Summer Song Vol. 3 // "Lord, I Need You"

I looked that up.

That it was a song that's Matt Marr, by the way, who uh released that song, Lord I Need You, on April 19th, 2013.

And I don't know if this is an age thing, but I'm like, I thought that was kind of a newer song.

That's 13 years old.

Oh my goodness.

But as he was saying, that the inspiration of that song comes from an old hymn written by Annie Sherwood Hawks.

Annie Sherwood Hawks.

And that hymn is entitled, I Need Thee Every Hour.

Maybe it's a song you remember.

That song was pinned in 1872.

And I'm reminded we've seen this common thread in a lot of the songs that we've sung and focused on in our summer song series this summer.

I just said a lot of S words there, but uh, but it's amazing how uh there's such a connection to songs that are pretty old.

Uh I want to read to you a quote from the author of I Need Thee Every Hour, Annie Sherwood Hawks.

And this is what inspired her to pin that old hymn.

One day, as a young wife and mother of 37 years of age, I was busy with my regular household tasks during a bright June morning.

Suddenly, I became so filled with the sense of nearness to the master that wondering how one could live without him, either in joy or pain, these words were ushered into my mind.

The thought at once taking full possession of me, I need thee every hour.

I think I felt that in a way this weekend.

Just a lot of cool things that happened this weekend, um, a lot of worky kind of things that still happen this weekend too, but just that feeling of gratefulness, but also dependence.

Like that, that I'm getting to do, as Missy was saying earlier, I'm getting to do what I'm doing, and I can't help but know that that's because of something other than me that I'm getting to do that, that the Lord has uh opened up a door of blessing, that God has done a work that I can't even fully know and understand.

Um, that gratitude.

I like this phrase in her quote there: either enjoy or in pain.

Either in joy or in pain.

We never ever stop needing the Lord.

We never ever stop needing Jesus.

Um, it's not only a desperate hell hell Mary pass, like I, God, if you don't show up right now, I'm done for.

It's not just in those moments when maybe we're crying out for a quick miracle.

It's also, I thought it was so cool that Annie Hawks was inspired to pin those words when it was just a beautiful morning, doing everyday things, just her chores or whatever she was doing in the morning, that it just suddenly hit her.

That I always need you, God.

I always need you, God.

I think in the human experience, our response to either of these can almost be the opposite if we're not careful.

We can respond to desperate pain by blaming the Lord or just distrusting him.

Like maybe you're not even real because of what I'm going through right now.

But also in those times of joy when things are going great, that maybe we just don't think of him at all.

Maybe it's because of our trained self-reliance and self-sufficiency, or that we're just experiencing something that we've worked for, that we've earned or deserved, and maybe that just causes us to not even think that this is a gift from God that I'm getting to experience this joyful moment.

I think that can be our natural human tendency.

And so I want to look at a song, another even more ancient song written that I would argue probably was an inspiration to Annie Sherwood Hawkes before she even knew it, to pin her hymn in the 1800s, and ultimately for Matt to release his song in 2013.

And this song was written by King David, and King David was a Renaissance man.

The more I think about that, like he was a mighty warrior, a king, but also an epic musician as well.

And the song that I want to look at is Psalm 63.

And I would argue that Psalm 63 would maybe be the prequel to these songs we've been talking about.

So I want to break down the lyrics of David's God-inspired song together.

Psalm 63, and I want to read to you something that's not even given a verse number.

If you look at your copy of the English translation of your Bible, you will likely see this phrase that says, a psalm of David regarding a time when David was in the wilderness of Judah.

Now, this is called a superscript.

And this likely was not original to the psalm that David wrote.

He probably did not write that down as God inspired him to write the verses we're about to read.

But these were added in by scribes, and the oldest copies of Psalm 63 that we have at our disposal had these superscripts.

And so we consider them historically reliable because of that.

But this is kind of a big deal that this is a simple sentence.

You're like, cool, thanks for pulling that out, Bill.

Don't know that I needed to know about this, but it's very important that it says when David was in the wilderness of Judah, there's only two life events that we know of about David that would put him in the wilderness.

One of them would have been when he wasn't king yet, but he was running away from Saul, his predecessor, whom he had done a lot of great things for, but this Saul wanted him dead, was going to kill him out of jealousy.

And so we know that in that season of his life, David was hiding in caves.

He actually had an opportunity to take Saul's life, but chose not to because of his relationship with God.

And that was, but he lived out of the wilderness.

It was a very difficult time in his life.

