Text-Context: Matt Chandler - Where's the Angst?

I have listened to a decent amount of preaching in my life, but rarely am truly moved. This does not necessarily mean that all the preaching I've heard is bad preaching, for I am a bad guy and often hard-hearted. This also is due to the fact that when you grow up in church all your life you get preached at plenty.

However, I must say that rarely, at least with the above qualifications in mind, do I hear men plead for the hearts to be radically devoted to Jesus and to long for the Savior like Matt Chandler does. His call for men to have intense angst and radical pursuit of the living God blesses my soul. No, this does not mean that I have it, it means so desperately that I need it.

To groan for God. To long to be close to Him. To love Jesus. To truly be dependent on the Holy Spirit not in word and clever prayers but in the desire, the heart's cry inside.

I've only listened briefly to Matt's call to church planters to long for Jesus, but I know that this call is rare and this call is deeply prophetic in the profoundest sense. Not that what Matt is saying is new, but that what Matt is saying is old and very needed in the hearts and souls of the men and women of our generation.

Where's the longing for God in our generation? This call is to you, which means most profoundly that it is to me.

"As the deer pants for the flowing streams,
So pants my soul for you O God." Ps. 42:1