Jesuni Awado Lyrics by Bro. Charles Thomas

Jesus, did you truly come? For the joy I received,
in meeting you I saw a wondrous thing
I felt love, I received a life

Like a deer, alone, seeking water in a cruel desert,
in that very moment you met me and looked on me with love
I felt love, I received a life

I offer my life in meeting you, Lord Jesus,
I share the good news at every moment, and that is my joy
I felt love, I received a life

This is a hymn of the joy of encountering Christ, the fresh gladness of a person for whom faith is not a duty but a discovery. Its opening is almost breathless with happiness, “Jesus, did you truly come? For the joy I received, in meeting you I saw a wondrous thing.” Meeting God is described as seeing “a wondrous thing,” and the result is stated in a line that becomes the song’s refrain: “I felt love, I received a life.”

The second verse gives a vivid picture of the state the singer was in before that meeting, borrowing one of the loveliest images in the Psalms. “Like a deer, alone, seeking water in a cruel desert,” he was parched and lost, exactly as the Psalmist wrote, “as the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul thirsts for God.” And “in that very moment,” at the point of deepest need, “you met me and looked on me with love.” The encounter came precisely when he was most thirsty.

The final verse shows how such joy naturally overflows into a life given back. “I offer my life in meeting you, Lord Jesus,” and “I share the good news at every moment, and that is my joy.” Having received love and life, the singer cannot keep it to himself; passing it on becomes his happiness. What the listener is left with is the pure gladness of conversion, a thirsty soul met in the desert, filled with love and life, and so glad about it that telling others has become the natural expression of the joy.