The purpose of this blog is to call a generation and a nation to behold the beauty of the Lord. By ‘the beauty of the Lord’ I don’t only mean the physical appearance of God, the transcendent beauty emanating from the throne room in heaven, the thunder and lightning flashing on the sea of glass (Revelation 4). I mean the beauty of His heart, the beauty of His ways, the beauty of the way that He sees and loves and relates with His people (His affections towards us) – His mercy, His faithfulness, judgement, righteousness and loving kindness (Psalm 36). The beauty of God is the knowledge of God that touches our hearts. When we describe something as beautiful it’s not a statement of logic, it’s a passionate cry overflowing from a moved heart.
King David wrote in Psalm 27:4 – One thing I have desired of the Lord, That will I seek; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. To behold the beauty of the Lord, And to inquire in His temple. This pursuit of God so consumed David that his family thought he was crazy, “I have become a stranger to my brothers, And an alien to my mother’s children; because zeal for Your house has consumed me…” (Psalm 69). So why did this passion so consume David? It’s because beholding the beautiful God is what the human heart was made for. God’s beauty is to the human heart like high octane fuel to a V8. It is the fuel our lives were made to run on. The experience of beholding Him causes the human heart to explode with love back to God.
As the time draws near for the return of Jesus, the Holy Spirit is moving all across the earth to raise up a Bride who is consumed with passionate, fiery love – the same kind of love for God that David had. This is possible. It is available to you and me. The revealing of the beauty of God to hungry hearts is the Holy Spirit’s primary strategy in this endeavor. God knows that if we could just catch a glimpse of who He really is, we would be captured forever. The purpose of this blog is to share the journey of a captured and consumed heart in the hope that if an ordinary person like me can live this way then so can others.
Joel Ratcliffe
Chasing the Beautiful God 
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