Along with reading Desiring God, I’m finally getting around to reading Francis Chan’s Crazy Love.

They’re both hitting me right in the same spot. It’s convicting and it hurts, but it makes me want to love Jesus so much more. It’s the desire of my heart to love God; no longer an obligation. I have a habit of justifying myself, but if you’re reading this, you sin as much as me (because we’re all sinners in light of a holy God), so I’m just laying it out. Christ intended to set me free when he was crucified; my responsibility is to take hold of that freedom and live in it.

Desiring God is a process. I can’t desire Him on my own, because without Him I can do nothing. He has to help me to love Him, to draw close to Him because of my unworthiness. Read Crazy Love if this doesn’t make sense! 

I often have spurts of time when I desperately desire to know God, and sometimes it feels impossible to approach Him because, maybe I didn’t have enough time with the Lord that week, or maybe I consciously sinned minutes before and felt as if I couldn’t approach God out of a sinful heart. But no.

Number 1: I can’t be clean without the Lord’s cleansing, so thinking that I have to be clean before I pray/approach God is pretty ridiculous. As the Needtobreathe lyrics say, “I’m not able on my own.” God reaches down into our dirt and wipes us off. He is the Living Water, precious Redeemer, Rescuer. 

Number 2: Getting to know the Lord takes time, like any relationship. Intentionality, quantity time, quality time, prayer, memorizing Scripture, serving, and worship all play into this. Psalm 131:2 is quoted in Crazy Love: “Like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me.” I think it’s a perfect description of where I’m at. I’ve been so blessed to, “from infancy…have known the holy scriptures” (2 Timothy 3:15), but I am also incredibly unknowledgeable about so much. The Psalm is a humbling reminder of consistency. Consistency in my walk with the Lord. Perseverance. Understanding and trusting the Lord’s strength to complete, mature, and teach me.