I Need Thee Every Hour

“I need Thee, oh, I need Thee.  Every hour I need Thee.  Bless me now my Savior, I come to Thee.”

The human need for God is one of the most fundamental realities of life.  It is God who creates us, sustains us, saves us, provides for us, and ultimately delivers us from death into His eternal Kingdom.  We, on the other hand, are needy creatures. Yes, we are wonderfully made, carrying the image of our Creator, but we are fatally flawed.  Sin has left us weak, broken, and without hope for redemption apart from Christ.  

This is why one of the greatest illusions that someone can ever live under is the illusion of “self-sufficiency”. If we’re not careful, our gifts and abilities, or the most admirable parts of our personalities, can blind us to the reality of our great need for God.  When life seems to just “go our way” we can forget that we are mortal, fragile, and far more dependent than we may feel. This is why self-sufficiency is an illusion — a false-reality that we live under until something snaps us back into the reality of our neediness.  

The good news for us is that Christ only lives in reality, which means that he is never confused about our need for Him like we often are.  He sees us for who we are and has compassion on us, even our blind spots.  

This is why we can always find the Good Shepherd pursuing his wandering sheep.  He’s never far, and he’s always poised with a listening ear toward those who will call out to him for help. 

It shouldn’t be a surprise to us that humility, then, ought to always be the posture of God’s people.  Dependency ought to be the default setting for our hearts.  This, I believe, is one of the reasons why lyrics like “I need thee every hour” resonate so deeply with Christ’s people.  At a soul level, we resonate with the hymn’s dependent prayer.  

So let us now take a moment and consider our own lives.  Are there areas of your life where you are leaning on the illusion of self-sufficiency?   In what ways can you acknowledge your need for the Savior and also lean into His strength on your behalf?  

No matter what today holds or what tomorrow will bring, each of us can learn to live in continual dependence on Christ every hour of every day.