"Help me to love you"

Lately I've been feeling stuck in the muck of apathy. And when I say lately I mean for the last two or three years (that sounds really long!). It all started after I got home from 6 weeks of touring with bugirl and 4 weeks of speaking at summer camps back in 2006. That experience and the whole year previous to it was probably the most exciting spiritual high of my life. In that time I learned and grew at an exponetial rate and coming out of that was one of the toughest spiritual challenges of my life.
Don't get me wrong- the last two or three years were filled with wonderful events, people, experiences and even moments with God. However I've felt, in a lot of ways, like I'm walking through a spiritual dessert.
I'm happy to say that I think I'm on the verge of exiting the dessert and entering back into the lush green of a thriving relationship with Jesus! But it's a slow process as the heat of the dessert has exhausted my spiritual energies and left me moving slowly and sluggishly towards God.
There have been several events and conversations that have helped me get through this season, but something I read the other day in a book called "Crazy Love" by Francis Chan has given me that final push. It said this:
"The fact is, I need God to help me love God. And if I need His help to love Him, a perfect being, I definetely need His help to love other, fault-filled humans. Something mysterious, even supernatural must happen in order for genuine love for God to grow in our hearts. The Holy Spirit has to move inour lives."

I need God to help me love God.

I need God to help me want God.

My prayer has become this, "I want You God, and when I don't, help me to want You."

It lifts such a weight off my shoulders to know that I don't have to muster up the desire to love God. That God is love and because of that, He can give me love for Him and for others. This is the only way that I'll be able to take these final steps out of the burning sand and into the cool spring waiting - if He gives me the desire to run towards the One who is waiting for me in the river.