August 12

My soul faints for Your salvation; I wait for Your word. — Ps 119:81 BSB

How hard it is, and how rare, to experience a lasting and deep sense of the spiritual blessings we have as believers in Christ. Often, we only get fleeting glimpses—brief tastes and crumbs of God’s goodness that are sweet beyond words while they last, but they are usually short-lived. After much effort, many prayers, and deep longings before the Lord, we are left with just these moments. How many are there who cry out daily, if not in these exact words, then in the same heart—“O come, you long-expected guest; Lord Jesus, quickly come!”

And yet, it feels like He delays. Many keep looking upward until their eyes and hearts grow weary, waiting for Him more eagerly than those who watch for the dawn. They are willing to sacrifice anything, to be or do anything, if only He would reveal Himself to their souls. They examine their hearts, lips, and lives to see if there is any sin blocking His presence, desperately hoping for just a word from Him to satisfy their longing for communion. They long for true repentance and godly sorrow for their sins, to be melted at His feet by the sight of His bleeding, sacrificial love.

But where do these intense longings come from? These desires reveal that those who feel them have been born again into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It’s the presence of divine life in their souls that fuels these deep longings. Just as a living child cries, so these longings are the cry of the soul that has been born again. A dead hope does not cry out. The fact that they continue to hope, to long, and to seek shows that their hope is alive. This hope, united with faith and love, keeps them coming before God, persistent in seeking what He has promised to give to those who wait for Him.