The Nature of Longing

THE

SEVEN LONGINGS

OF THE

HUMAN HEART

MIKE BICKLE

WITH DEBORAH HIEBERT

KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI

The Seven Longings of the Human Heart

By Mike Bickle with Deborah Hiebert

Published by Forerunner Books International House of Prayer–Kansas City 3535 East Red Bridge Road

Kansas City, Missouri 64137 (816) 763-0200 Ext. 675

forerunnerbooks@ihop.org www.IHOP.org

Copyright © 2006 by Forerunner Books All rights reserved.

This book or parts of this book may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means

—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.

ISBN: 0-9776738-4-7

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from the New King James Version of the Bible. Copyright © 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc., publishers.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture quotations marked NAS are from the New American Standard Bible. Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977 by

the Lockman Foundation.

Cover design by Owen A. Brock, Visual Fluency Interior design by Dale Jimmo

Printed in the United States of America

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

The Nature of Longing........................................................ 5

CHAPTER ONE

The Longing to Be Enjoyed by God...................................... 25

CHAPTER TWO

The Longing for Fascination.............................................. 41

CHAPTER THREE

The Longing for Beauty..................................................... 57

CHAPTER FOUR

The Longing for Greatness................................................. 75

CHAPTER FIVE

The Longing for Intimacy Without Shame............................ 93

CHAPTER SIX

The Longing to Be Wholehearted...................................... 113

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Longing to Make a Deep and Lasting Impact................. 133

CONCLUSION.................................................................... 147

INTRODUCTION

The Nature of Longing

whether we realize it or not, we are being driven by innate de- sires that demand answers and refuse delay. These longings are inherent to us as human beings. We have longings, yearnings, placed deep within us by God, for the purpose of wooing us into His grace and presence. As we understand their origin in God, we begin to cooperate with these longings in accordance with His will. We find the answer to our longings in the One who put them in us. His master plan extends even into the realm of our emotions.

Through thirty years of ministry I have been an eager stu- dent of human emotions and dynamics. I have enjoyed count- less hours listening to people talk about what excites their hearts. What’s interesting is that people’s longings and needs are not dissimilar and varied; they are common. We have watched thousands of people come through our spiritual community here at the International House of Prayer in Kansas City. Some are internationally-known speakers in their seventies, others are eighteen-year-old interns on their first big adventure away from home. They come from a broad variety of backgrounds, from

within the Church and outside of it. Some have large budgets; others have scraped together barely enough support to get by. They come with big moving trucks or with everything they own crammed in a backpack. While no two are exactly the same, I have noticed this interesting commonality among all of them: their longing.

Few words in the English language capture such depth of emotion in two short syllables. A longing is not a superficial want that might be satisfied by a simple act of kindness. A long- ing is not even a genuine need for which we can demand satisfac- tion. Longing goes deeper than that. A longing is an ache of the heart. It is a cavity of the spirit crying to be filled. In its deepest sense it is neither a true verb nor a true noun, but combines the two, spanning the gap between emotion and genuine need. It is an intangible feeling that ebbs and flows, yet it is a concrete reality. It cannot be reasoned with, negated or dismissed. If not attended to, it will overtake us. One way or another, whether legitimately or illegitimately, a human longing will be filled. It must be.

As I have observed people and studied the Scriptures, I have identified seven longings that are found in every human heart. These longings are universal and give us insight into the way God designed us. We have cravings built into our spirit as an integral part of our divine design. These cravings reveal the ge- nius of the Creator, who placed these longings in us to reflect His own personality and guide us to—and back to—Him. We are made in His image, and He intentionally planted longings deep within our hearts that only He can fill. He hard-wired us to need, to want, and to find our satisfaction in Him and Him alone. It is the epitome of intelligent design. God’s design— both brilliant and diligent—is evidence that He is a jealous God who does not want us to be given over to any lesser pleasure. We were made for Him.

The seven longings I have identified are: the longing for the assurance that we are enjoyed by God, the longing to be fasci- nated, the longing to be beautiful, the longing to be great, the

longing for intimacy without shame, the longing to be whole- hearted and passionate, and the longing to make a deep and lasting impact. To understand these longings is to better un- derstand both our struggles and the true purpose of life. They are cravings put into us strategically by God and they entice us into His presence. Though the enemy twists these cravings to tempt us into darkness, they are actually amazing counterparts to characteristics in God’s personality and realities in His heart. As with all hunger, these longings have an element of pain, an element of delight and an element of aching as they woo us into God’s presence. When these longings are not fulfilled in God, we are left empty, with pain, mourning and dissatisfaction. We have built into us a God-shaped vacuum, which remains empty until we allow God to fill it by fulfilling our deepest longings. This gnawing hunger is only sated by God’s touch, and never totally fulfilled in this age. Even so, having the merest taste of this satisfaction is to truly live, and having the faintest revela- tion of that future fulfillment is the pinnacle of what it means to be alive.

This idea of created desire is not entirely foreign to us. When the father of a young child takes him into a swimming pool for the first time, he holds him gently. While never actually giving up control of his son, he allows the child to get a sense of buoyancy, to bob in the water for a moment, in order to dem- onstrate that this is not the playpen. No matter how surefooted the little fellow was on dry land, this is a different environment demanding a different response. If the child is going to survive, he is going to need to hold tightly to his father. From the child’s perspective, at first this may all be new and a little scary, but it doesn’t take long for him to learn that the answer to his yearning for stability is found in the arms of his father. Dad, in his wis- dom, creates the awareness of a need and then presents himself as the obvious answer to the need. His son finds the answer to his longing for safety when he is nearest to his father. The end result is a child who clings closer to his father than he would have had he not been compelled to crave safety.

God is not a haphazard leader or random designer. Every- thing He does is done with specific intent. In His sovereignty, He put these seven longings in us to help us walk in different facets of privilege as the Bride of Christ. He put these cravings deep within us not so that He could deprive us, but so He could fulfill us to the uttermost! I often refer to something I call the “su- perior pleasures of the Gospel.” God romances our hearts with His Word in such a way as to loosen our grasp from that which is inferior to His Kingdom—all the secondary pleasures cluttering our lives—and cause us to be apprehended by the superior plea- sures of God: those which authentically and eternally satisfy.

Our response to these longings determines our success in life. People spend an inordinate amount of time alternating between denying desires and fulfilling them in unhealthy, ungodly and even destructive ways. Imagine the time and energy we would save if we acknowledged these longings as inescapable, God- given desires, and then positioned our hearts to allow them to be answered and satisfied in the way God intended. The Church must realize that mankind cannot repent for having these heart longings, but only for seeking to fulfill them in wrong ways. We cannot repent of the way we were formed by God any more than we can repent of our physical DNA. No one has ever thought of asking God’s forgiveness for being tall or having brown eyes. People may or may not like these characteristics, but they don’t view them as wrong; they are just a part of who they are. So it is with these longings of the heart. When we learn to embrace them in a healthy, godly way and allow God to answer them— with the only true satisfaction—then we will begin to touch the superior pleasures of the Gospel and enter into the joyous realm of living for which we were created.

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