Another time that we know that he was in the wilderness of Judah was when he was already king, and his own son Absalom had put a coup together to dethrone his own dad and take over the kingship.

And at that time also, David had to flee Jerusalem completely and go out in the wilderness and hide in caves once again.

So likely this song that God inspired David to wrote was written while he was in those two very difficult seasons of his life.

With that in mind, let's read it together.

Verse 1, O God, you are my God.

I earnestly search for you.

My soul thirsts for you.

My whole body longs for you in this parched and weary land where there is no water.

Now, likely, he experienced literal thirst as he ran for his life from either Saul or Absalom.

And in that moment, him thinking of his own time that he had to search for actual water to sustain his life while he was fleeing for his life, that he thought, but you know what?

My God does this for my soul and my heart every day.

He is water to me, and he is who I seek, and he is who supplies my needs.

Just like he needed to find water in that wilderness to survive physically.

In that moment, he realized he needed God every day to survive in life spiritually.

Verse 2 I've seen you in your sanctuary and gazed upon your power and glory.

Your unfailing love is better than life itself.

How I praise you.

I will praise you as long as I live, lifting up my hands to you in prayer.

And this is a poignant part of the song.

It's easy to miss this if we didn't have our superscript, but David had a tent that they had put together in Jerusalem, and that was the sanctuary for them.

Oftentimes during his life, there was an object called the Ark of the Covenant that would be housed in the tabernacle.

And there were times and moments where we know that David literally danced with all of his might before the Lord in the presence of God, just praising him in those moments of worship when he had been given victory over his enemies, over Israel's enemies.

And so it's like this moment when he's in this dark, dark place in the wilderness of Judah that he reminds himself, I've seen you.

I've seen you while I've worshipped you.

I've gazed upon your power and glory.

And even that moment when he says, I will praise you as long as I live, did he, even at moments in the wilderness, wonder how long I will live?

My life might be shortened because of what I'm facing right now.

But as long as I have breath, as long as I'm alive, I will praise you.

I will lift up my hands to you in prayer.

In the midst of his current pain, he's remembering God's unfailing love and reminding himself that he still can praise him in the wilderness, even when he had at one point praised him in the sanctuary.

He goes on in verses five through eight.

You satisfy me more than the richest feast.

I will praise you with songs of joy.

I lie awake thinking of you, meditating on you through the night, because you are my helper.

I sing for joy in the shadow of your wings.

I cling to you.

Your strong right hand holds me securely.

And as I look at this section, he was far from any rich feast, running away from his enemies in the wilderness, away from the kingly feasts he got to enjoy.

And yet he realized that even though he could not have a feast right now, that God satisfied him like a feast.

Lying awake thinking of you, probably because he had to.

Sleepless nights in the wilderness, worried about his own safety, worried about wild animals that were around.

While he was awake, he thought of his Lord.

He meditated on him.

I love verse 8 there.

What a great memory verse.

Just look at verse 8 by itself.

I cling to you.

Your strong right hand holds me securely.

I love that verse.

You know what I think about when I think about that verse, to be honest with you, and it kind of tracks with the holiday weekend.

I think of tubing.

Any of y'all ever been pulled behind a boat on an inflatable raft?

How many have ever experienced that before?

Any of you guys?

A lot of you have.

I have I've retired from that years ago.

Years ago.

I'm like, I won't do that anymore.

And I knew that it was my time to retire when even when I was pulled gently, my arms just hurt for days afterwards.

Why?

Because while on that thing, without me, even no one had to tell me, you should hold on as tight as you can.

No, I definitely was doing it.

And I felt pain in these parts of my arms that I'd never felt in my life hanging on to the tube.

Because what I've learned, I don't care how much the driver of that boat loves you.

I don't care how much they care for you.

Their whole goal in that moment is I'm gonna skip that person across the lake as hard as I can.

And that's what they do.

That is exactly what has been done to me many times.

I'm like, I'm done with that life.

But when I think about that verse, I cling to you, that that tough, hard grip.

I think about that's the hardest I've ever gripped anything in my life is being tubed on a lake.

And yet, that is the force with which I want to cling to Jesus.

That's a good reminder for me that that's how I can connect to my Lord.

That Hebrew word that's translated clean is kavka.

And we'll throw that up on the screen for you to see that Hebrew word kavka.

And it can be translated cling or cleave or follow hard after.

And what's really cool about this Hebrew word is it's the same Hebrew word used in Genesis chapter 2 to describe what a husband and wife do for one another.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

They cleave, they cling.

It's this idea of complete oneness and unity.

