Jesus answered, “Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?”
John 18:34
Recently, I had coffee with a local leader of a prominent Christian ministry. The meeting was prompted by a strange request—that I teach him how to pray. When he first brought it up via email a few weeks earlier, I was caught off guard. For one thing, the ministry that he is a part of has long been a prayer-forward organization, and I know that he himself considers prayer a top priority. That this experienced, committed leader would admit naiveté about something so fundamental to the Christian life seemed not only humble but extraordinary. Even more startling was that he considered me somebody who might help him learn. Most startling of all, he confided that I was the only person among his cohorts who stood out as someone who might be able to. I was honored to be considered such a resource but a bit unsettled by it too.
We met at a bustling coffee shop in town. After exchanging pleasantries, the conversation swerved to the matter at hand. He shared the significant ministry challenges he was facing and his determination to do what must be done in order to restore vision and purpose to his missional community. To my mind, that alone would warrant serious prayer. But then his tone abruptly shifted. With sudden and surprising passion (it was a public place, after all) he confessed a consuming desire to know God. His voice strained with emotion. But what really struck me were his eyes; they burned with a desperate and fierce hunger. His intensity staggered me. This earnest man, who had committed years of his life to raise up serious followers of Jesus, was himself famished for God. I cannot remember when I last encountered such furious spiritual longing in a Christian.
In fact, I am baffled by how satisfied most Christians seem to be. They are comfortably saved and generally content in their relationship with the Lord. If some do acknowledge a lack in their spiritual lives, it’s a minor one that they seem to tolerate well enough. Insatiable hunger for God is to them both alien and unintelligible. For most Christians, prepackaged affirmations and quippy lifestyle tips seem good enough.
This preference for second-hand revelation is nothing new. God has always proven a but much for well-balanced types. Israel’s reaction at Mount Sinai to a turbulent visitation is a case in point and serves as the template for two thousand years of curated Christianity:
Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.”
By the time Jesus arrives on the scene, it seems that God has recognized the futility of offering pearls to pork. Revelation is no longer disbursed by blunt instrument but is reserved for those who actually pursue it. Jesus informs his motley crew, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, but for others they are in parables, so that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.” Spiritual insight is awarded to the earnest seeker. “You will seek me and find me,” says the Lord through Jeremiah, “when you seek me with all your heart.” No amount of preaching and teaching can bring the complacent to the mountaintop. For the terminally satisfied the word of God is one word more than they want.
And so the Christian experience, like so much else in our culture, has become a matter of information rather than incarnation, explanation rather than impartation, validation rather than visitation. Energetic singing and sermons are surrogates for presence. (Has anyone noticed?) We are earnest but maintain a safe distance from the fire on the mountain. We gather to pay our respects, not to die.
I wonder, now, for whom I am writing this. The satisfied among my brethren will read this, if they read it at all, as a mere curiosity. For them there will be neither illumination nor motivation in it. But for the hungry—the famished—perhaps it will be a reassurance that they are not alone. Others among your spiritual kinsmen also long for the living God. Find them. And remember this, my starving friends: “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field.”
Remember that.
