SOUL CRAVING ::by: Erwin Raphael McManus
It's so much easier to organize us, to control us, when we allow others to standardize us. It shouldn't surprise you that your brain eventually revolts from being pressed and shaped like processed food (or you go brain dead). Imagine how your soul is reacting to a processed life. Now we have 100 percent pure beef and natural spring water. I don't want to even think about what we were eating before. Or maybe more important, what kind of religion have we been swallowing? Your soul will end up vomiting everything you shove down its throat that violates who you are created to become.
You can choose to believe that your spirit has lived a thousand times before and that in a previous life you were a bug-or even worse than that, it's the life to come. Or you can choose to believe that you are the result of some kind of genetic mutation that arbitrarily happened through the evolutionary process. But remember this, what can settle your mind will not settle your soul. It will stir it up. You are a unique creation made by God to live and not simply exist. Your soul longs to find its ultimate purpose. It will not rest until you do. Your soul craves its destiny. Your soul desires. It always will. You were created as a creative being. You were made to grow, to dream, to achieve. It is your soul letting you know you come from God and your life is intended for a God-sized, God-inspired life.
If this weren't enough to change my mind, all it would really take is the contrasting views on desire. To be truly holy in Buddhism or Hinduism is to be free from all desire. Personally this has never worked for me, and thank God, not even God expects that, nor does He desire it. In glaring contrast, Jesus was a man of amazing passion. Love, compassion, mercy, anger, disgust, even hate found expression in the person of Jesus. Just in case you're wondering, it was people He loved and evil He hated. He wasn't all that happy about hypocrisy either. Then there was a time He made a whip and chased out all the moneychangers from the Temple , but that's another story.
If Jesus is God, then God is a God of passion. He is not a force or energy-indifferent to the human condition. He has created us like Him-with passion and desire and emotion. God is like a fire that burns within your soul.
It isn't an accident that we are filled with desire. It's one part of being made like God. The problem, of course, is that we have raging passions and desires without the character and inherent good of God to channel them properly. Nevertheless, the solution for God has never been to neuter us or move us toward living apathetic lives. The goal of spirituality is not to extract from you all desire and passion. The call of Jesus is the exact opposite-delight in Him and He will give you the desires of your heart. The destination of your spiritual journey was never intended to be nothingness.
Jesus kept inviting those who seemed to think it was too good to be true to follow Him and experience nothing less than life and life beyond measure.
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Erwin R. McManus if the lead pastor at Mosaic - a remarkably diverse ethnic and cultural congregation in Los Angeles, California . He is the author of several books including the recent Soul Cravings (Thomas Nelson, November 2006). Soul Cravings is a powerful, down-to-earth exposition that interprets our need for intimacy, meaning, and destiny as common sense apologetics pointing to the existence of and our need for God. The book will deeply stir the reader to consider and chase after the spiritual implications of their soul's deepest longings. For more information visit Soul Cravings.
This article was taken from Catalyst a ministry of John Maxwell’s Injoy
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