So I am sitting in a darkened auditorium with my son Dan on a soggy Saturday morning a few weekends ago. We have made our almost annual trek to the drummer's summit called the Modern Drummer Festival held by Modern Drummer magazine. Imagine, if you will, 500 seats filled with all manner of drummers waiting to see their heroes, the "best of the best" perform -- talk about a room full of nervous energy, talk about unbridled longing!

Anyway, midway through an artistically tepid afternoon, a brash hotshot from New York City sits on stage talking to us about his approach to playing the instrument, and he says the following: "You gotta get it in your ears, first, and your hands will follow."

He was referring to the importance of listening to your musical instincts to guide your hands, rather than to train your hands in all kinds of technique before listening to those God-given instincts that drew you to drumming in the first place. This guy was pointing, in a musical sense, to the habit of paying attention to the nascent instincts ready to guide creative expression. It just takes learning how to turn the "internal ears" to hear them.

"But how exactly does longing fit in with this?" you ask. Well, as I was sitting listening to him the thought occurred that Jesus must be the Ultimate End of our deepest, most cherished longings. I referred to this idea at the end of the last newsletter in the form of a question: "Is Jesus your Treasure of treasures, your Longing of longings?"

Many of us know He should be, but remember that longing is kin with passion and desire. There are potent feelings associated with a longing that ravish your available heart. You are never lukewarm about a powerful longing. In fact, its power is in the fierce fire of feeling associated with the enchanting object of your desire. We all would like to have a passion for Christ, but truth be known, we can't seem to muster it much of the time.

Like one flame to light many small candles, our penchant for desire and longing finds a never ending supply of wants and amusements to divert our limited attention away from the true Source of longing fulfilled. Yet the flame born from heaven glows nevertheless because we are designed to desire something or Someone grander than ourselves. (Ecc. 3:10)

In other words, for Jesus to be welcomed into the most treasured place of our heart, that place we protect with a fury, and are loyal to above all others, we have to "get it in our ears," so to speak. What does that mean for most of us who struggle with captivating self-absorption and uncontested fickleness? Well, first it means recognizing, in truth, where our treasures are hidden. You don't have to scratch very deep beneath the surface to see what a man or woman really treasures. We are radically occupied with what amuses, pleasures, and fulfills us. Being alive means being most alive to what seems to bless our living.

If Jesus is truly to be our utmost treasure then we need to really wrestle with what it means for Him to be so. I suspect that is a tall order for most of us because we have been disappointed by people we naively appointed to that role. It's just that they can't fill the shoes. Nothing under heaven can.

Wrestling with the question of how anyone actually begins to let Jesus be his or her highest treasure should lead a person to the fact that to know Jesus truly in this way involves substantial surrender to Him in the face of stiff competition for our affections and loyalties. We need to let go of our white-knuckled grip on the promises other things make about how well they might please, fulfill, and complete us. In reality, this letting go will be more "turning our backs," and saying a resounding "no" to the constant parade of lesser promises lit up against the night sky like the flesh pot casinos of Atlantic City. But "let go" we must.

Once we own up to the unhappy fact that we are fascinated with the bountiful joys planted in Creation more than Joy Himself, we can begin to be taught about finding our Treasure of treasures in Jesus. Paul refers to such awareness as considering "everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord." (Php 3:8) I'll bet most of us have never genuinely explored deeply what it is to actually see our accomplishments, credentials, possessions, and enterprises as "loss" compared to knowing Jesus as Lord. When was the last time you said that you felt that way to anyone?

"We don't have that kind of longing "in our ears. So how do we get there kemo sabe?" Well, this worthiest of journeys starts with stepping off the perpetual Stairmaster you call your life for a minute. You will have to listen and think to "get it in your ears.". Pray for help to stay the course until you arrive at clarity.

In your listening and thinking, you will be well served to ask two questions:

• How can I turn my heart toward the Treasure Who lives in me?



• How can I surrender to His call to love Him with all my heart and strength?

Sitting for a time with these fundamental questions is the first step in "tuning your ear" to the quiet, but steady longing placed there by God to be filled by Him alone. You need to hear it, to feel it, to let it call to you so that you become steadily uncomfortable with life as usual.

Turning your heart toward Jesus also means gaining understanding by searching the scriptures for who Jesus is, and what He has done. Otherwise, how can you long for Him as the highest treasure in your life if you have only a sketchy grasp of Him? As you search, you will need to look at: how He saw Himself, what He cared for, how He responded to the work He was given to do by His Father, how He expressed His humanity, and how He related to the various people He encountered as he fulfilled His mission.

