General Reflections

ThursdayReflection

15^th June 2023

JOSHUA S HILL describes
group

What It Really Means
to Be 'Desperate for God'

The church is home to many slogans, banners and phrases.
One such slogan I have noticed in songs and church ministries
is the idea of being "desperate for God."

The very phrase echoes in my heart as being true -
something God wants us to strive for; a truth I believe comes
straight from the Bible.

I trust in the words of Jesus that say,

"Where two or three gather in my name,
there am I with them" (Matthew 18:20)

and the words of God to the prophet Isaiah,

"Do not fear, for I am with you." (Isaiah 41:10)

Being 'desperate for God' isn't about acquiring His presence in our lives -
we must already believe that God will always be with us and the
Holy Spirit will accompany us everywhere.

Specifically, we can trace this desperation for God back to David,
who wrote Psalm 63 while he was in the Desert of Judah.

David's language in Psalm 63:1 is not only poetic, but desperate.
David's "whole being" thirsting and longing for God..

The sons of Korah had similar things to say in Psalm 84, saying

1  How I love your Temple, Lord Almighty!
2  How I want to be there! I long to be in the Lord's Temple.
   With my whole being I sing for joy to the living God. (GNT)

In Psalm 63:3, David immediately exclaims that God's
"faithful love is better than life", clearly showing that he already
has a relationship with this God that he "faints" and thirsts for.

These are not people seeking God for the first time -
these are children seeking more of Him.

Finding similar language in the days after Jesus is trickier.
But one need only look to reminders to "seek Him" (Hebrews 11:6) and
"seek first the kingdom of God" (Matthew 6:33) to see that God never
provides us with an end-date to seeking Him.

We are to do so continually, through all of our days here on Earth,
until He comes again or we are taken to Him.

The Oxford Dictionary defines "desperate" as "feeling or showing a
hopeless sense that a situation is so bad as to be impossible to deal with."
This does not sound like the sense of hope we know God provides His children.

Jon Bloom, author and co-founder of Desiring God, writes that
"the lack of a sense of desperation for God" is deadly.
Bloom speaks specifically of the easy lifestyle in America
"in which it costs the least to be a Christian" compared to the
"hard struggle with sufferings" (Hebrews 10:32) that many
missionaries face day to day.

"If we don't feel desperate for God, we don't tend to cry out to him."

And this leads to spiritual death.

Being desperate for more of God should be the cry of every
Bible-believing Christian.
We should want our cup to overflow with God's presence and existence,
and we should be ever seeking more of Him.

Spiritual death comes when we think we have enough of God,
when we think our cup is appropriately filled.

To avoid the ruination of our faith, we should follow in the path
of the Psalmists and ever be longing for God.