So when David wrote that lyric, he's like, I cling to you, God, in the most intimate way that I could possibly cling to anyone.

It's that kind of union and intimacy that David is trying to convey in his song.

Now, here's what's interesting about the Psalms of David.

I have to confess to you that as I read some of the Psalms, sometimes I get a little cracked up at what David does.

He's kind of got an MO with his songs.

They're beautiful.

Like you could see these lyrics on a wall art, and you know, someone create that and go sell it on Etsy or something, right?

These are beautiful verses, beautiful lyrics.

But almost every song he writes, he's got to stick it to the enemy.

It's like, and by the way, verses 8 through 11, or 9 through 11, but those plotting to destroy me will come to ruin.

They will go down into the depths of the earth, they will die by the sword.

I mean, we don't sing songs like this in modern hymns that we write.

And become the food of jackals.

How did he put the word jackal in this beautiful song?

But the king will rejoice in God, all who swear to tell the truth will praise him, while liars will be silenced.

The end.

He has it, it does it every time.

It's the funniest thing to me when I see it.

But it's it helps to see what he's going through and why it is a reminder in these song lyrics.

There really is an enemy that you and I still face today, right?

It's not an army chasing after us in northern Kentucky, but it is one that Jesus said will still kill and destroy.

We have an enemy.

And sometimes it feels like the enemy is really winning, doesn't it?

And so, yeah, I can resonate with that.

Yeah, they will go down to the depths of the earth.

It's a reminder that the enemies of the Lord they will not last forever.

They will come to ruin.

The enemies of the Lord will not stand.

And we can trust in the Lord.

And you know what?

David had receipts, didn't he?

He had receipts on this all the way back when he was a young shepherd and when God delivered uh his sheep from the paw of the bear, the paw of the lion, and he remembered those receipts when he approached King Saul and said, I'll fight Goliath.

Who is he to defy the Lord's armies?

So he had those receipts too, and he had many more.

Almost every single people group that tried to stand against Israel.

He saw not that by my might, King David, not by our might, the armies of David, but by the might of the Lord, he has seen the enemies go down to ruin.

And so, yeah, he's like, I've seen it, I know it will happen.

He wasn't iffy on this, he was confident in this.

But here's a big thing that I want to lean into in that last verse, verse 11, but the king will rejoice in God.

He's talking about himself in the third person there.

So this really tells us something about that superscript that we looked at at the beginning.

If he's referring to himself as king, most likely the reason he's in the wilderness is because his own son is chasing after him to take his life.

Now, the reason I'm gonna lean into that is there's a backstory that you might know that was causing Absalom to do that.

When David had the most epic failure in his life, a prophet named Nathan told him, From this day forward, the sword will never leave your home.

This is kind of the consequences of your sin.

And what did David do?

He had an affair, had an affair with Bathsheba, and to cover up that affair, he had Bathsheba's husband Uriah basically put to death and used other people and abused his own power as king to make that death happen.

So pretty epic failure.

I mean, it's bad.

I think sometimes we water down how bad that epic failure is.

And yeah, God still redeemed him and God still used him in a mighty way, but it was pretty terrible.

And Nathan said, Because of what you've done, the sword will never leave your household.

And he was prophesying about this very incident where Absalom, his own son, was coming after him to dethrone him and to take over the land.

And so this is a reminder that even in David's past failure, he trusted the Lord and he praised the Lord and he clung to the Lord with his very soul.

Don't miss this.

Because I think this is what we do.

When I realize I'm in trouble and I need God, it's maybe a little easier to do that in a worshipful, trusting way because I don't deserve what's happening to me.

This this stuff is happening and it's outside of my control, and it's circumstances that I don't understand, and I don't know what's happening and why this would happen.

And so we're easily able to maybe compartmentalize that and say, Lord, I don't know why, but David knew why.

David knew exactly why he was in the wilderness.

He was suffering from the consequences of his own mistakes.

So what David did not do is write a song saying, I deserve this, so therefore, God, just let go of me.

Just, I know you're far away, and I'll never have you in my life again, and you probably don't care about me right now.

I deserve this, so instead, in fact, let the jackals eat me instead of my enemies.

That was not the song he wrote.

And I don't know why we tend to do this, but we tend to forget how amazing the grace and mercy and the unfailing love of God is.

It will sustain you, it will re-rescue you, it will restore unto you the joy of your salvation, it will remind you that even though we sometimes aren't faithful, he is always faithful.

Even though sometimes we fail, he is unfailing.

And because of that, Lord, I need you.

Oh, I need you.

