9 Sermon Illustrations on Longing

The thing we long for, that we are For one transcendent moment, Before the present, poor and bare, Can make its sneering comment.

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Longing is God’s fresh heavenward will With our poor earthward striving; We quench it that it may be still-- Content with merely living; But, would we learn that heart’s full scope, Which we are hourly wronging, Our lives must climb from hope to hope, And realize the longing.

— JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Rocky Bleier, when he was a balding Pittsburgh Steeler running back, expressed his wishes: "I'd like the body of Jim Brown, the moves of Gayle Sayers, the strength of Earl Campbell, and the acceleration of O. J. Simpson. And just once I would like to run and feel the wind in my hair."

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Hoover Rupert, "Why Didn't Noah Swat Both Mosquitoes?" (Lima, OH: CSS Publishing Co. Inc., 1994), p. 88

We first meet her in Genesis 16, she is an Egyptian servant in Abraham’s well-off world. We will see her used and abused by Sarai, her mistress. She will always end up either running away or being driven off into the wilderness. Her name is Hagar and she carries deep inside her heart a hunger we all secretly share.

When her baby, Ishmael, is finally known to be on the way, the reward for her submission to Sarai’s manipulative and faithless behavior is abuse (16:6b). And so Hagar does what we see her constantly doing in Genesis, what you and I also constantly are doing, she runs away. She carries within her all that she really owns, her unborn baby, Ishmael. She wanders out into the desert on the road to Shur.

But she is not really alone, even as we can never really be. The angel of the Lord meets her near an as yet nameless spring and asks, “Where have you come from and where are you going?” It is a basic question we should still be constantly asking ourselves. She honestly opens her heart to the angel, “I’m running away.” she defiantly whispers through her tears.

The angel tells the frightened girl to do the last thing in the world she wants to do, return to the abuse from which she has fled. In the language of poetry, he promises her that there is more going on than she can see, more than she can possibly know. It is a heartbreakingly beautiful picture, the angel singing a song of hope in the desert to a hopeless pregnant girl.

As the angel finishes his song (vvs. 11-12), Hagar abruptly responds to the angel who knew her name. She speaks to God a new name, “Lahai Roi,” “The One who sees me.” In her fear, hopelessness and despair, God met her in the wilderness with His perfect provision. It was all she really needed or wanted. She wanted simply to be seen, and the God who sees, saw her and sang to her a song of hope.

After a six-year pursuit, my wife Susan finally responded to my courtship by telling me that she felt I was the first person to really see her. It was only then that I realized inside myself how much I needed her to really see me too. Twice, the gospels tell us, Peter is “intensely gazed at” by Jesus. (John 1:42, Luke 22:61) That is, Simon Peter becomes aware that Jesus can see to the heart of who he really is, a man so fatally flawed, and yet still love and even die for him. It must have been the first time for Simon to sense that he was so completely known. Later in Acts, Peter really sees the need of a crippled beggar. It is not healing he needs so much as Jesus. And so the “seen” disciple, who has learned to really see the heart, gives to the beggar both healing and Jesus.

“Where have you come from and where are you going?” the angel asks us all. Have you come from a world that has shown you only abuse and blindness to who you are? And are you now in headlong flight from intimacy and genuine relationship, having tried to give up on the hope of ever being truly known? Then what hope could you possibly have had? And where are you going? Back into that same sightless, heartless world? What hope could you possibly look forward to in such a world? We constantly ask for provision when what we need is the clear-sighted Presence of Jesus. We sense His gaze on our lives, and we reflexively turn away from being so lovingly seen, our souls so leprous and untouchable. But His gaze is relentless.

The things we ask for in prayer are almost certainly not what we really need. We need most to be seen, to be understood for better or for worse for who we are. This deep desire is one of the evidences for our being created for relationship with God. Would He give us this profound longing and not perfectly fulfill it by loving us so unconditionally in Christ?

Ask for the grace to look into your deepest longing. You may be in the desert. You may have given up on ever being seen at all. But let me tell you, as one who has been found again and again in the wilderness, there is an Angel of the Lord who is prepared to sing you a song. He asks where you have been and where you are going, already knowing the answers to both questions. It is almost as if He wants to give you the sacred space to respond to the question He already knows. It is as if you need to hear yourself say how bad it was where you’ve been and how hopeless it is where you are going. Only then will you be ready to hear His song of hope sung to you. Only then will you be ready to drink from the Living Spring of the One who sees you. For, after all, there is a Savior who sees all that is unlovable and yet still loves perfectly, completely, sacrificially. And there is a God who knows you and me more than we know ourselves.

Though thousands of years old, Homer’s famous epic poem, The Odyssey, remains a perennial favorite — a classic.

As Ken Boa says, “Homer established the epic as a genre in Western literature and set the standards by which later works would be judged. Moreover, the values reflected ... in The Odyssey not only shaped Greek culture but also persisted into the Roman era and influenced the Renaissance centuries later.”

Homer’s works were a major influence on poets through the centuries, from Virgil to Dante to Milton and beyond. Even Hollywood still uses it as source material, as in the popular film "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"

That’s quite a legacy for an ancient epic. Just what is it that makes Homer’s work, in particular The Odyssey, so special?

