Hey team,
I was fortunate enough to be chosen to read the call to worship at church on Sunday. The text is below. Thanks to those whose ideas influenced mine --

I’m worn down by words sometimes. I think this is one of the devil’s better tricks. I talk so much, I read so much, I hear so much that words lose their meanings.

So I’ll read a psalm where David thirsts for the Lord, and his thirst seems like no big deal.

Yeah yeah, he’s thirsty, I’m thirsty, we’re all thirsty. I get it.

Then I’ll read about how God is the mighty rock and that won’t matter either.

I’ll read about the river of God being full of water and no, that meaning won’t connect with me either.

Then a day will come where the meaning does hit me. One day I’m spiritually in the desert, this hopeless middle-of-nowhere place where I’m starving and dying and a million other intense adjectives and there’s nothing I can do about it…Nothing that is, except long for God.

And those are the moments when my mind and heart rediscover their ability to feel, taste, and live in truth. Suddenly I understand that when David says his legs are in clay without God it’s because he literally cannot move without God. That when Jesus says He is the light of the world, it’s because He is the only thing that can be seen in an eternity of pitch black. Suddenly the idea of hungering and thirsting for righteousness, of hungering and thirsting for God…suddenly I realize that the desert is teaching me a thirst far better than any earthly quenching; the desert is teaching me that, in my deepest parts, I was made to crave--and to know--the Living God.

I’m not talking about yearning for God only when the chips are down. I’m talking about voluntarily entering the desert, being on my knees, sprawled out and asking to drown in His love every single day. It's about learning to live in longing for Him, and knowing that whether my day is good or bad, He saves me. Everyday He saves my life.