Living in the Overflow

"The fact that our heart yearns for something Earth can't supply is proof that Heaven must be our home."—C.S. Lewis

Sometimes, it takes a heat wave to help you realize that you are built for more than what’s right in front of you. More than the next thing, the next goal, the next achievement, the next purchase, the next horizon. Like juice and coffee and lemonade, which all sound and look appealing under normal circumstances, when the heat and humidity have rendered your thirst to the point of beyond description, you realize that only water will satisfy. And even then, you ache for more...

"O God, You are my God; with deepest longing I will seek You;

My soul—my life, my very self—thirsts for You, my flesh longs and sighs for You,

In a dry and weary land where there is no water."—Psalm 63:1, Amplified

This is a glimpse of what David is feeling in this Psalm about his thirst, his ache for more of God in his life. They are phrases and emotions that are easy, in our nutty world, to pass off as out of touch with reality. But in some translations, the anchor word of what is happening here is anything but fleeting emotion, and to be sought after perhaps more than ever—it is “yearning.” A deep longing within for something you know is out there but you can’t describe, but you know is somehow higher and greater than anything you can imagine. It doesn’t happen every day, but when it does, it settles in the pit of your stomach and wraps your brain into a pretzel with “What is it?!”

“Yearning: It needs to hurt in order to be worthy of the word. Otherwise it is just wanting.”—John of the Cross

If you have ever stared at a stunning landscape and had this strange desire to have another layer peeled away to reveal something even more stunning…

If you have ever heard a song that seemed to have been downloaded from Heaven itself and then hit replay over and over again with a strange desire to go ever deeper into enjoyment…

If you have ever sat around a dinner table with family, friends, and newcomers and felt that all other good ideas about home fellowships miss the mark except this one…

If you have ever left a worship service on a Sunday morning thinking either “but we were just getting started” or “is that it?”…

….then far more than contracting David’s supposedly “out of touch with reality” words that have no answer, you have probably tapped into a yearning that is the vein of God’s everlasting Love—one that is so deep, and wide, and high, and mysterious, you could never plunge the depths of it all. And so, it aches. And maybe one reason why no one yearns that way all the time 24/7 is that the intensity of such longing would do us in. Which is not what God had in mind. We may indeed be built for Eternity, but until then, the prayer from the heart of God to us is “Thy [My] will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

To, as much as it is possible within us every morning and throughout the day, drink in that yearning Love that alone satisfies and that cannot be contained, but that overflows into action, just as it was intended…

“…love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul (life), and with all your mind (thought, understanding), and with all your strength.’ This is the second: ‘You shall [unselfishly] love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these."

—Mark 12:30-31, Amplified

You're the God who loves

You're the Son that gives

You're the Spirit that moves

The reason that I live

You call me to Yourself

You call me to be free

You call me to new life

So generous to me

I worship You Jesus

My heart belongs to You

My mind is Yours Jesus

My soul it yearns for You

—"My Soul Yearns," Benjamin Lucas and Samuel Lane (c) 2007 Vineyard Songs (U.K./Eire)