Jenks Pastor Encourages Students To Cry Out To God

March 1, 2001

March 1, 2001

"There is a cry God can't ignore," said Dr. Glenn Plum, pastor of First Baptist Church of Jenks, during the Feb. 28 chapel service at Oklahoma Baptist University.

Reading James 4:8, Plum said, "Draw near to God and he will draw near to you."

He asked the students, "Do you think we might be the right kind of people for God to draw near this morning?"

God wants to be wanted, he explained, and we must display a need for him in our lives in order to have a "God encounter."

He gave the students the example of a baby crying from hunger.

"The hunger controls the baby and the baby doesn't care who knows it's hungry. The baby cries until his need is met," he said.

Bartemaus, in the gospel of Luke, cried out to the Lord, desperate to be healed of blindness. Jesus stopped, heard his plea and met his need.

"Do you think Jesus would have stopped if Bartemaus hadn't been calling out to him?" Plum asked. "As he was passing by, something stopped him; it was the cry of an honest, humble man simply saying, 'I need you God.'"

Making a heartfelt cry to God requires vulnerability, he said. "We are taught to be reserved, sophisticated, and careful in our relationship to the Lord."

But God responds to the person who doesn't care about what people think, and instead has a desperate hunger for God.

Plum told the students that if they make Bartemaus' simple plea, "I need you God," their own cry, God will come near.