The Level of Your Longing

All right, Porch. How are we doing? Are we doing okay tonight? Great to see you. Welcome back. I'm so glad you would make your time to be here with us this Tuesday and particularly in this series. I don't know what it is. I just have so much expectation for what God is going to do as we read his Word and work our way through this series.

And it's not just an expectation for what he's doing here in Dallas, Texas, though we love you and we think he is doing something tremendous here; it's also an expectation for what he is doing all over the nation. So, if you're tuning in with us right now, welcome. We love that you're a part of The Porch wherever it is you are. We're firm believers that God can meet with any person in any place at any time, including you. Special shout-out to Porch.Live Springfield, Scottsdale, and Fresno.

I want to dive into this, but I want to make sure we take a moment and pray. Again, I'm a firm believer in this space, if you're not familiar, that my goal is not to be the weekly entertainment. I do not want to stand up here and just be the man in the arena and preach to a large room. I really want you to meet with God himself, because I'm a firm believer he wants to meet with you. So, can we just pray for a moment? Would you be willing to do that?

God, we're so grateful that we have a moment here with you. It's good to be near you. God, we know we're always near to you, that for those who have placed their faith in your Son for the forgiveness of their sins, nothing can separate us from your love, yet, God, oftentimes we grow desensitized to the fact that you're close. More than even that, we grow discouraged to the fact that it is in your heart to be close. So, God, right now we just want to quiet ourselves, still ourselves in your presence and be reminded you're here.

Take a moment and pray for yourself. Just ask, "God, would you speak to me?" As you talk to him, know that you don't speak to an empty, vaulted ceiling; you speak to a living and true God. Then, if you would, would you pray for me? I need the Lord. I'm asking that his Spirit would help me here. I have nothing good to give you. Only he has good to give. So would you pray for me and ask that he would speak through me to be helpful to you?

Father, we come with a really humble expectation tonight, knowing that there's nothing within us that deserves anything from you but believing that it's in your heart to give to us because you love us and you gladly lavish your favor upon those who seek you. We seek you tonight, and it is in your name we pray, amen.

Well, I'm not exactly the type to relive my football glory days from high school, but there is one moment that I think would make Hollywood very proud. Now, this moment is not the moment you would likely expect. It wasn't in the pouring rain beneath Friday night lights against our crosstown rival en route to the state championship. It wasn't that kind of moment. It was actually in the moment you would not expect. It was in the middle of offseason during conditioning.

I do not remember why, but for whatever reason, on this day, our coaches collectively decided that we had not worked hard enough and we clearly needed to do a lot of conditioning. Now, the choice in conditioning for my coaches was always to the tune of up-downs. I don't know if you know what up-downs are. If you don't, consider yourself blessed. Up-downs are exactly as the name implies. You're up, and then you're down, and then you're up, and then you're down. You throw yourself to the ground, and then you pick yourself back up off the ground.

I'm convinced that if ever I get into a fistfight, all I need to do is throw that person to the earth and have them get up, and then throw them to the earth and have them get back up, because it is exhausting. There is nothing quite like this form of conditioning. The thing is you do them until either your coach tells you to stop or you die. It's kind of the way this sort of conditioning works.

For whatever reason, my coach was nowhere close to blowing the whistle in this moment. He just continued to whistle over and over and over and over and over again, calling us to continue in this form of conditioning until the sun had gone down, guys had lost their lunch, and I was convinced this was the place that the Lord was going to call me home. All hope seemed lost…that is, until a guy standing one row in front of me where the captains always stood decided to yell out, "We want more, coach!"

"Uh, I know you're captain, but that's not, in fact, true for the rest of us."

"We're hungry, coach!"

"It is past dinnertime, but I don't think that's what you mean."

"We ain't tired!"

"If you're not looking around you, perhaps you've missed the fact that we are exhausted. That guy hasn't been up for the last 15 minutes. He's laid out flat."

"We want more!"

"Dude, I think you think this looks cooler than it actually is, but it is not cool at all."

At least, that's what I thought…until the guys around me started agreeing with him, joining him, chanting alongside him. "More. More. More. More." I felt like a man on an island all by himself, because I did not want more. But what I noticed in this moment was, as we all collectively unified around this common cry for more, stirred about by a great movement within our hearts, something moved within my coach's heart. I could see it in his face.

