More Than This

I’m learning about longing. It’s not a word that I’ve used in recent decades and certainly not an emotion that I’ve given much thought to. Dreams? I think about those a lot. Wishes and wants? Yep, I think about those pretty consistently throughout the day. But longing…not so much.

As I’ve been thinking about longing in preparation for our Christmas series, I’ve been overwhelmed with how much the longings I have actually shape everything I do and say on a day-to-day basis.

We do what we do for a reason. We all say what we say for a reason.

Whether consciously or subconsciously, the longings we have influence who we are and how we live. For the better part of 46 years, I lived unaware of that reality. I was told and I believed that my dreams shape how I live. I’ve even heard that my desires impact how I make choices each day.

There is truth in those statements, but I’m realizing that the longings I have are much deeper and influential than any dream I might strive towards or wish I seek to fulfill. What I’m seeing afresh is that longing is not man-made, it’s God-given.

Consider what the Bible says in Ecclesiastes 3:11 – “He has planted eternity in the human heart.”

Have you ever wondered why you don’t feel completely satisfied or fulfilled even when you get the job you want, the relationship you prayed about or the cash in your bank account that you’ve only ever imagined? Even when we get everything we think we want, we know instinctively and through experience that it’s not enough. Something is missing.

God has planted something within each human heart that nothing in this world could ever satisfy or fulfill. God has given us the gift of longing, but it’s not a longing for worldly, temporal things – it’s a longing from Him for Him. And anytime I seek to satisfy that longing outside of God, it will leave me wondering, ‘Isn’t there more than this?’

Do you ever hunger for more? I do.

This is why longing matters so much. We must pay attention to the longings we have because God is using them to point us back to Him. It is always God seeking to get our attention anytime we feel the desire for ‘more than this’ creeping in. He is what we need. He is what we ultimately want. He alone is the ‘more than this’ that we are longing for.