our nobility. He alone fully understands, he rejoices and celebrates with our triumphs. He is like right there with you, championing every single breakthrough you have. He is cheerleading for you. He knows your secrets. E, well, I guess I gotta read the verse there, and let's go back to D, Romans 12. When it says rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep, Jesus does that with us forever. He rejoiced to say, oh, we're gonna weep forever. That's not my point. My point is that he knows what hurts us and what excites us now, and he will relate to us in a full way forever. He knows what excites us, what we're rejoicing. Oh, this is amazing, this da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Oh, and he goes, oh, I remember when that excited you. I remember when I answered that prayer. Oh, it excited me when it excited you. He doesn't tell us to weep with those who weep and rejoice and those who rejoice when he doesn't. He does this with us. E, he has intimacy with us, and he's feeling our pain and our struggle and sin. He forgives us. When I say he feels our pain, I mean he understands it. In my struggle with sin and my failure and pain and my disappointment with myself, he looks at me and says, Mike, I remember when that hurt you. I was there, I saw your tears. That's what he told David. I saw your tears. I saw your love for me and your weakness. I saw that. It touched my heart. You know about that? Oh, yes, I saw what you did, and I saw how you responded, and it moved me. Lord, let's not talk about that anymore. He protects us. He doesn't, you know what? He doesn't disclose. A few of your sins get found out. The vast majority of everybody's sins are never found out, ever. If they're believers, they get forgiven. If they're not believers, they get exposed. But he works life this way. He does not want to disclose them. I mean, maybe 1%, I don't know, maybe 10%. You know, if you had pride and everything else, you know, a few of our friends know more than we think. They know about our pride, but a little bit more of it's exposed than we think. But the vast majority of our failure is not exposed, and the Lord could easily, he didn't want to expose it. That's not what's on his heart. Sometimes he does it to give us a wake-up call. He honors us. He treats us with great honor. But he does expose us sometimes. I don't want to create a false doctrine. It's biblical to do that under certain situations in the Bible, even. But, beloved, when it's all said and done, it's really a small percent of the time over the course of a person's life where he allows that to happen. Very, very small percent. He feels our pain, or at least he understands it in our struggle. Gee, he knows the passions of our heart. He knows the depths of our longings, our dreams. He knows our intention is good. He knows these longings and dreams in you. He knows the cries of your spirit. He knows the longings you have in time. He knows the longings you'll have a billion years from now. We will be intimate with God forever. Longing six, the longing to be wholehearted. You'll love the Lord your God. God is gonna restore the first commandment to first place. We long for the ability to be deeply given to God. A passionate God created us with a longing to be passionate. B, he imparts to us the power to be passionate because he is passionate. Beloved, we can't function properly until we are passionately given ourselves to a person and a purpose beyond ourselves. We don't work right unless we're giving ourselves to something bigger than us, fully, fully. If you don't have something to die for, then we have nothing to live for. That's a fact. That's a psychological fact. That's not just a spiritual truth. That is a fact of how the human heart works. If we're not given, then we're bored. If we're drawing back and protecting our turf, our money, our honor, and our comfort, we're protecting our stuff. We might be able to keep it for a while, but we live bored on the inside. You cannot be alive without living for something that is worth all of your time, all your money, and all of your passions. And most people protect their honor. They protect their money. They protect their comfort. They protect their stuff. And they're looking around, and they're nice, and they're nice people. But the way they posture their spirit is to protect themselves. And a person that lives that way, which is almost the whole human race, they end up spiritually bored on the inside. They have all this stuff. Nobody ended up getting it. Years later, nobody got it, but they never actually lived. They were always going to live one of these days if nobody took their stuff. And their stuff is their money, their honor, their comfort. It's not just their money. It's all that. And they live for the day when finally it will be secure, and then they're going to be alive. And they get there, and they go, I don't feel anything. I'm dead on the inside. You can't be alive psychologically if you don't live, and I don't live for something. If there's not something you would die for, I'm talking about give your time, and money, and energy. I mean, really give yourself for it. You will live spiritually bored. We were created to be passionate. And we will be passionate forever. Number seven, we'll end with this. We have a longing to make a deep impact. And God, I mean, our impact, we want, and what I have written here, I'll just sum it up, a little bit of it. We can act now in time and space. We act now, and what we do now, we can do things that are esteemed and remembered by God forever. We can give somebody, Matthew 10, a cup of cold water, and God will esteem it. He will value it and remember it forever. Beloved, you can serve someone now, and nobody pay attention to it, and God will remember forever. That crowns your life with indescribable power right now. You can be serving completely out of the way. Nobody pays attention. You don't get any of the honor, do you? God's watching it. He's remembering it. He's writing in his book, and he will honor it forever. The ability to give something as insignificant as a cup of cold water, or the widow gave the two mites, or the out of the way thing that nobody celebrated, but God remembered, that is a powerful way to live, if you know that. It makes a lasting impact forever, and our impacts in this age, a little bit, we do make an impact in this age, and it matters. It really touches people, even the little things. It really touches people, and it matters to the people now, and that's good, and it matters to God forever, and both of them are operating together. Look at the Hebrews chapter six, the next verse. For God is not unjust to forget our work. He's not gonna forget our work. In most people's works, there's only a couple presidents on the earth. There's not very many presidents. Most people's work is really mundane. 99.99999% of the human race in all of history, all of history, not just today, all humans, 99.99999% of all humans, their work was small, and their work was mundane. Only a few people do big things that run a nation. You know, there's only a few Bill Gates in history. Almost everybody in human history, their work is real small and real mundane, most all people, and God's talking about that kind of work, and he says that I won't forget it. I won't forget the labor of love. I won't forget the cup of cold water, the little things you do, the labor of love which you have shown in my name. He goes, if I forget one cup of cold water that you've shown love for me, because we're showing love to Jesus when we're doing it. We're serving in those out-of-the-way places. We're doing it for the Lord, and like in Colossians chapter three, verse 25, he says, you're doing it for the Lord, and the Lord remembers it, and he'll reward you forever, though man does not esteem it at all. God says this, you could charge me with injustice. I am unjust if I forget one deed. Is that amazing? This is the thing you did for your neighbor, the thing you did for your family. You know, it's just kind of one of those moods, and you served anyway. You just didn't feel like it. I mean, I'm thinking about in a, you know, because I don't want to always talk about public meetings, but the work that goes on behind the scenes, the people working with children right now, they're just doing it because they love God. Yeah, they like the little whippersnappers, but they love God. They're doing it for God. You know, see, I got a passion for children. I say, well, I love preaching, but half the time I'm tired when it's time to preach. I'm doing it for God. I know you love the children, but there's something else operating in your spirit too. You're sacrificing because you're doing it for God. I think of the IHOP worship teams. There they are, I mean, day in and day out, morning, noon, and night. And sometimes they love worship, but there's a lot of times they don't love it. They're doing it as an act of service. And then all the behind the scenes work, and the whole world, not just our little ministry, just the whole world of kingdom people, the out of the way things nobody sees. God says, if I forget one act, call me in, accuse me of injustice. He says, I assure you, I won't forget one act. That's a powerful way to live, man. Amen. Let's stand.