Diserner
Well-known member
My favorite Bible verse has always been:
And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. (Jer. 29:13 NKJ)
I have Dr. Michael Brown's commentary on Jeremiah signed by him with this verse in the front, it's pretty cool.
There are a lot of invitations and promises about seeking God in Scriptures—and we tend to think in terms of just salvation or information, we seek God to know more about him, more "information." Some people would say "That promise was just to ancient Israel." Or try to compartmentalize or limit these verses to just times and people of the past. But they are universal spiritual truths and declarations of God's character and ways.
And there are a lot of Scriptures that talk about a deep love relationship with God, even in emotional and passionate terms, and it's very easy to neglect that level of relationship for more surface level Christianity. But there is a different kind of knowing that flows out of a sacrificial and real relationship, and it's not dependent on just how many right facts or doctrines we have about God, but rather another element altogether:
How much we want God, and how much effort we put into seeking him.
Now, it can be that studying is a way we feel we "seek" God, but that is often a very surface and mental way to seek God; just getting the "data" right so we can be "good" Christians. The kind of time and effort spend in prayer, and making a real attempt to fellowship with God in all we do, is a much deeper level of seeking God than just Christian fellowship or devotional readings; there is a deeper cry of the heart, and a more focused sincerity on giving attention to God in all we do.
A. W. Tozer wrote in his book, The Pursuit of God:
It can be kind of hard to know where to start, or how exactly to enact this, but the main thing is just knowing, that to want God like that, we should be doing something more than we are doing, making a real effort to give God more attention than we normally do, spending time with him in various ways. We can put a real focus on working and getting things done as well, that we become more Marthas than Marys, and think all God cares about is working at tasks or getting things done.
I understand sometimes we have duties, and we can do them as unto the Lord without feeling guilty, but there is very rarely a person who you don't find spending his spare time on something, somewhere—our priorities will manifest themselves with our time. But there are new ways we could experience God, and those who think the Bible is all in the past, have missed the living voice of God promising to reveal himself to those who hunger and thirst.
Charles Spurgeon wrote in his Evening and Morning devotional:
We might feel guilty having already spent a lot of time out in the field "working" for the Lord, or having squandered a lot of our lives with the prodigal. Or we might feel there is not enough time left to make a real difference. We might think, well why does it matter, when we will all get to heaven eventually anyway. We'll have plenty of time then.
But I think that makes a really big mistake. There is something precious about this life, it is a one time thing, a one-shot—and how we live it will go on into eternity in one way or another. And another real thought, is just because we know we will one day love the Lord as we should, really doesn't mean we have no reasons to fall more deeply in love with him now.
We will be just that much closer to heaven, before we go.
Listen for the voice, you might hear him calling to you today.
And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. (Jer. 29:13 NKJ)
I have Dr. Michael Brown's commentary on Jeremiah signed by him with this verse in the front, it's pretty cool.
There are a lot of invitations and promises about seeking God in Scriptures—and we tend to think in terms of just salvation or information, we seek God to know more about him, more "information." Some people would say "That promise was just to ancient Israel." Or try to compartmentalize or limit these verses to just times and people of the past. But they are universal spiritual truths and declarations of God's character and ways.
And there are a lot of Scriptures that talk about a deep love relationship with God, even in emotional and passionate terms, and it's very easy to neglect that level of relationship for more surface level Christianity. But there is a different kind of knowing that flows out of a sacrificial and real relationship, and it's not dependent on just how many right facts or doctrines we have about God, but rather another element altogether:
How much we want God, and how much effort we put into seeking him.
Now, it can be that studying is a way we feel we "seek" God, but that is often a very surface and mental way to seek God; just getting the "data" right so we can be "good" Christians. The kind of time and effort spend in prayer, and making a real attempt to fellowship with God in all we do, is a much deeper level of seeking God than just Christian fellowship or devotional readings; there is a deeper cry of the heart, and a more focused sincerity on giving attention to God in all we do.
A. W. Tozer wrote in his book, The Pursuit of God:
It can be kind of hard to know where to start, or how exactly to enact this, but the main thing is just knowing, that to want God like that, we should be doing something more than we are doing, making a real effort to give God more attention than we normally do, spending time with him in various ways. We can put a real focus on working and getting things done as well, that we become more Marthas than Marys, and think all God cares about is working at tasks or getting things done.
I understand sometimes we have duties, and we can do them as unto the Lord without feeling guilty, but there is very rarely a person who you don't find spending his spare time on something, somewhere—our priorities will manifest themselves with our time. But there are new ways we could experience God, and those who think the Bible is all in the past, have missed the living voice of God promising to reveal himself to those who hunger and thirst.
Charles Spurgeon wrote in his Evening and Morning devotional:
We might feel guilty having already spent a lot of time out in the field "working" for the Lord, or having squandered a lot of our lives with the prodigal. Or we might feel there is not enough time left to make a real difference. We might think, well why does it matter, when we will all get to heaven eventually anyway. We'll have plenty of time then.
But I think that makes a really big mistake. There is something precious about this life, it is a one time thing, a one-shot—and how we live it will go on into eternity in one way or another. And another real thought, is just because we know we will one day love the Lord as we should, really doesn't mean we have no reasons to fall more deeply in love with him now.
We will be just that much closer to heaven, before we go.
Listen for the voice, you might hear him calling to you today.
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