need/want

I have never known what is means to need God.

If you think about it, you only truly appreciate something when you really need it. We don't realize what food means to us until we don't have any. We don't know true thirst until our wells run dry and there is nothing left to quench our parched throats. In that same manner, I can say without a doubt that I take God for granted.

I feel as though I don't need Him, that my life would not be so devoid of fulfillment even if I didn't know He existed. I got along just fine without religion for the majority of my life. Of course, I was a miserable little brat of a child, but my melancholy cannot be attributed to life without God as the confound of the misery of life itself muddies that dichotomy. I'm just beginning to think for myself and wonder if God is what I truly need. Will I ever encounter a moment where I will be so completely without God that I will understand what it means to need Him? I wonder when I can truly be so weak.

I suppose it is for these selfish reasons that I have been contemplating missions trips as of late. Don't get me wrong, I do want to go to Haiti and rehabilitate people who have had their legs crushed by falling cars during the earthquake; I think it would be a lovely experience and one where I would feel as if I was contributing to humanity rather than sitting in my study room playing Starcraft till the wee hours of the morning. I think, though, that if I were to go on a missions trip, it would simply be out of my own personal spiritual desperation, a final, self-initiated alpha course to educate my brain that there is the importance of God. In that respect, perhaps it isn't a missions trip that I need but simply a weekend of solitude in the mountains to reflect and peruse God's righteousness and majesty.

I just want to know if I am forming a relationship with Him out of necessity, or if I am truly getting to know Him with the purest essence of my heart.

I am sad to say that at this point I cannot tell.