"Dear
God, I don’t want anything, I just want to run to Jesus Christ. I want Him so
bad it hurts."
Here I sit on my sister’s bed
during prime blogging time (those beautiful hours between midnight and 3 a.m.), telling myself that even decaf
coffee after 5 p.m. is a bad idea.
My sister is in India and I miss her...and her bed is more comfortable than mine
– not that that matters when I’m wide awake. So what do I do when I’m wide
awake instead of sleeping? Tonight I’ve been reading other people’s old blog
posts while listening to an audio Bible.
My favorite old blog post is
from three years ago and was written by Adam Young, the musical genius besides
such musical projects as Owl City and Sky Sailing. It is a piece he wrote while
in a post-surgery drug fog, and he had no memory of writing it when it was
found.
If you are brave, or if your
brain works like mine, click on that link. Most of it doesn’t make sense, but
sometimes making sense isn’t the point. It is a thing of beauty, taking mismatched
word pictures and creating a tapestry of color. And if you look closely, you
will find golden threads woven among the bright hues.
Drugs alter one’s state of mind;
that is a fact. But the person is still there, and in many ways more accessible
because all practiced guard has been removed. Because “Hercules Goes Bananas”
was written while Adam was on prescribed painkillers, there are pieces of
himself that showed through without inhibition. Several of these moments
provoke me to love Jesus more, but none more than this:
“Dear God, I don’t want
anything, I just want to run to Jesus Christ. I want Him so bad it hurts. I
need Him...Oh my God, all I want to do is live to make You proud." - Adam
Young
Matthew 12:34 says, “Out of
the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.” (ESV) When the filter was
removed, what came out of Adam was, “I want Him so bad it hurts.”
My life’s cry
In many ways I feel like I’ve
never moved on from the cry that formed in my heart as a girl. When I was
twelve, I first penned the words, “God, I want to want You.” One thing have I
desired, and that one thing I will seek: to dwell in the house of the Lord, to
gaze on His beauty and inquire in His temple. I want to want Him more every
day.
Maybe someday I’ll face a situation
where my filter is removed, or maybe when persecution comes I will be forced to
choose between my Lord and my life. No matter what I face, I want the overflow
of my heart to be this: No matter the cost, no matter the loss, no matter the
sacrifice, I want Jesus.
Oh, that He would grant to me
that I may want Him so bad it hurts.
