Desperate For God

 My goodness.  How do I start?  Where does one began?

There is a time or two in one's life where he feels desperate for God.  That sense of desperation is an invitation to call on the invisible one who resides in the heavens.  

When I say heavens, I mean not physically.  God is not physically in the heavens.  God is not corporeal and God doesn't have mass.  God is everywhere, but not in everything, but everything is in Him, "for in Him we live and move and have our being".

The heavens refers to being above it all and so much so that you could go through one heaven and reach a second heaven and go all the way through that infinite progression to the third heaven and there you find God.

Really though, God is right here.

I have had three times when I was desperate for God.  Once I was fifteen years old, dumb, foolish, didn't know how to make or keep friends.  The guys who chased me down as a friend were not good people, there were two of them, both ended up in prison.  I never sought friendship, I was always the prey, the one pursued as a friend.

Then another fifteen years later I became desperate as some physical changes begin to happen to me due to a major illness and after some mental problems.

The third time was after our trailer house burned down and we lost all of our stuff.  I became desperate because that incident was the end of a long struggle just to work and eek out a living of some kind.

But, I am not desperate every week.

I can't listen to Pentecostal worship, I can't participate in it because they encourage the worshipers to feel desperate all the time, desperate for God, hungry for God.

There's often this attempt to build the intensity up and the emotions up so that so called worship becomes addictive.  A lot of Pentecostals would be surprised to learn just how boring worship was in the first Christian gatherings.  They were very formal.  There was a call to worship, then the gathering would recite an early cread.  The most exciting part would be the dinner.  They would dine together and the drinks would break out.  That's when Paul told them they had to tone it down out of respect for the Lord's table.

I don't see where there was build up of tent revival fervency every week.  It's not there.  Worship was real, genuine and based on the risen Christ, not a feeling surging through one's body from the top of their head to the sole of their feet.

This shows a lack of faith.

This shows a loss of stability.

How can one be stable when they are off kilter every week?  Bring your needs to him in prayer, in confidence, in faith, believing that God hears and responds.

I have experienced the answers to prayer enough times that I can say He doesn't look on my purity, my virtue, my goodness, my anything.  He just loves me which means, he is working with me as a partner in my life.  He has asked me to partner with Him in His venture.

It is He who has made us and not we ourselves. We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.

I don't cry out in desperation.  I am His child.  I imagine that there will be at least one other time when I do sense desperation and call out to Him for help.  I expect that, but I don't go through life every day just so desperate and so hungry.

That is not normal.