Are you desperate for God? Or has the Americanized Christian experience left your faith dull, complacent, lukewarm, and wading in mediocrity.
Jon Bloom of Desiring God Ministries observed:
The New Testament teaches us that whether or not our treasure is really in heaven is most clearly seen when it costs us our earthly treasures in order to obtain it. But American Christians live in the most prosperous nation in world history and the one in which it costs the least to be a Christian.
This environment can be deadly to faith. It allows false faith to masquerade as real very easily. And its power to dissipate zeal and energy and mission-focus and willingness to risk is extraordinary because it doesn’t come to us with a whip and a threat. It comes to us with a pillow and a promise of comfort for us and our children. The former makes us desperate for God. The latter robs our sense of desperation.
And it’s the lack of a sense of desperation for God that is so deadly. If we don’t feel desperate for God, we don’t tend to cry out to him. Love for this present world sets in subtly, like a spiritual leprosy, damaging spiritual nerve endings so that we don’t feel the erosion and decay happening until it’s too late.
If we have lost our desperation for God, we must spend ourselves in prayer and fasting. Hungering after God isn’t something that our busy culture is conducive to stimulating in us. We must fast and pray for God to deliver us from the spiritual carcinogens of affluence, prosperity, and comfort. Having the “good life” isn’t a bad thing in and of itself. It’s when the good life eradicates our desperation for God that lukewarmness begins to set it in.
Here are some questions you can ask to examine yourself for lukewarmness:
- How has your appetite been for God’s word lately?
- Do you find yourself interceding for the suffering church around the world, praying for the lost in your community; or just offering abbreviated prayers of “thanks” for all your blessings?
- Has church become a place to have your needs met (to be blessed or have a satisfactory consumer experience), or is it a community you serve and bless—people you are committed to living out God’s mission with, sacrificing for, and investing in?
- Are you having any spiritual conversations with people outside of a regular church service or organized Bible study? Is Christ consuming your life, or is he merely being micromanaged by your life?
The Psalmist cries out to God in Psalm 42:1-2 (ESV): “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?” And in Psalm 63:1, from the arid conditions of the wilderness of Judah, David desperately pours out his soul: “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.”
In his New Testament epistle, James wrote: “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.” (James 4:8 ESV)
Through the Old Testament prophet, Jeremiah, God declared: “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:13 ESV)
What if we pursued God with the same intensity that He has pursued us? Are you desperate enough to find out what that might look like?
In The Pursuit of God, A. W. Tozer wrote: “O God, I have tasted thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need of further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still.”
God, we repent of our lack of desperation. Grant us a spiritual desire that can only come from your grace!