A Seeker of God, part 3

 I think Noah fell prey to the same thing that many of us fall to in this early 21st Century. He was in this brand new world. Everything was fresh and clean - and subsequently the need for God fades. We have a tendency to relax spiritually when all things seem to be going well. 

Let me give you a prediction of what the near future holds for us. If there is a recession, if there are a lot of lay-offs, there will also be a spiritual resurgence. People will be praying more than they do today. They will probably be going to church more regularly than they do now. They will be reading their Bibles more… all because of mixed-up priorities? You might be asking yourself, “Why do I think that praying more, reading the Bible more, going to church more is a sign of mixed-up priorities?”

Technically, I don’t think that those are bad priorities. I wish we all did that even more than we do today. What I am talking about is how those activities tend to increase only when the urgent presses in on us. If a person had right priorities, those are the things he/she would be doing even in the good times. To do those things in the good times means that the important supersedes the urgent in your life. To wait until your world falls out from beneath you to do those things proves that the urgent supersedes the important in your life. 
 

Why do you think the average pastor has to preach so much on tithing and giving to God? It’s because some of us are so in love with the urgent that we will even willfully disobey the Word of God in order to care for it, rather than pursuing the important. Think of this: if we can’t give what we owe God during the good times, just think of what will happen when times get bad! Think of how much our rationale will make sense to us when we are pressed by the urgent. 

Look at this catch-22 situation. When the urgent has replaced the important in our lives, the urgent gains dominance. If all we pray about is the urgent, a part of that is going to be praying for financial help. Do you see it? If we won’t take care of the important (using this example of tithing), the urgent begins to press in. 

The urgent would mean financial pressure. Because the pressure is so great, that is all you can focus on during your prayer time. Subsequently, your prayer time is not spent seeking God; it’s spent seeking things from God – all the while feeling completely justified because of the pressure of the urgent. If we had right priorities we would just tithe. Tithing would take care of the urgent so that our prayer time could be spent in a pursuit of God. 

Psalm 91:1 “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.” King David was a great seeker of God, not just a pray-er, but a seeker of God. He loved the secret place of the Most High.

There is a significant difference between being a person who spends time in prayer and a person who seeks God. Most Christians spend time in prayer without drawing many benefits from it because they do not understand the significance of seeking God or waiting on God. They pray from the perspective of getting things from God, or getting God to do things. But those who “wait upon the Lord” pray from the perspective of gaining a closeness to God. Their heart’s cry, their deepest desire, is for more of Him. 
 

Being a seeker of God does not equal perfection in your relationship with God. It does, however, indicate a constant return to seeking when they do mess up. King David was a seeker. He loved to dwell in the shelter of the Most High. He loved being under the shadow of the Almighty. 1 Chronicles 11:17 “David longed for water and said, “Oh, that someone would get me a drink of water from the well near the gate of Bethlehem!” 18 So the Three broke through the Philistine lines, drew water from the well near the gate of Bethlehem and carried it back to David.” 

This was a time when the urgent was pressing in on David. He was thirsty and longed for some water from the well near Bethlehem; the problem was that the garrison of the Philistines was, then, in Bethlehem. This shows how extensive the Philistines had invaded Israel, in the days of Saul. David said with longing, while hiding in the cave, that he wanted some water from that well. He probably remembered the taste of the water from his boyhood village. Perhaps, he longed for it all the more because it seemed that he couldn’t have it. 

Typically, we only long for the things we cannot have. I can relate to this every time I return home from a Missions trip. When you are in any foreign land, with time, you start to long for the things of your own country. The first thing I often do, even on the way home from the airport, is to stop and get some good old American, made in MN, food to eat.

Continued tomorrow