Every hour I need you, whether in joy or in pain, even if the pain that I'm going through is self-inflicted, I need you.

I had an amazing discovery just a few days ago.

So I'm researching the backstory of the other songs we're gonna do to finish the summer.

In a couple of weeks, we're gonna do the backstory of the song I Speak Jesus and focus on that.

And so I'm like really struggling.

Some of these songs, it's kind of hard to find the backstory.

I'm like, I'm coming up with very little.

And I find out that there is a podcast recording of a guy named Jesse Reeves talking about that song.

So I figure out he's the author, one of the authors of the song I Speak Jesus.

But this podcast, it's a video, but it's actually just a steel shot, and you hear the audio.

I'm like, I don't want to show that to my church.

I want to see real people.

So I keep researching and digging, and I find a video podcast of Jesse Reeves talking about the authorship of I Speak Jesus.

So I start watching it, and I'm like, oh, this is such a cool story.

Then I realize what I'm watching, it's not about that song at all.

It's about this song, Lord I Need You.

And I'm like, wait, I thought Matt Maher wrote that song.

I'm confused right now.

So turns out, Lord I Need You, which we will sing in a few moments, was written by Matt Maher, Jesse Reeves, who you'll see on the screen in a little bit, Christy Knockles, Daniel Carlson, and Christian Stanfield.

And they were preparing for an annual conference, an annual worship gathering called Passion.

And that's, they were kind of, you'll hear the story, they were kind of put together to try to come up with a song.

It was the pain of Jesse Reeves, the pain of his own failure, that birthed this song that we will sing shortly.

I want to show you a little clip of that.

It's seven minutes long.

I usually don't show videos that are that long, but I think it's riveting to hear really the origin of the song we'll sing in a moment called Lord I Need You.

Check out this video.

Yeah, so that's the it's this story's terrible, by the way.

So um the short version.

Short version is my wife took like 10 or 15 women to Africa for like two weeks to go take care of babies in an orphanage over there.

All my kids were young at this point.

I have four kids.

And when you're dad and the mom goes out of the country, you your only job is just to keep them.

Alive.

So that was that was where I was.

My kids were little, and I kept them alive to my credit, but at the end of every day, I was exhausted.

Of course, I would never tell my wife that.

Yeah.

Um, I was exhausted.

And I was all I wanted to do was put my kids to bed and drink whiskey.

And that's where people were probably like, Wait, get to you want to get to nine o'clock, eight o'clock, so you can get a drink.

Just wanted to get a drink just to unwind.

And I would drink a whiskey, and then I would drink another whiskey, and then I'd drink another whiskey.

My wife's doing the Lord's work in Africa, and I'm at home.

And just so happens this week was one of those weeks.

It hasn't happened since, but this week we had like free trial of all the channels.

So I'm sitting there, you know, watching TV, drinking whiskey, and the later it got, the worse the things got on the channel, and I got into this like downward spiral.

And then I'd wake up the next morning and I'm exhausted.

Yeah.

But I got to do it again.

Yep.

And so when the kids go to bed, you know what I did?

I did it again.

And it was about day three of this, and I could not get out of this cycle.

And we talked about it earlier, but that's the story in the Bible about when David plays the harp for Saul and the evil spirits flee.

There's an old hymn called I Need the Every Hour.

And for some reason, I sang that song out loud in my bedroom.

Um and and the chorus is very similar.

I need the every hour.

And I would sing it, and the evil spirits would flee.

And I'd snap out of it.

And so then, like the next night, and kids go to bed, I'd just start singing that song and not be tempted.

So coming off the end of that, Janet comes home, uh, we're going into a rite for passion.

And, you know, and all the worship leaders and songwriters are getting together, and they divide us up into two groups.

Um group A was gonna go up to, they're not even called A and B, but group one was gonna go up to Chris's house.

And group two was gonna stay down and write in the studio.

And so they're calling off the group A, and I'm thinking, yeah, I'm not gonna be on the A team.

I'm gonna be on the B team because I'm wicked, you know, just like, you know, whatever you call it.

Just condemn con condemnation.

So they read off the the lyrics that I mean they read off the people going up to the A group, and it was Chris, it was Ed Cash, it was Jason Ingram, Matt Redman.

They're all going up there, and I was like greatest hits of the greatest hits right now.

Yeah, and I'm like, of course I'm not gonna be in the A, I'm not gonna be in the A team.

I get stuck in B team with Matt Maher and Christy Knockles and Christian Stanfield.

Like in it when you're not in condemnation, it was like anybody in the world would kill to be in this room.