Homer’s 12,000-line poem tells the story of the journey of the Greek warrior Odysseus after the end of the Trojan War. Twenty years after leaving home, Odysseus is still battling against various obstacles and dangers, including angry or deceitful gods and treacherous monsters, in order to get back to his home and family in Ithaca.

At the same time, his wife, Penelope, and his son, Telemachus, are facing their own struggles without him. It takes Odysseus’s eventual return to make things right at home and drive out the wicked men who have been trying to win over his wife and take over his household.

This epic is all the more remarkable for having been conceived and created in the oral tradition of Homer’s time, by a bard who was probably illiterate and may have been blind. It would have changed many times in the telling before being preserved in the written form in which it was passed down to us.

But it’s not just the method of its creation that makes this epic narrative one of the great achievements of literature. Ken tells us, “The Odyssey is thematically rich, and its principal themes include creativity, imagination, deception, heroism, the human condition, love and loyalty, order and disorder, heroic craftiness, triumph over temptation, the nature of women, the concept of home, the epic journey, the theme of revenge, and the gods’ involvement in humanity.”

In other words, there’s something here for just about everybody!

The myth of Odysseus encompasses an incredibly wide range of experiences, emotions, and ideas. And the tale is permeated by the longing for home — something we Christians know is a longing for God — that’s so strong that it again and again leads Odysseus to forsake a life of easy pleasure and to keep pursuing his goal.

As Ken puts it, “The fullness of life demands the wholeness of longing.”

In this way, Odysseus’ journey shows us something about the condition of humanity as a whole, about our need for home, for God and our capacity for endurance. Ken calls it “a timeless journey into self-understanding and completeness.”

It’s no wonder, then, that this work of genius resonates so powerfully with us, so many centuries later.

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Copyright (c) 2010 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

“For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only [that], but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.” (Romans 8:22-23 NKJV)

Universal Longing For Deliverance

• whole creation — nature, animate and inanimate

• groaneth — such figures not uncommon in Scripture — Ps 96:12, Hos 4:1-3, Joel 1:18, Jer 12:11 — “The groans of nature in this nether world, which heaven has heard for ages, have an end.” (Cowper)

• travaileth [labors] — Gk., with pangs of childbirth — “Earth trembled from her entrails as again in pangs; and nature gave a second groan.” (Milton)

• until now — consider, in proof of this, the history of the past, and the state of the world at this day

• ourselves [we also] — even we, the sons of God

• which [who]…Spirit — already possessing the pledge and foretaste of the harvest of liberty and glory — Eph 1:13-14, 2 Cor 5:5, 1:21-22

• adoption — in its complete and perfect form

• redemption — Eph 4:30, Phil 1:6 — final deliverance

• body — Phil 3:20-21, Luke 21:28, Hos 13:14, Luke 20:36 — rescued from sin’s presence and power

The frstfruits of the Spirit — Spurgeon

What is meant by first-fruits:

I. They were so called because they came first. So the spiritual life, with all its adorning graces — repentance, that gem of the first water; faith, that priceless pearl; hope, the heavenly emerald; and love, the glorious ruby — are the first operations of the Spirit in our souls.

II. They were the pledge of the harvest. So when God gives us things which are pure, lovely, and of good report, these are to us the prognostics of the coming glory.

III. They were always holy to the Lord.

So our new nature, with all its powers, is a consecrated thing, not to be ascribed to our own merit; for it is Christ’s image and creation, and is ordained for His glory.

IV. They were not the harvest, and the Spirit’s work in us at this moment, is not the consummation — the perfection is yet to come. Be avaricious for more holy grace, and your Lord will grant it to you.

Hope, a waiting grace — Hope is a waiting grace; it makes a Christian’s life to be a perpetual waiting: “All the days of my appointed time will I wait till my change come,” saith Job. Job had many changes; but he waited for that great one which should bring him into a state of unchangeable happiness. Whatever holy men are a-doing still, they are in a waiting posture. When Jacob was blessing his sons, he did not forget this, but broke out in a sudden, sweet ejaculation, “I have waited for Thy salvation, 0 Lord” (Gen. 49:18). Hope makes Christians to wait for the good things to come at all times, but in a special manner in time of suffering. St. Paul, speaking first of the suffering saints, and then of the groaning world, expresseth himself thus “We ourselves also, which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body; for we are saved by hope” (Rom. 8:23-24). And when the storm of persecution comes, it waits in a way of patience. Hence the Apostle speaks of “the patience of hope” (1 Th. 1:3)… When the martyr Ananias, in the Persian persecution, seemed to tremble at the approaching cross, Pusices spake thus to him: Paulisper, 0 senex, oculos claude; nam statim lumen Dei videbis;- “Shut thine eyes a little, old man, and immediately thou shalt see the light of God.”

“Though God suffers the earth to bear for a while unholy men upon it, while it doth not without sweating under their weight, and groaning to be rid of the load; yet we are sure fie will never admit them into heaven.” — Gurnall

“Hope is like the wing of an angel, soaring up to heaven, and bearing our prayers to the throne of God.” — Jeremy Taylor