The Constant Need

In my last post I talked about the challenge of living in the world even as Jesus calls us to be apart from it. There is a disconnect resulting from the rich joy Christ is filling me with and the deep desires He is awakening that feel so impossible to satisfy in this world. As I've been living with the disconnect, the paradox, over the last week I've discovered inside me a constant need for communion with God. It is something I cannot go without. I am entirely addicted and wholly dependent.

I've experienced something similar to this in my walk for a long time. For the past year I've made a point of beginning my mornings with prayer and for a long time before that I'd made an effort to read my Bible on a daily basis. Even then I noticed a difference in my life when I missed those daily times with God. Taking time each morning became an essential part of my day.

What I'm experiencing now is like that but about a hundred times more intense. It's not enough to offer up a brief prayer or two at the beginning of the day, I now need to prey with an intense passion to start my mornings. I need to read the Word because without it I feel lost. And it cannot be once a day anymore. It must be constantly throughout the day.

It takes all different forms. Sometimes it's earnest prayer that God will center me on Him again as I begin to feel the erosion of The Matrix. Sometimes it's a more specific request that God has laid it on my heart to fight for. Other times it's my heart crying out with whatever emotion is raging inside of it. Often I find myself just sitting outside and staring at the world God's created.

I suspect I'm beginning to understand what Paul meant when he talked about praying at all times in the spirit. I can only imagine how much more desperate the need must have been for someone like Paul. For him, no doubt, once a day, once an hour, even once a minute was not enough. For him the constant need was exactly that: constant. And when he said "all times" he meant it quite literally.

Praying for me is not a duty or a discipline, it is a breath of air. It is a need to unplug from The Matrix and remember that there is another reality. It is a desire to share my heart with The One who rescued it.

Not only is prayer not duty or discipline, it cannot be, it must not be. The constant need is only grown by Christ awakening our hearts and calling us further up and further in. No amount of striving or effort on our part will get us there. It is a path of grace and transformation. The only way to find that path is to begin to believe in just how good Jesus is, how much life He has for us right now and how much He desires to restore us to who we were meant to be.

My constant need, my deep desire for prayer and union with God, has been awakened by where God is leading me and where God is leading me I never could have found on my own. It's only by His grace and His love. It's always only by His grace and His love.