Fall 1992

The Insatiable Desire of the Redeemed
Edited from a message by
John Wright Follette

IDENTIFICATION

I am a flame born of celestial fire,
I bear a name, Insatiable Desire.
I wear in heart an image all divine,
Past human art, not traced by mortal line.
I hear God call to taste His heavenly power:
I give my all to burn life's single hour.
So let me burn through fetters that would bind;
Thus will I learn and freedom will I find.
I shall return to Love's eternal fire,
There shall I burn - a satisfied desire.

The question of our identification, why we are caught up in an arrangement so divine as a "new creation," is usually not considered sufficiently to allow substantial ground for our ventures in faith. If I am unsure as to who I am, endless confusion will follow. I will mistakenly think that I am what I was before I became a partaker of the Divine nature.

To discover and use the basic fact of my "new creation life" as a premise from which to "work out my salvation with fear and trembling" is of paramount value. I must remember that man is essentially spirit. My body is not I; but only a medium of expression, the house in which I live during my earthly life. When I recognize this, and order my life accordingly by placing the emphasis where it belongs - on spiritual, eternal issues, only then will I begin to experience the necessary vital adjustments in my new creation life.

This new "being" that I have become can be likened to a flame. In Psalm 104:4,God makes His ministers a flaming fire. In Deuteronomy 4:24 we read, "The Lord thy God is a consuming fire." Being born of God through the redemption accomplished by Jesus upon the cross, I have become a partaker of His Divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). Therefore, I think of myself as a flame of celestial origin, and one with God because the heavenly fire is ministering in my whole being, making me daily more like Him.

Through the miracle of our spiritual rebirth, God continually reckons with us as a new being. We are born of the Spirit in order to receive a nature which is perfectly adapted to this new order of life. All the laws and principles of spiritual life are made for this, and as a new creation, we are fitted for the finest and highest that heaven can afford.

The opening lines of this poem expresses the characteristic mood of this new creation, "I bear a name, Insatiable Desire." Desire is at the root of all life and conduct, the starting point for all natural urges and drives common to human experience.

Through sin and failure, desire may lose its sense of relation and proportion, resulting in abuse, misuse, and misdirection. But the wonderful Christ who knows and understands us perfectly can take a disorganized personality, cleanse it of sin, fill it with His own life, and cause an integration of all the essential elements of our makeup. He does not destroy; rather, He cleanses and unifies our personality, causing it to function normally and perfectly for God's glory.

Behind all the forms of outer expression is "desire." We are conscious of these inner urges in their various tones of emphasis. This unique God-given quality in our makeup is one of the marks which lifts man above the animal kingdom. It is not possible for us to do all that we would like to do, or become all we would like to be, yet God sees our desire. Paul said "If there be first a willing mind [desire], it is accepted according to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not" II Cor 8:12.

It is here, in the field of desire, that God sees us and where He longs to change us. But man has become so adjusted to the external, tangible world that often he fails to deal with the desire question. As a result, he experiences frustration because he does not realize that his conduct is but a reflection of the real man inside.

Most religions deal with desire, since it is common to all mankind. Hinduism would get rid of it by a process designed to bring the personality to a desireless Brahman. Buddhism offers a different solution: Strike it with death and kill all desire for life (a strange and subtle delusion) and so enter Nirvana. But Jesus has the true solution. He recognizes desire as a very necessary part of life, not only on the natural plane but also in the realm ofour spirits. Instead of condemning it, He creates a new place where it may find its release and movement.

Jesus did not come to suppress or destroy life with its desires. Rather, He came to give life, and that more abundantly. He comes into our hearts and lives to create and correct, by His radiant presence. He sets new objectives before us; He cleanses and adjusts our desires until we can say with the Psalmist, "Lord, all my desire is before Thee."

The desires He creates in our heart are for spiritual, eternal qualities rather than for material things. Therefore, while we tarry here, the hungers and thirsts we experience are insatiable. The new man that we have become yearns for completion. He longs to find adequate expression for the hidden, spiritual awakenings and discoveries in this new life.

As a part of our new birth, there is created within us a holy urge to attain to full spiritual development. Jesus said, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" Matt 5:48. This word "perfect" means "to be fully grown, fully developed in mental and moral character."