I looked at him very specifically, and what I saw was a look of pride cast across his gaze as we gave him exactly what he wanted. We played right into his hand. He was looking for his team to become united under the common bond of a unifying desire. Now, why do I tell you all that? Because when it comes to revival, God often works through a people found not in the expected places. Not in massive stadiums with packed-out crowds and star-studded lineups and all the high drama of an amazing event.

He can work in that space, yes, but where he most often works is in the unexpected places, the proverbial equivalent of offseason. He works in the ordinariness, the simplicity, the mediocrity of life. It's in those places that he is looking for a very specific group of people. He's looking for a group of people that, like my teammates and I, are united by a common bond and cry for something more, which begs the question…What more should I want for? You should want for more of him.

You see, God is looking for a people who are looking for him, who are hungry for his presence, who are longing for his power, who are seeking after his person. The degree of our desire for God…not always, but often…determines his response to us. So, how do we deepen our desire, our longing? How do we stir up our yearning for more of God? How do you cultivate hunger? That's what I want to talk to you about tonight, and the way we're going to do it is we're going to work through a few verses in Isaiah, chapter 55.

We're in the middle of a new series called Revive where we're exploring all of the concepts that surround this idea of revival. I don't know if you're aware (we unpacked it a little bit last week), but we're standing in the middle of a really interesting and unique moment of history where there's a surge of spirituality that is spreading across not just our country but the globe.

I won't unpack all the data for you again, but what's being called the quiet revival has been distinguished by a particular rise in commitments to Christ, church attendance abroad, higher levels of satisfaction within those who claim Christ as opposed to those who do not claim Christ, lower levels of anxiety and depression, and young men outpacing women in their return to the faith, which is just wild.

Ladies, take this as an encouragement. If you haven't met him yet, he might, in fact, be on his way. Gentlemen, take this as a word of warning. The competition is about to get stiff, so if you haven't made your move, they're coming. I don't know if you've seen, but the tide has turned and the men are on the return. You need to make your move and take your shot as soon as I speak.

We are in the early phases of a new move of God. Here's the thing: I desperately do not want us to miss it. Now, let me be very, very clear, because this was a great concern of mine as I knew we were going to engage this topic. I am not angling for us to be the apex moment in awakening history, but I am aiming for us to be a part of awakening history. I want God to do in here what he's doing out there.

I'm asking the Lord, begging him still, to actually move, not just in our day but in this room and in your lives. I'm praying that God would give us greater intimacy with Jesus, that we would see conversions of the least likely, that he would release you into your destinies, that we would see generational sin broken on the anvil of what Christ has come to accomplish, that we would see his kingdom come here to Dallas and wherever it is you're tuning in as it is in heaven. That's what I'm praying he would do.

But here's the thing we have to know. Though we would unapologetically want to see more of God move, the way he moves in meaningful change at a broader level comes through meaningful change at an inner level. You do not find revival by seeking revival; you find revival by seeking renewal. At least that's the way Mark Sayers, who has been a great influence to me on this topic as I have been studying, puts it.

I like the way he writes this in his book Reappearing Church. He says, "Revival is when renewal occurs on a large scale, bringing significant advancement, growth, and kingdom fruit to a city, people group, movement, region, or nations. Revival is renewal gone viral." If we want to see a widespread change, then there needs to be an individual change. Do you get that?

So, what we're trying to walk through in this series is…What do those steps look like? How do we produce personal renewal? How do we change what's happening in the inner man or inner woman so that God might change what's happening in the outer world? We can't move his hand in terms of how it affects everyone here, but we can change what's happening in here.

The history books would agree with this philosophy. By and large, outpourings of the Spirit or moments of awakening or revival or revolution or renewal, whatever you want to call it, whatever your preferred terminology is when it comes to this topic… All throughout history, they have been marked, first and foremost, not by technique, not by charisma; they have been marked by two things: humility and hunger.

