One of the best things about being in a season of perseverance is yearning.

As I stated recently, perseverance in Christianity is the state of continual forward momentum towards Christ when one’s circumstances lack the positive emotions that make forward progress easy or ‘light’. Persevering implies that one’s circumstances are difficult to sustain, and there is a gap between your current experience and what you’re designed to experience.

This gap is where yearning begins.

This season of perseverance has taught me the value of yearning in the Christian life. Yearning is our response when we recognize the reality of how sin distorts and ruins our lives in contrast to the promised hope of the gospel. It is when we admit and confess the presence of sin within us– how it twists our desires and results in corrupt actions– and then long for our lives (our experience as humans) to align with the gospel. Yearning helps us feel peace amidst the circumstances of sin.

I find myself yearning a lot these days. I’m not in crisis, but I consistently feel the gap between my contaminated-by-sin-experience and the experience I will one day have when all things are in their completely redeemed state after Christ’s final victory over sin and death.

• I’m learning to yearn through the waves of temptation towards the Christian hope in Christ;
• I yearn for salvation to come to those who do not know the Lord;
• I yearn for the saints around the world who experience persecution;
• I yearn for unity in Christ’s Church;
• I yearn for the end of war– for ethnicities and cultures to uphold & value the imago dei of others.

Most frequently, however, I yearn for God to cleanse me of all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). This season of perseverance has alerted me to unrighteousness within me. God is graciously at work, identifying that unrighteousness, helping me see it and call it what it is, and He is bringing me through the journey of snuffing it out. But I yearn towards the day when the desire for that unrighteousness is extracted from me, for when I am fully cleansed of it. God may be gracious and bring me to that through this life’s sanctification; or I might it might not be fully realized until Christ’s final victory. Either way, it is the hope of the gospel that is promised and made evident in Christ’s resurrection and the presence of the Holy Spirit. So I yearn.

What are you yearning for?