TIME TO GET DESPERATE

From time to time we sing a song at our church that is emotionally and spiritually enormous in contrast to the actual brevity of it lyrics. Every time we sing it, the words convict me about the state of my relationship with God.

“This is the air I breathe: Your Holy Presence living in me.
This is my daily bread: Your very Word spoken to me;
And I, I’m desperate for You! And I, I’m lost without You!”

The melody is so easy that is makes singing the song not so much a musical experience as an intimate prayer.

Read the words again, and think of them as praying. Go ahead. Read them again.

There, now.

Isn’t the Presence of God as important as the air you breathe? Without air, you’d be physically dead. Without God’s Presence, you’d be even worse off: spiritually dead.

And how about God’s Word? Without His Word spoken into your life by the Holy Spirit, you would become spiritually malnourished, weak and diseased.

That leads you naturally to say “Lord, I’m desperate for You! I’m lost without You!”
Since I learned the song, I haven’t been able to escape that word “desperate.” God keeps pressing the question: “Are you really desperate for Me, John? Or is that just a nice song?”

According to the huge dictionary in my office, the word “desperate,” as it is used here, means “to have an urgent need or desire,” or “to make an ultimate effort, to give all.”

Does that sound like your attitude towards your relationship with God? Kind of makes you wonder. If you were desperate for God, how would it show in your life?

If you were desperate for God, you would take exceptional steps to pursue Him.

If you were desperate for God, you would pay any price to obey Him.

If you were desperate for God, you would take any risk to experience His power.

If you were truly desperate for God, you wouldn’t put limits on what you ask Him to do. You would crave His power, and you wouldn’t care how He manifested that power.

If you were truly desperate for God, you wouldn’t mind personal inconvenience or discomfort, just so long as you could live in the Presence of God.

If you were truly desperate for the Lord, you would be willing to do anything He tells you to do, even if it were something new or different or unfamiliar.

The problem is, folks like you and me are often more concerned with comfort than with the Presence of God. And that, brothers and sisters, is a sin for which we all need to stay in a state of repentance.

Are you desperate for God? Do you “have an urgent need or desire” for His Presence? Are you willing “to make an ultimate effort, to give all” for the sake of knowing Him?

We need God like never before! And that means we may need to do something we’ve never done before. It’s time to get desperate!