These people are amazing, but I was under such condemnation.

So we do the pre-write, you know, where you go around and nobody got anything, blah, blah.

When it got to me, I just decided to be honest for some reason.

I said, Y'all, I shouldn't even be in this room.

This is what my last week looked like.

And I just confessed it.

And I said, but there was this hymn, Lord, uh, I need thee every hour.

I said, if I could do anything in this time, I would want to write a song for our generation that they could sing over themselves and the evil spirits would flee.

That's literally what I do with it.

And so to their credit, they were gracious, not judgmental.

Matt Maher is Catholic, so he never heard the hymn.

He wasn't raised with the Baptist hymnal.

Right.

But he can sight read, and I had a hymnal.

So I opened up the hymnal, he sat out on the piano, we gathered around and we sang that hymn together for probably 20 minutes or longer, just looking at the lyrics.

Then we move into the kitchen, and we're all sitting around the kitchen table, and Christian Stanfield just had a guitar and he was just kind of droning on the one.

And he was like, Lord, I come and I confess.

I was like, bowing here, I found my rest.

Somebody else was like, Without you, I fall apart.

You're the one who guides my heart.

Bro, we wrote that whole song in 20 minutes.

And then we were done with it, and we didn't have a bridge.

And Christy.

Christy's like, she's so sweet, and is about to be the mother-in-law of my daughter.

My da, my daughter's engaged to her son.

Um, she goes, she's she was real shy, and she was like, I mean, I have this other song, but it's it's not even like in the same time signature.

And she sings the bridge.

Teach my songs with her eyes to you.

And Matt Marr was just like, oh, that can work.

And he just goes from one time signature to the other one and back, and we're like, okay, that's the song.

And we just sat there and sang it together for the rest of the ride.

We would sing it and sing it again.

The bridge is cool.

I cannot stand, I fall on you.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, the the the movement is amazing.

Yeah, yeah.

I it's just the worst story.

That's because you feel the condemnation of the moment you're in, but like that's the best story.

Yeah, I like what he said.

That is the best story.

Um, and I want to close with this thought that we can cling to together today, that being a faithful follower of Jesus just looks like this clinging to my Lord in both joy and pain for all my days.

Anyone would ever ask you, what's it mean to be a Christian?

What's it mean to do that?

We're just desperate dependent people, never ever needing anything in ourselves because we've learned that that doesn't work.

We need the Lord, and we always are aware we need the Lord, whether in joy or in pain, even if that pain is self-inflicted, we need him.

And so you've heard us many years, many weeks.

Every time we gather together, we talk about what is your next step?

What is the next step Christ wants you to take with him today?

My word to you today is two simple words.

Just cling.

Just cling.

Just cling to him.

It's the words of David, it's the words of Amy Sherwood Hocks, it's the words of Jesse Reeves, Matt Maher, it's the word of the Lord.

Just cling to him.

And maybe for someone here today, someone watching, listening online, it would be the first time you've ever clung to him.

Finally putting your faith in him, finally saying yes to Jesus, finally approaching him in faith, saying, Lord, I need you.

And I'm I've never trusted in you, I've never believed in you.

I would have never called myself a Christian, but I want that to change right here, right now.

Lord, I need you.

I remember being in a Billy Graham uh training for when he came in 2002 to speak at Paul Brown Stadium.

They were training our Hickory Grove volunteers on how to counsel people who came forward for a decision.

And they said, you tell them all they have to do is pray.

Romans 10, 13, call on the name of the Lord and you will be saved.

And they said, even if their only thing they can think of to pray is help me, Jesus, that's it.

That's all that's needed.

There's no magic words, there's no script.

It's just faith.

And so maybe that's your step today.

Maybe you've already done that.

But if there's anything we learn from King David, we will never ever stop having to remind ourselves to cling to him.

Why is it that maybe you needed to hear that today?

Maybe it's in joy.

And great things are great right now.

And you're like, man, I got I can just, I don't even have to think about all the blessings I can count right now.

Give him thanks, give him praise, and cling to him.

Those are gifts from the Father above.

Or maybe you're like, I'm going through it.

Things are not good right now.

Cling to him.

Never ever stop clinging to him.

And we're gonna sing about that in just a moment.

But first, will you pray with me?

Father, we need you.

Oh, how we need you, God.

As we sing that in just a moment, Lord, may we take steps of faith.

May we re-cling to you like never before.

May we trust in you in joy and in pain, no matter what we're dealing with.

May this be a moment when we really unite with you in faith.

Father, have your way with us right now.

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.