Daily Desperation For Almighty God

 

“Daily Desperation For Almighty God”

Psalm 42:1-2

NIV- As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God.  My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.  When can I go and meet with God?

NLT- As the deer longs for streams of water, so I long for you, O God.  I thirst for God, the living God.  When can I go and stand before him?

I was reading a devotional this morning and the author used the word “Desperation” describing how our longing and panting for God should be each day.  It really caught my attention and I looked at both the NIV and NLT translations and wanted to use them both for this week.  I think about how we do or do not find ourselves longing or even panting desperately for God. 

If we are really honest with ourselves, I think most of us find ourselves often longing and even panting for whatever is next to give us another “high” of what the world offers.  With all the ads and invitations we constantly see and how we really long for the next great thing the world offers, we often get pulled away and enticed instead of truly longing and thirsting for what only God offers.

We so often get so busy with our daily lives that we forget how desperate we should be for God.  As you can tell, it’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve sent out a devotional.  We just got done selling a house and buying one in the same town.  For the past couple of weeks, I kept thinking about how I need to get another devotional out, but allowed myself to be consumed by everything else as we’ve worked on getting settled. 

So the case and point right there is that I longed and desired to send out another devotional and then ended up reading this morning about being desperate.  That hit home!  We so often get wrapped up in what we think is important and often forget what is really important and that is meeting with Almighty God and seeking Him above all else. 

When was the last time you and I found ourselves really longing and even panting desperately for God?  We should be this desperate each and every single day, not just when we become drained from the pull of the world that leaves us dry.  We should develop a daily desperation to seek God like we’ve never done before. 

I hope and pray that we are all encouraged this week and in the coming days, weeks, months and years to daily become desperate to seek Him like we have never done before!  We need daily desperation for Almighty God!  Our souls should long and pant for God in desperation to meet with Him!

Do They Really See Him In Us?

 “Do They Really See Him In Us?”

1 John 4:11-12 NLT

Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other.  No one has ever seen God.  But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.

I have to really wonder how often unbelievers really see God in and through us.  As I consider all the ways we tend to live our lives each day as proclaimed followers of God, I just have to question whether or not we are striving for others to see Him in us?  It seems like we get so focused not only on how we want things, but also on how we want others to know how we feel about certain things. 

I just have to wonder with all the different opinions that we feel we need to share and get others to hear from us, how often are we really concerned how much God is showing through?  In all of my years of experience with secular work and working in ministry, it breaks my heart how so often His love is not expressed through how we treat one another. 

Think about this passage and read it over and over again, pondering what it is saying.  God loved us way more than we’ll ever understand.  He came to die for us and that is the greatest act of love anyone has ever expressed.  What does that mean to us?  Does it overwhelm us?  Does it move us to the point where we stop focusing so much on what we want and what we think and focus on loving others as He commanded us to?

I go to work each day and I just so often wonder if others are seeing God in me in some way.  I wonder if they notice something different in the ways that I treat others.  Sometimes, I don’t know if they see God at all in me as there are times that I don’t handle things well at all and say things I should keep to myself.  Working in the secular world for so many years has taught me so much and it has challenged me to think more about how I am around non-believers.

Loving each other is probably one of the biggest challenges we face in being the church God wants us to be.  Why is that so hard?  Sure, we have differences, but why can we not just love each other as He has called us to do?  That’s been a prayer and cry of my heart for years.  I’m sure it has been for many of you as well. 

I hope that you and I will deeply desire for others to see God’s love in and through us.  We need to work a lot hard on loving each other, especially when challenges arise.  We need to love others as best as we can, even if we don’t get along.  If we really want others to see God in us, we will obey His command with a passion in our hearts to sincerely love one another.

Investment in Godly Wisdom and Understanding

“Investment in Godly Wisdom and Understanding”

James 3:13 NIV

Who is wise and understanding among you?  Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom.

I think we would all be very quick to say that we desire to have understanding and wisdom.  We all want to know things and become wiser in all that we do.  We want to learn more so that we can further our understanding for different things we continue to do in life.  We spend so much of our lives continuing to learn different things so that we can fill our minds with more knowledge to be more successful.

With all the learning that we do, I often think the best wisdom we can obtain goes untouched in so many ways from God’s Word.  We say we want to grow in Him and that we want to learn humility, but the ways we live our lives really says something totally different all too often. 

What are we investing in these days?  Where are we putting our time and focus?  This is something I have been thinking a lot about, especially with so many changes that have happened over this year.  I’m trying to continuously challenge my priorities and where I am putting most of my focus.  It’s a daily challenge as it is for us all.

This week, I’d like to ask all of us to seriously consider where we are investing our time?  Do we really seek Godly wisdom and understanding?  Do we really want to learn what is means to be humble?  Are we serious about this learning?  We often say we are, but what we are doing daily to be challenged and to learn more about Godly wisdom that will bring more understanding and more humility? 

I’m not at all against the different investments we make in our lives for us and our families.  We definitely need to invest in different ways, but I have to wonder where we are focusing most of our investing?  Are we investing more in material things or in Godly wisdom?  I know I am not investing as I should each day. 

What do you think others are seeing in your life?  Are they seeing you invest in the wisdom from God or from the world?  Do they see you investing in understanding His Word more?  Are they seeing you become more humble?  I think we all need to take a serious look at how we are investing our daily lives and then ask God to give us His wisdom and glean as much as we can even more from His Word like we’ve never done before.

Our greatest investment is gaining Godly wisdom so that we can be more understanding and learn to be more humble.