At the point where you are genuinely surrendered to the fascinating possibility that Jesus may literally be the Great Treasure of your life, you open the way for Him to help you grasp His call to love with all you have. Perhaps He will take you down the following path as you continue to search for and listen to Him:

1. He might remind you to contemplate what He has done for you through His death and resurrection (remember, you were literally dead spiritually -- "dead man walking" -- before being regenerated). Being born from above, (Jn. 3:7) and entering into a status with God called being a "son" (Gal. 4:1-7) is a marvel because Jesus made a way for all that to happen.



2. He will likely invite you to chew on the fact that you (individually, and as a member of the Church, His Bride) are the object of His affection. He longs for you much in the same way that a bridegroom longs for the day when he will be fully united with his beloved. You really haven't given much serious thought to God's longing for you lately, have you?



3. He could challenge you to think way down into His creativity, beauty, greatness, and grandeur by looking at, and reflecting from the crazily alive world He has given us to walk for a brief time. You know, who is this Person who thought up and makes the orangutan, orchid, and aurora borealis? What must God be like to know how to create a universe from meson to galaxy?



4. Or He might ask you to wrap your mind around the dizzying miracle of Incarnation: Jesus became man so that you could become in some manner like God (sanctification). Who is this God wholly complete, and perfect, yet One who takes on the flesh of that stiff-necked band of corrupt rebels called humanity, and says: "you, I love." He knows you like no other one in your life. He cares about the sting you felt when you were made fun of in front of the guys, how your heart broke when the dog you grew up with died, how good it felt when the best looking boy in class made a point of saying hi every time he saw you . . . . or the funny way you will eat only one thing at a time on your plate, the vegetables have to go first, and how you just seem to be enchanted with Shaker furniture.



5. Or maybe He will let you get a mental foretaste of what it will be like to be near Him in the place He has prepared for you. There will be no separation from Him, and the excruciating goodness that is His reign will be everywhere: beauty in every direction, boundless creativity, fascinating ideas to explore and talk about, work that will be who you are, perfect bodies, unscarred fellowship with family, friends, and people who are filled with the same complete life you have, love given just because it can be, the "belliest" of belly laughs, steaks always cooked to order, and newfangled delights you never knew could even turn up. God will be there radiant in the middle of it all, and it will be as if you never were away from Him.

When you get right down to it, finding Jesus as the greatest Treasure of your life requires that you do the labor of seeing Him that way. How does anyone learn the value of anything, but by getting to know it as it is to discover its intrinsic worth? Knowing Jesus in this manner flows from many times turning your mind and your heart to Him. Most of us give up after the initial glow of "first love" has faded. But, because He is living, through the Holy Spirit in your heart, the invitation is continuously made for you to turn your first and deepest longing toward Him.

Have you not realized that your spirit, the part of you that was regenerated, is already captivated by Jesus, and in a constant state of longing for Him because it knows Him as He is? It loves Him, wants to obey Him, and moves toward Him without hesitation. Your flesh, on the other hand, hesitates, struggles with its own selfish desires, and because it is still part of the fallen order, needs to be harnessed, and made obedient to Christ. It still gets caught in longing for lesser things.

Treasure found is usually treasure hunted for, sometimes years are devoted to looking. Those who truly long for God have been blessed by a life changing glimpse of His glory, making every other delight merely foretastes of Someone more exquisite, more ravishing, infinitely more dazzling than earth's most sublime beauty or pleasure. They have sipped fleetingly the bittersweet cup of knowing for Whom they wait, but not knowing when they will finally be free to drink in great gulps until filled, and happy to the marrow.

The question of why Jesus is not your Treasure of treasures, if He is not, always remains to be answered if you are called by His name. It is insanity, plain and simple, to long after lesser things in place of God, especially when He invites all of His own to love Him without holding back anywhere. Our ability to long at all shows that we find ourselves fully only when we love something or Someone more magnificent than we. God is magnificent bar none. Find Him. Find your Treasure. Don't be turned aside, turned away, or turned back until you do.

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Well sir, we've moved uptown, gone up to the big leagues, been pushed upstairs, as they say. With the help of Errol Boyle at Admatha Internet Consulting, we finally put Klesis Ministries on the web.

Our vaunted purpose for the site is to make it available for inquirers and clients to get information about the ministries we offer without having to call us and receive it in the mail. We have put all our brochures there, along with newsletters, information about us, a map, a bookstore that links directly to Amazon .com, and links to other sites we find pertinent or helpful. Make sure to click the "Klesis Ministries" header on the home page for options besides those listed there.

Tell us what you think. We have already received comments from some of you calling it: "beautiful," "fantastic," "appealing," "serene, unusually soothing," "put together well," "direct," "committed, reverent to our Lord and Savior." I think it captures the spirit of the ministry and our sensibilities.

God has been most gracious in letting us do something grand in spite of our smallness. He always leads us to more life than we would find on our own. May He be glorified by its contents.

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