Psalm 42:1. As the hart panteth after (the deer longs for) the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.
Sunday, oh Sunday, our day of confidence building, faith growing, Christian uplifting, believer fellowshipping and joyful God worshipping! Wow! Yes friends, those are some of the things that happen in and to us when we gather in the Lord’s sanctuary on a Sunday. No wonder we hunger for Sunday to come so that we can get there and refresh and renew our souls, bodies and spirits!
And today we open our God worshipping with a song of praise that describes our situation to a T. It’s most appropriately titled: ‘I Need Thee Every Hour.’ It’s referring to our everlasting need for Jesus every single hour of every day! I would further like to add though, that it’s not only every hour we need Him, but we desperately need Him, every single minute of every hour of every day, especially in these very turbulent and ungodly times.
So, let’s gather round and sing this very uplifting hymn written by American poet and gospel hymnist Annie Sherwood Hawks and her Pastor Robert Lowry. The hymn is said to have been translated into more foreign languages than any other modern hymn at the time of her death. And it’s very interesting to know how the hymn was birthed. Hawks apparently stated – “For myself, the hymn was prophetic rather than expressive of my own experiences, for it was wafted out to the world on the wings of LOVE and joy, instead of under the stress of personal sorrow.”
And isn’t that strange that such a personal and emotional hymn was not born from her own personal sorrowful experiences, as so many of our other touching hymns are. It was truly prophetic, the awesome work of the Holy Spirit. Meanwhile, Lowry, who wrote the music reputedly said: ‘”I believe it was the expression of her own experience. It came to me in the form of five simple stanzas, to which I added the chorus to make it more serviceable. It inspired me at its first reading.’
So let’s get it to inspire us on this its umpteenth singing, by raising our voices in sacrificial praise in a rich, soulful, scintillating version, not the dirge like manner in which so many people sing it. With feeling now: ‘I need thee every hour, Most gracious Lord, No tender voice like thine, Can peace afford. (Chorus: I need thee oh I need thee, Every hour I need thee, Oh bless me now my Saviour, I come to thee.) I need thee every hour, Stay thou near by, Temptations lose their power, When thou art nigh (Chorus)
I need thee every hour, In joy or pain, Come quickly and abide, or life is vain. (Chorus) I need thee every hour; teach me thy will, and thy rich promises in me fulfill. (Chorus) I need thee every hour, Most holy one, Oh make me thine indeed Thou blessed Son. (Chorus: I need thee oh I need thee, Every hour I need thee, Oh bless me now my Saviour, I come to thee. I need thee, Oh I need thee, Oh bless me now my Saviour, I come to thee…I come to thee…’
And for our own sinful sakes, we had better be sincere in our sentiments and truly go to Jesus, otherwise things bad with us mih people! Now what scriptures can we find to corroborate those amazing sentiments of Ms. Hawkes? I think the first and most appropriate are these words of the Sons of Korah from Psalm 42: ‘As the hart panteth after (the deer longs for) the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?’ (Ps. 42:1-2) Now that’s how we ought to long for the God of Abraham, Jacob and Isaac, my fellow believers!
Or, as Bruh David declared when he was running from King Saul in the wilderness of Judah. ‘O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is. To see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen (looked for) thee in the sanctuary. Because thy LOVING-kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee. Thus will I bless thee while I live: I will lift up my hands in thy name.’ (Ps. 63:1-4)
That’s the kind of desire we need to have for God, especially in these very trying and uncertain times! But unfortunately, not enough of us have that overwhelming desire to seek Almighty God, our Creator and Controller. Why? I don’t know. We either don’t believe, don’t believe enough, or simply don’t care. But as Peter and John so rightly and boldly proclaimed before the Jewish rulers, when they were questioned as to the healing of a blind man at the temple gates.
‘Be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him doth this man stand here before you whole. This is the stone that was set at nought of (rejected by) you builders, which is become the head of the corner (chief corner stone). Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.’ (Acts 2:10-12)
That says it all my brethren! Jesus is the ONLY ONE who can save us from ourselves and our sins, so if we don’t truly believe in Him, then things won’t go very well for us. And it’s not like we don’t know it nuh, but we just seem to take it for a joke, or we’re besotted by the empty, short-term pleasures of sin, and we put it off until some later date. But sadly friends, then it might just be too late. So, if you know of Jesus, please accept Him today, RIGHT NOW! It will be the wisest and most timely decision you’ll ever make in this life!
And I want to quote one last scripture re the depth of need we ought to feel for Jesus. This one comes from Bruh Paul, the great apostle of the New Testament, who was himself a persecutor of the brethren, until the Lord set him straight and recruited him to spread the good news of His gospel all around the then known world. Bruh Paul wrote to the church at Philippi:
‘But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count ALL things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung (rubbish), that I may win Christ, And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith: That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death.’ (Phil. 3:7-10)
Wow! Now that’s powerful faith in and LOVE for Christ! And until we come to approximate that kind of faith in Christ, that kind of hunger and thirst for Him, we’ll not become truly mature Christians. That’s the kind of level of maturity we need to aspire to. So hopefully those scriptures will put a jolt in our system and wake us up today, to the reality that we need Jesus even more desperately than we think we do! Much LOVE!
…Jesus is the ANSWER…to EVERY question that we have… the fulfillment of EVERY need…
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