We all want more of God. Anyone who professes to be a Christian will acknowledge a sense of sorrow and disappointment when they consider how little they know of God and how little they experience of his presence. Every Christian or Christianesque tradition acknowledges this reality and offers a means to address it.
Mystics may promise that a deeper experience of God can be had through contemplation. Monastics may promise that a deeper experience of God can be had through practicing his presence. Roman Catholics may promise that a deeper experience of God can be had through the Mass. Proponents of Higher Life theology may promise that a deeper experience of God can be had through a second blessing. Pentecostals may promise that a deeper experience of God can be had through the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Though the means are different, the core issue is the same—we feel intuitively that we do not know God or experience his presence as completely as we wish to. We live out our Christian lives with a sense of longing for more—more of God, more of knowing him, more awareness of his nearness and power.
I write here for other Christians who hold to Reformed theology and especially for younger ones. I want you to know that you make yourself spiritually vulnerable when you determine that your spiritual longing necessarily indicates a weakness in your faith or practice. For every longing there is a tradition, a church, a book, or a program that promises to satisfy it and people like you can often become spiritual nomads, sojourning among the various traditions to try their solutions. Or you can become spiritual hybrids, integrating a bit of this, a bit of that, and a bit of the other thing, even when they are mutually contradictory. You may even be tempted to reject Reformed theology and practices altogether in favor of something else. But I want to encourage you to be patient, to be wise, and to be content.
You make yourself spiritually vulnerable when you determine that your spiritual longing necessarily indicates a weakness in your faith or practice.
Here is something that needs to be said about any tradition: None of them will ultimately satisfy us. None can or will actually deliver us to a higher plane of spiritual experience and none will fully satisfy our longing for more. Why is that? Because the longing is unresolvable at the present time. We can certainly know God better than we do now and can certainly have a deeper experience of his power and presence, but we will never experience it to the degree we long for. At least, not until we are finally welcomed into God’s immediate presence.
In contrast to so many other traditions, the Reformed tradition offers no higher tier of Christian living. Neither does it offer rapturous experiences or second blessings. Rather, it looks carefully to Scripture and offers ordinary means of grace—means that are equally available to all of us as we participate in the local church and live out our faith through a personal relationship with the Lord.
I know the word “ordinary” sounds very plain and uninspiring. What are ordinary means when compared to extraordinary visions or ecstatic experiences? But this is what we need to understand: God does not owe us anything other than complete separation from him. Anything more than being eternally banished from his presence is breathtaking evidence of his mercy and kindness. Though we deserve to be forever separated from God’s presence, he lovingly offers us means through which we can relate to him and through which he lavishes his grace upon us so we grow in joy and sanctification and satisfaction in him. Because of what we have done, it is God who now sets the terms of our relationship. The question is: Will we be content with this or will we demand more? Will we accept what he has so graciously given us or will we demand the right to relate to him on our terms? Will we invent or adopt means he has not prescribed or endorsed?
I hold to Reformed theology and am convinced it is most consistent with Scripture. I understand why many people believe that Reformed theology works itself out in a faith that is coldly intellectual instead of warmly experiential. We have probably all known people who have exemplified that aloof intellectual approach to the faith. But this is not the way it has to be and not the way it is meant to be. Reformed theology is experiential, but crucially, it constrains itself to the experiences the Bible permits. Perhaps you would do well to read up on experiential theology which “teaches that Christianity is not only a creed and a way of life but also an inner experience resulting from personal fellowship with God through the indwelling Spirit.” Instead of resenting the tradition or walking away from it, fully embrace it! If you have been discouraged by the examples you have seen, go deeper into the tradition and resolve to display what it means to live a life that flows out of the soundest doctrine.
With all that in mind, let me speak to you as a kind of spiritual older brother. My call to you is to remain resolute in pursuing God through the means that he has prescribed. Come to see that when we speak of ordinary means, we are not indicating the means are plain, pedestrian, or prosaic. They are ordinary in the sense that all of us can ordinarily expect God to bless them and sanctify them to his purposes. God has granted them to us and it now falls to us to receive them gratefully and practice them faithfully. It falls to us to resist looking for solutions that will deliver a higher life, a second blessing, or a mystical rapture, and to resist being swayed by those who promise there is so much more to be had if only we will follow this ancient discipline or subscribe to that modern program. Instead, I’d call upon you to embrace the reality that your longings will never be fully satisfied on this side of the grave, that so much of what you desire today is the right longing, but at the wrong time.
This is not a call to apathy but a call to remain steady and resist chasing what will always remain out of reach. Acknowledge that your sense of longing is part of God’s will for you right now and that it cannot be resolved in this world. And embrace this reality: that you can only be spiritually content when you admit, identify, and accept your spiritual discontentment. Instead of trying to satisfy that discontentment in ways God does not invite or permit, let it deepen your longing for the day when you will finally be in God’s presence—the day when you will at last know and experience God in all the ways your heart has ever longed for.