In the Welsh Revival, which saw 90,000 people come to Christ in just one year… Its origins can be traced back to a small prayer gathering of one coal-mining preacher named Evan Roberts and 16 teenagers who wanted God. The social impact was crazy. Just to give you some perspective of what happened there in Wales… Crime rates plummeted to the point that there was no one for the magistrates to try in court. Police officers ran out of work to do and started creating singing quartets to perform in pubs.

They found that alcohol sales dropped dramatically as thousands gave up drinking, and in one instance, some of the coal miners, who used pit ponies to resource their materials in and out of the mines, could not communicate with the horses because the horses were so accustomed to vile language. They were used to expletives and curse language. These coal miners had stopped speaking in such an inappropriate way that the animals couldn't even understand them. That's how massively God moved in the Welsh Revival.

In the Ulster Revival, there were 100,000 people who came to faith, and guess where it originated: within four Sunday school teachers who agreed to pray together in Ireland. It started in a humble place. The Hebrides Revival was an outpouring of the Spirit that struck the Scottish Hebrides after two sisters, one 82-year-old named Peggy and one 84-year-old named Christine Smith, started praying for God to move in their parish.

They looked around their church and saw no young people, and they felt a deep need for God to move in and bring young people to their church. What they found, as they began to pray, was that an awakening would come to the Hebrides the likes of which people could not explain. There were spontaneous outpourings of the Spirit where entire villages would awaken in the morning, and men and women would be on their knees in repentance.

You would drive down the road, and the roadsides would be filled with people on their knees, crying out to God for mercy. One famous story recalls a dance hall where a group of young adults, like you and me, were gathered together, yet they felt such conviction from the Spirit that they all left the dance hall and went to the church to pray instead. This was the Hebrides Revival.

In the Businessmen's Revival, 10,000 to 30,000 people began attending regular prayer meetings in New York because one businessman organized weekly noontime prayer meetings for anyone who would want to attend. This led to hundreds of thousands of converts in only one year's time as estimated by historians.

In the English Revival, John Wesley (famous) and his companions prayed until the entire country was aroused by the gospel again. In the Moravian Revival, which began the 24/7 prayer movement by refugees, ultimately was moved so powerfully by the Spirit of God that what was originally just a week's worth of prayer, 24/7 within a week's time, extended to 110 years of nonstop 24/7. This is what God does when the humble and the hungry seek after him.

Why would God use teenagers, old ladies, refugees, coal miners, and businesspeople to produce revival? Why would he do this? Because they want for him. We should want for him too. What do you think God might do in your spheres of influence if you want for him in a very similar way? God cares about the level of your longing. So, for the rest of our time, I want to talk to you about how you deepen it. There are three things you need to know, specifically.

1. We are creatures of desire. That's at least how Isaiah begins to unpack it when he gets into verse 1. He says this, talking about creatures of desire: "Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price."

Don't you hear it in the text? God is speaking to a people who hunger and thirst, which are representative of a people who long for something, who want for something, who yearn for something, who are seeking after something. The reason for that is intrinsic within the hearts of all people is that quality which bases its decisions on an internal desire. Every decision you make in life is rooted in what you desire most, not in what you've disciplined yourself for or what you feel called to be dutiful in.

You may hear that and think, "Kylen, no. I make plenty of decisions where discipline and duty are the primary motivating forces behind why I do what I do. I don't want to pay my bills. Do you think I desire to do that? I don't want to get up and go to the gym. No way. Blind date? That's not exactly fun when a friend wants to set me up. Do you think I want to mow my grass?"

There are plenty of areas of your life where you may look and think, "I don't desire that thing. I am disciplined for it, and I feel a duty to it." Yet, though you may not desire the object itself, you desire what it produces. You may not want to mow the grass, but you do want to avoid the watchful HOA eye or that nosy neighbor living next door. You may not necessarily want to go to the gym, but you really do desire the benefits the gym produces, the kind of body it creates.

You may not want to pay your bills, but you like the comfort that paying your bills produces. Blind dates are tough. You don't know who you're sitting across the table from, yet we all want to find love. You are driven by desire when you boil it down to its most essential place. You see, every decision we make, every action we take, and every word we speak are all driven by our greatest desire in that moment.

It's the reason why, all throughout the Gospels, whenever Jesus engages with people, he does so on the basis of their desire. Have you ever noticed this? It's fascinating, because when you study the Scripture… Not every interaction, but anytime someone approaches Jesus, most often he is engaging them with some sort of interaction that is testing their desire.

