I need Thee every hour, most gracious Lord;
No tender voice like Thine can peace afford.
Refrain:
I need thee, oh, I need Thee;
Every hour I need Thee;
Oh, bless me now, my Savior,
I come to Thee
In the months before we returned to the States, I started almost every morning with the exact same prayer/thought: I NEED YOU, LORD!
James and I keep talking about how exactly we got in to the situation of being as over-extended as we were. We can pin-point the time frame where we began feeling like we were doing too much, but we weren't as clear exactly about which task/responsibility was the one that made our lives feel insurmountable.
I remember last fall a church member asking me how I was doing. My answer was that I was hanging on by a thread and that the thread had better be Jesus because all of me was finished somewhere in May/June. (my abilities, my self-reliance, my China experience, my time-management skills, my parenting....I was at the end of all of them)
While I don't recommend anyone putting themselves in the situation we were in with responsibilities, the constant remind that I need Him was a really good place to be. A dear friend here was telling me the story of telling her friends back home that she likes to listen to and sing this song while in the fetal position. "And they mostly thought I was joking," she said. But I knew she wasn't kidding. There are many aspects of life here that bring us to our knees, or to the the fetal position, or to collapsing into a ball of big ugly cry sobs on one's kitchen floor.
Since the fall and especially during our time away in the States, we've been trying to make changes to reign in our lives and our schedules. And we're doing much better overall. But I don't want to change my utter dependence on Him.
It's easy to see and admit my need for Him in the crying-on-the-kitchen-floor moments, but less easy when I can rely on my language skills, or my intelligence, or long experience here, or whatever. I want to be able to recognize my need for Him at all the moments in between utter despair and total self-reliance.
This year, one of the things I'm studying in the Bible is all the times the phrase "He is able" or "God is able" is used.
This week I was in 2 Cor. 9:8
And God is able to make every grace overflow to you, so that in every way, always having everything you need, you may excel in every good work.
I read this one of the days our heat was out, after the water has been out an entire day and the space heater we were using had just died and we weren't sure when the heat would come back on. It was a great reminder that I NEED HIM to make grace overflow. I can't do that on my own. He did indeed make grace overflow. He changed my attitude about the day and gave us everything we needed. The heat even turned on later that day. But even if it hadn't (more so if it hadn't!) I would have had to go back to my prayer, "I need you, Lord!" I need you to make grace overflow! I need you!
