Insatiable Longing

This summer I did a worship service in which I included this quote from St. Bernard of Clairvaux almost 900 years ago,

We taste Thee, O Thou Living Bread,
And long to feast upon Thee still:
We drink of Thee, the Fountainhead
And thirst our souls from Thee to fill.

I included this because it voices a sentiment for which I have often been criticized, to ask for a deeper drink of the living water. I felt that expressed so eloquently and being so ancient, perhaps the thought could be accepted without so much reluctance. Here is a passage that A. W. Tozer calls a “holy paradox in a musical quatrain that will be instantly understood by every worshiping soul.” But express this same desire in the context of a modern worship song and you will be criticized for experiential shallowness, for longing for something that you have already been given.

Lord we want more of You
Living water, rain down on me
Lord we need more of You
Living Breath of Life, come fill me up.
We are hungry for more of You
We are thirsty for more of You.

I’ve heard, “what the heck does that mean? How dare we want more from Jesus when He has given us His all.”
Tozer states that the place at which I am so often told we should have received all that satisfies, is not the end at all, but the inception. That is where we begin, “but where we stop, no man has yet discovered, for there is in the awful and mysterious depths of the Triune God neither limit nor end.”
Interesting that “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for” was a statement that seemed to be the final straw to prove to a skeptical Christian community that Bono couldn’t possibly know Jesus. All while we encouragingly quote, “Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected, but I press on…”

It seems to me that in our attempt to realize the greatness of God, we have made Him unapproachable even by the blood of Jesus. We have academically explained Him to the point that we’ve boxed Him up and made Him small, able to be discussed, described, predicted. In Tozer’s words, since we have found Him we need no more to seek Him. “…it is taken for granted that no Bible-taught Christian ever believed otherwise. Thus the whole testimony of the worshiping, seeking, singing church on that subject is crisply set aside. The experiential heart-theology of a grand army of fragrant saints is rejected in favor of a smug interpretation of Scripture…”
Tozer (not Rod) goes on to say,

The simplicity which is in Christ is rarely found among us. In its stead are programs, methods, organizations and a world of nervous activities which occupy time and attention but can never satisfy the longing of the heart. The shallowness of our inner experience, the hollowness of our worship, and that servile imitation of the world which marks our promotional methods all testify that we, in this day, know God only imperfectly, and the peace of God scarcely at all.

Do you understand the holy paradox? Are you a worshiping soul?


Quotes from A. W. Tozer, The pursuit of God, (1948)