If they come to him, he may confront them with a question about their desire or he may commend them with some encouragement for their desire. In Mark 10, he talks to a guy named Blind Bartimaeus. Bartimaeus, being blind, wants what a blind man would want. "Give me my sight, Jesus." Yet Jesus looks at Bartimaeus and says, "What do you want?" "Jesus, it's obvious. He wants to see." Yet Jesus wants to know what Bart desires.

When Jesus encounters the first disciples in the first chapter of John, he looks at them and asks them the question, "What are you seeking?" Do you hear it? That's a question testing desire. When James and John want to sit at the right hand of Jesus, he looks at them and asks them, "What do you want me to do for you?" Another question of desire.

When he finds Mary at the tomb following his resurrection, weeping, he comes to her and asks, "Whom do you seek?" "Well, it's obvious. She's at your tomb." He wants to know what it is she desires. Zacchaeus, that wee little man, climbed up into a tree because he sought to see him. He wanted to see Jesus. The Canaanite woman who wanted a few morsels of crumbs from Jesus' table… What did he do? He kind of dodged her for a minute until she pursued him, and then he realized her desire was so great that he had not seen a faith like hers.

When you get to the two men who were both blind seeking after Jesus, they cry out, "Son of David, have mercy!" yet Jesus dodges them as well, because then they seek him more, and he realizes these men want not just for the blessing; they want the blesser. What did the rich ruler do? He comes to Jesus, and Jesus looks at him and says, "Give everything away and follow me." Why? "I want to test the depth of your desire to be with me."

The bleeding woman pushes through a crowd. Jesus could have moved on. He had given power plenty of times before, yet in that moment he engages with her to commend her faith. The people who brought their paralytic friend to Jesus, dug through the roof, and lowered him on a mat… Have you ever thought about that?

Jesus says he saw their faith. What does that mean? They didn't show up with shovels and excavation tools at hand, thinking, "You know what? We're going to have to lower this guy through the roof." No, they showed up thinking, "We're going to just bring him to Jesus," yet they couldn't get to Jesus, so they decided to hop up on the roof and start clawing their way through until they could get their friend down. They had a deep desire to get to Jesus.

What is the point in all of those explanations, all of which are not actually cumulative? Jesus responds to the degree of our desire. Based on verse 1, he gives us a really good reason to desire to be near to him. He gives us three incentives. As he unpacks it, he offers water, milk, and wine, which at first glance may not stand out, but those three things are very different from one another, and so too is that which they offer.

If you think about it, water provides refreshment. If you're thirsty, you don't want a tall glass of milk. Ron Burgundy said so himself. "Milk was a bad choice." You don't want milk; you want water. Why? Because it's refreshing. It's reviving. It's restoring to a person. Have you ever been outside on a really hot day, taken a drink of cold water, and felt it move from your mouth, down your throat, and into your stomach? It is the greatest feeling in the world. Try it sometime.

But he doesn't simply decry milk; he says milk serves a different purpose. Where water serves for your refreshment, milk serves for your nourishment. Just last week, my wife and I took our newborn son Kash… He's 6 months, and he had his six-month checkup. What we found out from that meeting is that he's north of the 90th percentile in both weight and height, which just means he's a very big boy. Why is he so big? Because he has never missed a meal in his life.

Some of you are not growing because you are spiritually malnourished. You are not feeding on that which will provide for your nourishment. Instead of taking in more of God's Word, you're focused on taking in season 3 of The White Lotus. I'm not condemning your favorite show, but what I am saying is you are starving your spirituality when you mistake entertainment for nourishment. You have to take in the milk that he offers.

The last one he offers is wine, and he's certainly not talking about the cheap stuff that comes in a box. Water is for your refreshment, milk is for your nourishment, and wine is for your enjoyment. Have you ever thought about this? Christianity is supposed to be fun in the sense that it should free you from living a solitary life of pragmatism, stoicism, and chillness.

You should actually feel a deep sense of delight in the world. It should free you to a childlike wonder where you adventure things the way God intended for them to be experienced. It should catapult you to see in the world all the goodness God has imbued within every single individual element. You're supposed to enjoy life…in a godly way, to be very clear.