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus painted a vivid picture of a fully committed Christian life. He presented an impossible standard for the natural man to attain to. But Jesus was setting this standard for the new man, not the natural man. All the character qualities He shows in this ideal picture are to be found only in our new creation. Jesus paints the picture, then says in effect: "Here is the ideal concept of the new man, along with the dynamic for its realization - the Holy Spirit. I have begun this new creation in your hearts and lives; now, rise to the completion of this new order."

Jesus did not tell us to do something; rather, He said that we are to become something. He sets before us the blueprint, then He tells us to carry it out to completion in our lives. His words in the Sermon on the Mount are both a challenge and a command. He challenges us to lead morally blameless lives as we go on to completeness, or perfection; which is the fulfillment of God's purpose for the new man. We are to grow. This is the end toward which God is working.

Our desires rule. Because Jesus recognized this, He demanded a fully surrendered life in all of its meanings, even unto death. Death is the very means by which He releases us from the hidden dangers which still lurk in the realm of our natural life. He alone is the answer, the source to which the hungry heart ever looks for satisfaction. O matchless Christ! The One solitary grandeur of all creation!

"I wear in heart an image all divine." We are created in the image and likeness of God - not a corporeal likeness, but a moral and spiritual likeness, as mentioned in Ephesians 4:23-24 and Colossians 3:10. The process that is now going on in our new creation lives is the restoration of the image of the Son, and our conforming thereto.

"I hear God call to taste His heavenly power." The Apostle Paul wrote that we are called "unto a fellowship" 1 Cor 1:9. Here we find a call to a fellowship which precedes heaven. This fellowship is a phase of our present lives for a specific and necessary reason. It is a relationship that is initiated by God. It deepens and matures as we yield to the demands and requirements for its realization. It reaches past the external life of the senses.

Many hear God calling them from sin and from the world, but this is not that call. This call to fellowship comes after the initial steps of redemption, water baptism, and the Baptism in the Holy Spirit. It reaches the ocean floor of the heart, the seat of all desire and motives, the veiled recesses of self-hood. God longs to bring the soul into a conscious relationship with Himself, even as fire. Fire cleanses, reduces, frees, and refines. This fire is heavenly, for neither natural force nor process planned by man can accomplish the necessary miracle. It demands all of life.

"I give my all to burn life's single hour." When I think of the eternal ages ahead and know that I am born for them, this earthly life seems but a single hour. Here and now I must plan and settle the issues which project themselves on into eternity. Christ, in His teaching concerning the deeper and fuller life, let His followers know it was no easy matter. He laid very stringent and searching demands on those who wish to enter fully into all that He has made available. We must deny ourselves, take up our cross daily, and follow Him (Luke 9:23). Instead of loving our life, we must lose it for His sake (Matthew 10:39). A miracle awaits the one who thus dares to yield all to God.

"So let me burn through fetters that would bind." The fire frees and releases the soul. One finds freedom from earthly bondages and the soul experiences a rich spiritual illumination. The fetters of tradition, religious habits (not born of the Spirit), unscriptural dogmatism (a natural setup in spiritual life), are burned off. All this and more is consumed in the fire of God.

As surely as the Blood cleanses us from sin, the Truth, this heavenly fire, cleanses and sets free the soul from hindrances and bondages which would block our entrance into the fuller understanding of His glorious purpose. "Thus will I learn and freedom will I find" the true liberty which God has for those who will pay the price.

There is a deep and glorious spiritual progression into His highest for those who meet God's requirements. Our new life in Him becomes a schooling, a divine process of becoming. Here we are disentangled and extricated from the old, Adamic setup. Life becomes a series of divinely planned experiences in which God is faithfully working to adjust us to life in Himself.

Our heart, once set on fire and illuminated in His fellowship can never again rest in any pattern of earthly life. An insatiable desire, a divine discontent, a heavenly restlessness becomes its holy obsession.

This marvelous and wonderful Christ we adore and love! We are changed as we behold Him. All our soul's desire is found in Him. Our deepest desires shall yet be realized for "I shall return to Love's eternal fire, there shall I burn, a satisfied desire."