Deep Yearning
Certain situations in my life produce deep yearnings within me. These yearnings lead me into strong intercession in prayer. I strongly desire to see a particular outcome when I have a deep yearning. But a deep yearning can be a blessing or potentially a challenge to me based on how I handle it.
Deep yearnings require me to put my faith and trust in God for the outcome. This can create a challenge for me. I can desire the outcome of my deep yearning so badly that I hurry to obtain it. When that happens, and I choose to give in to the impatience, I can set out to make something happen in the strength of my flesh instead of waiting and relying on the Holy Spirit to bring it to pass. I have had the experience of disappointment as a result of being in a hurry.
There’s nothing wrong with a deep yearning for God to intervene in a situation involving myself or another person or for the fulfillment of a promise from God. That can be a wonderful thing meant to bring me before the Lord for His mercy to help. But if I let it consume me to the point that I get in a hurry about it being fulfilled, I can cause many problems for myself and others.
This is shown to us in the Bible through the lives of Sarah and Abraham. God had given a promise—a son who would be an heir.
Sarah was old as was Abraham, and time had passed since the promise had been given, and the deep yearning for its fulfillment was increasing all the while. Sarah concocted a way to see it fulfilled so that the yearning could be satisfied. She came up with an idea rooted in her finite wisdom and presented it to Abraham.
Neither she nor Abraham submitted her idea to the Lord. They simply ran with it. They chose to fulfill the promise of God in their way, and they talked enough about it to convince themselves that it might be God’s way of doing it. So Sarah gave her handmaid to Abraham so he might have a son through her. It produced a son, all right. He was named Ishmael. But Ishmael was not God’s idea. Ishmael was not the promised son God had in mind. So Ishmael could not rid Abraham of the deep yearning for the fulfillment of the promise. Ishmael brought satisfaction on some level to Abraham, but he could not be the answer to the deep yearning produced by the promise.
Later, once the real promise came forth in the son Sarah herself gave birth to and named Isaac, Ishmael and his mother Hagar became a problem. Hagar and Ishmael held Sarah and Isaac in contempt and caused tension in the camp, and thus Abraham had his heart broken when he had to send Hagar and Ishmael away into the wilderness. You see, Hagar and Ishmael could not be allowed to continue to remain in the camp due to the conflict it created for them to be there. They would always compete with the promised son and the favored wife.
If you can see and hear it, this story is meant to demonstrate why the Law can not remain in place as a means of righteousness for a believer in Jesus. In New Covenant understanding, reliance upon the Holy Spirit becomes the way for the believer in Christ. A person may have a deep yearning to be right with God and thus have a strong loyalty to the law, thinking it is the means of fulfilling the promise of being made right with God. But it is not the way. Jesus is the promised Son, and He alone is the fulfillment of this promise that has produced such a strong, deep yearning in so many. Trying to fulfill the promise of being made right and kept right with God through any other means, no matter how good it may seem, is an imposter solution that can never truly satisfy the deep yearning. All our deep yearnings need God’s solution without being tainted by our own ideas or recommendations for obtaining it quicker.