Friends, we are creatures of desire, and Jesus knows it, so he has given us every reason to desire him. As C.S. Lewis puts it, "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing."

You see, your desire points to a greater satisfier, and all of our satisfaction is found in Christ. If you want to cultivate your hunger for more of God, you have to see where it is you're wanting and realize he's the answer for it. So, if you feel weary, if you're looking into your life and feel a deep sense of weariness over the fact that you can't keep a job or you're facing chronic illness or you're stuck when everyone else seems to be racing ahead, you should know where you're weary, he has water. He can refresh you.

Where you feel weak, tired of your singleness, wondering why God has left you in this specific relationship status when everyone else seems to be moving forward, overwhelmed by how behind you feel… If you feel weak, he has milk for you, that which will strengthen you. If you feel waned, just discouraged by where you're at in life, apathetic on your best day, coping nightly just to get through the week, he looks at you and says, "Hey, I have wine for you. I have enjoyment for you. I can give you delight the likes of which this world cannot provide you."

This is the heart of Jesus toward you. He has everything you want and more. We're creatures of desire, and all of our desires should drive us deeper into God, yet often, they do not drive us deeper into God, do they? Often, our desires lead us farther from God rather than near to God. That's what Isaiah says. He moves into verse 2 and says, "Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food."

I think this verse paints a profound picture when you inspect it for what it's saying. What you see in this verse is not a picture of an angry judge banging a gavel and casting his verdict. You don't see someone who is muttering disappointment under his breath. "Oh my gosh! When are they going to finally realize that I am the one who gives all satisfaction?" You don't see in this verse a picture of God clasping his hands and begging you to believe that he's the source of all your joy. That's not what you see.

What you see is a picture of an inquirer. You see God ask a question. He just asks, "Why?" Like, "Why is it that you spend your money on that which is not bread yet want to be filled? Why is it that you work, you labor, in an area that does not produce your satisfaction?" You see, he doesn't make an emotional appeal to you; he makes a logical appeal. He's looking at you and saying, "Hey, why are you doing that which is really unproductive?"

Does anybody in here hate getting to the end of your day and feeling like, "Man, this was the most unproductive day"? He's looking at you and saying, "Hey, come on in. Why don't you take a seat. Why don't we talk about what has been happening here. It seems like you're spinning your wheels and you're not making the kind of progress you want to be making when it comes to your satisfaction."

I remember in my first job right out of college, there was a guy in the company… He was in mid-level management. He'd been around for a really long time. He was kind of grandfathered in. He sort of meandered around the office space every single day, full of activity but not a lot of productivity, to the point that everyone noticed, so we started making wagers on what he was going to do next. It sort of became this kind of spectator sport.

We'd look at him, and we'd wonder, "Maybe he's going to the kitchen to grab another cup of coffee. Oh, you know what? Perhaps he's going by HR because he really likes the girl who works at the front desk. No, maybe he's going to swing by product development because he just wants to test whatever the newest, latest, greatest thing is that they've been cooking up."

We would always wager, because this guy was full of movement, but he really wasn't going anywhere. He was full of activity but not a lot of productivity. God is looking at you when it comes to your pursuit of desire, and he's saying, "Hey, it looks like maybe you and he have something in common. There's a lot of busyness but not a lot of traction. You seem like you're seeking satisfaction, but you're not really accomplishing it."

You see, God is not making an emotional appeal in this moment because he doesn't need to make an emotional appeal; he's making a logical appeal. Why doesn't God need to make an emotional appeal? Because we don't need to be emotionally convinced that the things of this world will not satisfy, because we feel that in our inner being. It doesn't matter if you believe in Jesus or you don't believe in Jesus.

You go out with friends and get black-out drunk, and you feel shame. You want to feel something nice so you look at porn, and it leaves you feeling empty. You want to find some success and measure up in the eyes of others, so you work really hard at the office, yet it leaves you feeling exhausted. You want desperately to be accepted by other people, so you'll go out and do whatever it takes to be accepted by them, yet it leaves you feeling compromised.

