I Want God
Reflections On The Revival We All Long For
I want God.
That’s it.
Just recently I am beginning to notice that my life is becoming complicated with lots of stuff than I planned. It’s becoming crowded with activities that aren’t bad in themselves. But it is hindering wanting God than I want. And am tired about it.
If we can be honest, we’ll admit that there are things we want more than God that keep us from wanting Him most. Those things consume us and take us to the end of our rope and get us despair. I want God! That’s the place I am now.
I am an everyday man, but I want a radical movement of God inside of me that will start me on a journey into the very heart of God to understand the sweet pleasures of wanting Him.
Need and Want
We all know we need God in our lives. But that’s our problem. Because we think we need God, we think that’s enough. We think having a sense of needing God can make a difference in our lives. But that isn’t always the case. There are a lot of things we need but we do not really want them.
We need to be healthier, but we do not want to exercise and eat healthily. We need to be wiser with our money, but we don’t want to stop spending. We need to have better communication with our loved ones, but we don’t want to take the time to sit down and talk. We need more of God, but we do not really want Him.
Most of our going out to God is based on our duty-driven need of God. Yes we need God like the way we need breathe and food and water and light, probably even more. But the truth is, until the want matches the need, nothing will ever change. Indeed, needing without wanting is just a really good idea that never sees light.
“Needing without wanting is just a really good idea that never sees light.”
What We Long for Most
A lot of people in my neighborhood knows me as a serious minded person, a Jesus guy. Well, it is the way I’ve lived before them since I was fourteen (which is all owing to Jesus). And those who knows me from afar off has an idea of me that is too spiritual for me. I know that people have been blessed by my services in the kingdom. A couple of them have come me for mentorship.
They see me as a passionate person for God. They see me as a man who has discovered God and seen Him. But when I look at myself, am not as spiritual as people see me to be; am not as passionate for God as I admire men who has gone before me do; I haven’t yet discovered God and seen Him.
What I do know about myself is that I am a want-er. I know there’s a longing in my heart that nothing seems to satisfy, that is nothing in this world. And the question I have been asking myself overtime, which I had the opportunity to discuss with some teenagers two days ago, is: What do you really, really want?
With much thinking, I know that I want to know God and touch Him and never hurt His heart. I know that I want to love Him and feel His love back. I know that I want to talk to Him with the simple words I know and hear Him talk to me too. I know I want to tell God I want Him and I want to mean it.
We Forget God
But with all the emotionalism that comes with encountering God, don’t we tend to forget God and forget that we do want Him? For me, as for you, it is paramount to remember our first encounter with Jesus. Because as the days fly away and life becomes noisy and crowded, those of us who know God often forget how bad we once wanted Him.
We can vividly remember those days when we newly became Christians. Those days when we were all in for God. Those days when something inside of us longs to take our hearts out, smear off the world’s enchantments, rattle the everyday stale cage we found ourselves in, run into the street, and find a pulse that started us beating to the wild of God. Those days when we were not normal.
“God is not the means to our own ends. God wants to be wanted only.”
But now. Now? We don’t even know what we want again. Now we’re half-hearted creatures that is torn between the now life and the one that started when we first drank Truth. We forget what it feels like to come with open hands and heart. How we were once enthralled by the Story of Glory. We forget the power and the promises, the commitment and the communion, the beauty and the blessings, the revelation and the relationship, the magnitude and the majesty, the raw passion for the Person.
God And
Now what we want is God and. God and prosperity. God and money. God and comfort. God and popularity. God and fame. God and success. God and wealth. God and ease. God and. In fact we have come up believing that if we want all these things, we have to seek God first, using Matthew 6:33 as our legal standing. But God is not the means to our own ends. God wants to be wanted only.
A. W. Tozer once wrote, “When religion has said its last word, there is little that we need other than God Himself. The evil habit of seeking God-and effectively prevents us from finding God in full revelation. In the and lies our great woe. If we omit the and we shall soon find God, and in Him we shall find that for which we have been secretly longing” (The Pursuit of God, 18).
The Revival We All Long For
We all long for a soul revival. But we can’t experience this revival when we want God and. Wanting God requires something of us. It will require we forgo ourselves and every idea we have of God. Jesus said, “Those who love their life in this world will lose it. Those who care nothing for their life in this world will keep it for eternity” (John 12:25).
We all want to encounter God. But when God does not show Himself to us the way we ask, it is not because it is in His heart not to; it is because He who knows all things knows the time when our hearts are truly ready to see and savor Him.
“Wanting God requires something of us. It will require we forgo ourselves and every idea we have of God.”
To have God, we must want Him—more than friends, family, things, job, applause and acceptance and comfort. There can be nothing, even our own life, that we want more. We can not want our life and want God at the same time. If we must have Him as He promised—in fullness (John 10:10)—we must want Him in the same way. Full on, all the way, with all our heart. Surrendering everything that we are and have. Since God is the keeper of our hearts and the One who knows all hearts, He knows when it is truly all His.
“Since God is the keeper of our hearts and the One who knows all hearts, He knows when it is truly all His.”
The revival we’ve been longing for is not what we think it is. What we have longed for is God Himself. That’s the revival! And when we have come to that place where all we want is God, then revival is already taking place in our soul. Because when God brings revival, He brings Himself.
Oh my prayer is that we’ll not only be filled with all that comes with revival in a way we have never before realized, but we will be consumed with an endless and ravenous passion for God, being able to say, as David said while he was in a dark, dungy cave, “I pray to you, O LORD. I say, ‘You are my place of refuge. You are all I really want in life’” (Psalm 142:5).
O. O. Living (@OO_Living) answered the call to follow Jesus Christ at the age of fourteen after hearing the teachings of a Christian lady. He is founder and teacher of Godcentered Christianity. Living is author of God's Passion for His Glory and most recently, A Godcentered Life.