enjoyment

you know i've been unfaithful
with lovers in lines
while you're turning over tables
with the rage of a jealous kind
i chose the gallows to the aisle
thought that love would never find
hanging ropes will never keep you
and your love of a jealous kind
love of a jealous kind
[jars of clay - 'jealous kind']

I've been hooked on Caedmon's Call's "Mistake of My Life," Derek Webb's "I Repent" (The House Show version), and Jars of Clay's "Jealous Kind" for a couple of days now. They all really fit in with the Desiring God glorify-God-by-finding-all-fulfillment-in-Him motif I've been mulling over. Maybe not "Mistake of My Life" so much, but it's a well-made song about something I've always wanted to do - drop everything for a girl. Something about reckless abandon strikes a chord with my heart.

Anyway, I'm about fifty pages into Desiring God and I've found some points of contention (i.e. God's sovereignty necessitates determinism, God's glorification required an elaborate game instead of a perfect creation, and the like), but I'm trying to overlook them in favor of absorbing Piper's greater point. To wit, that The chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever.

Growing up in an Episcopal church, a Methodist church, and a Southern Baptist church, I'm actually surprised that I never heard that. I should have noticed it in Psalms (among many other books), as Carter pointed out tonight, but the thought never occurred to me.

Derek Webb, in his intro to I Repent (The House Show, track 7), says that Christians live in such fear that we'll be found out. That an exposure of sins on the five o'clock news would be the best thing to happen to any Christian. That it's harder to go back to a sin after the light has been turned on in the dark corner in which it resides. That we hate to recognize our sins and call them evil. That we are scared to admit how great our sins are. That we have failed to believe the Gospel that though our sins are great our Savior is greater. That even when we believe that truth for a moment we are quick to return to our hiding ways.

Christians seem to view God as a combination of strict father with saving son, judging creator with gracious son and enlightening spirit, and kind deity who cares more about politics and "social issues" than about knowing his beloved children. Regardless of what I believe about foreknowledge and predestination, I can't deny that Paul meant something special by "those whom He foreknew." Not "those whom He foreknew would ask for salvation," nor "those whom He foreordained to believe." It means "those with whom He shared a bond more intimate than any other; those whom He actually died to save; those whom He loved, loves, and will always love more than any but Himself."

Knowing God is my greatest desire. More than knowing my future, more than knowing my wife, more than knowing even his will for me. I long to know my God, my savior, my beloved.

Two weeks ago I wouldn't have believed the paragraphs I've just written. But I've finally realized that it is incumbent upon me to run toward God as the prodigal son returning home to the warm embrace of his loving father.