Do you see what I'm saying here? We know that often, when we try to seek satisfaction in the things of this world, it doesn't necessarily move us to a place where we feel great about it, but here's the thing. Why then do we do it? Because although we don't feel great about it, we also don't feel bad enough about it. In fact, oftentimes, when we do this, when we satisfy ourselves through sin, it still feels good.

If you think about it, sin wouldn't be that useful of an obstacle from the Enemy if it didn't evoke some pleasure, garner some satisfaction, leave you feeling some kind of way. You would just look at it and be like, "I'm good. Thanks." Satan doesn't come up to Eve in the very beginning of the Bible with a smoking vial of poison. "Mm, doesn't this look yummy?" That's not what he does. He approaches her with fruit from the tree that was a "delight to the eyes," that which looked desirable, probably was even enjoyable, and yet ultimately was wasteful. If you want to cultivate a hunger for God, then you need to know…

2. Pursuing the wrong desire is wasteful. That's why God is appealing to our logic here. He wants us to reason to the reality that while the things we often seek our happiness in feel good, they're not good. Only in him is there that which is good and rich to the soul. That's how James, Jesus' brother, recalls it in his first chapter. He says, "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change."

Now, you may hear that and think to yourself, "Kylen, I get it, man, but listen. I'm not openly sinful. Yeah, man, I struggle with pride, and I want the acceptance of others, but I'm not egregiously addicted to something. It's not like I'm sexually deviant. I'm doing pretty good. I'm not bottoming out at the bottom of a bottle every single weekend. That's not who I am."

Here's what I would say. Though you think you're in the clear, you would be mistaken. Satan's greatest scheme isn't to get you focused on the worst thing; his greatest scheme is to get you focused off of the best thing. That's what he wants to do. He doesn't need you to get hooked on meth and sell kidneys on the black market. That's not his goal. His goal is to lead you to a place where you find more happiness in your job than you do in Jesus, because then your focus will be more focused on your job than it will be on Jesus.

His goal is to get you to a place where you have deeper happiness in your relationship…that guy, that girl…than you do in Jesus, because as you're more focused on them, you will be less focused on him. His goal is to get you so happy in your social status that your focus is fully set on your friends, your fans, and your followers more than on Jesus.

You see, this is the danger of Dallas, Texas. We are at risk of comfort, materialism, status, acceptance, and approval, and it's not just in our city; it is for our generation. Satan would love to lull you to sleep with the meager pleasures of a nice life so that you never awake to the major pleasure of a godly life. He wants to keep you asleep. He doesn't need to drown you out; he just needs to quiet you down.

John Piper said this in his book A Hunger For God: "The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we drink in every night. […] The greatest adversary of love to God is not his enemies but his gifts. And the most deadly appetites are not for the poison of evil, but for the simple pleasures of earth. For when these replace an appetite for God himself, the idolatry is scarcely recognizable and almost incurable."

That's why God is trying to reason with you here. He knows you're already well acquainted with the dissatisfaction this world has to offer. He just wants you to wake up to the realization that you deserve more than dissatisfaction, for he has come to give you more in Christ himself. That's why he continues. As he moves into verse 3, he says, "Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David."

Notice throughout this passage that God doesn't dismiss our desire. He doesn't belittle the fact that we want for happiness, that we long for some kind of fulfillment, that we seek after satisfaction; he just tells us where those things are found. He says, "They're found in me," which is why we have to cultivate a greater hunger for God.

3. Jesus is the only one worthy of wanting. It's interesting. After bringing us to a place where we've already answered why we seek after that which will not satisfy, he moves us to a place where he answers where we can seek that which will satisfy, which is in him. He says, "Seek me that your soul may live."

Now, to be abundantly clear, that's certainly talking about salvation, but it's also talking about so much more. The promise that your soul may live is not just so you can get eternal life one day but so you can have fullness of life right now. That's what he's trying to pull you into. As I was thinking through that, I cannot help but wonder, in a room this size, how many of us think we're already living.

You got the great job, the fancy position. You have someone who loves you. You have a million followers who want to be like you. You're the object of all of your friends' envy. You have time every single weekend to get out there and play golf with the boys, and you've really dialed in your swing. You've found the perfect place to live and the perfect people to live with. Life, according to you, is everything it should look like. You have actually found that which will bring your soul to life.

But if you drill down and look deep within yourself, into the inner recesses of who you are at a soul level, I would reckon…nay, I would actually wager…that many of us are sitting here thinking to ourselves, "Is this all there is? Is this it?" No. There's more. There is more on the table for you. The beauty of revival is this idea that Jesus has come to set you free to a life that is so much bigger than we often settle for. He's just trying to wake us up so we realize it.

He wants to bring you to a place where you know "There is one worthy of wanting that surpasses everything else I've ever wanted." Psalm 63:3 says, "Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you." There is one you can have which will not cost you, one you can have which will never fail you, one you can have that will satisfy you forever. He has come that your soul can live. The question is…Will you come to him so your soul might?

Just a couple of weeks ago, not even two full weeks, 2.1 million people gathered on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for a free Lady Gaga concert. Have y'all heard about this? The pictures are insane to look at, because it is a crowd the likes of which I could never imagine myself being numbered in, not because I don't like her music but because it is insanely crowded.

Can you think about what it took to be a part of these photos? Massive inconvenience. People waking up at the crack of dawn to get a good seat, though the concert would not begin until 10:00 p.m. later that night. A crowd twice the size of Dallas, Texas, 2.1 million people, showed up for this thing. One spectator, recalling the event, remembered it as religious.

What would compel people to do this, to suffer the inconvenience, to fight the massive crowds, to endure all of the problems you know this had to have produced? They saw one worthy of wanting. As I was reading the article, trying to understand what could compel people to this place, what was remembered about this crowd was they cried together, "She came! She came! She came!" talking about Lady Gaga. You see, they came because she came.

Friends, how convicting is it for us that we have one so much more worthy of wanting who has, in fact, come, yet we will not come to him? Jesus is so worthy, so deserving of our desire, and the beauty of him is that he has produced no cost to come near. In fact, he has removed the cost by burying it in himself, by dying your death upon the cross. There's no waiting to be done. You don't have to wake up and stay late. No, you can have him right now in this room, in this moment, here today, and there's no inconvenience to be his.

That greatest inconvenience that stood in the way of you belonging to Jesus he has removed, and to call it an inconvenience is to grossly underestimate what it was, because it was sin. It was a massive blasphemy against the God of the universe, a perfect, holy, and right God, that said, "We don't want you; we want ourselves." He removed that inconvenience from his presence by burying the full weight of it in his own death so that you would never feel inconvenienced to be near to him. You can be near to him right now. Isn't that crazy? Golly!

This is something I just have been begging God. I want us to wake up to the reality that this is all real. That's why I yell at you every single Tuesday. I just want you to get it. There is something realer than reality in this space, and it's God. He is not distant. He is not dormant. He is not dead. He is not a concept to study or something to intellectually fascinate about. He is not one to emotionally feel good in your soul over. No, he is one to experience, to engage with, to encounter.

The way you find that is you hunger for more of him. You are a creature of desire. He is the fulfiller of your desire. We often desire that which is wasteful, but he desires that which is worthwhile, to be with you forever. We, my dear friends, are so unworthy of wanting, but he, the only one worthy of wanting, wants you. Do you want him? Cultivate your hunger and have him, beginning tonight. Let me pray for us.

Father, we love you. We want to meet with you. God, in my sincerity, as I was sitting in service earlier tonight… I'm just looking for you. I'm just wanting for you. I'm trusting the plan we've created. I'm believing in the program we've crafted, but, Lord, this whole room, all of these people and what we do now… It is yours. We follow you.

If that means we sing all night, we'll sing all night. If that means we pray until we lose our voices, we will pray until we lose our voices. If that means we must confess that final 1 percent, the very thing we have held on to for so very long, then we will do it. We want to go where it is you are, because it is you, Jesus, we want. We don't want from you; we want more of you. We want more of you.

So, we want to sing to you now in an honest declaration that that is true. Some of us need to sing until we believe it. We have to sing until we start singing. Some of us need to pray until we start praying. We have to get ourselves to a place where we believe, but often we have to believe until we start believing. God, we must labor, we must seek, we must strive, we must desire, because you are worthy. It's to you we pray right now. In Jesus' name, amen.