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Desire for God

Seek the Lord, All you humble of the earthWho have carried out His ordinances;Seek righteousness, seek humility.Perhaps you will be hidden In the day of the Lord’s anger. (Zephaniah 2:3)

To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul’s paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too-easily-satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart.

Come near to the holy men and women of the past and you will soon feel the heat of their desire after God. They mourned for Him, they prayed and wrestled and sought for Him day and night, in season and out, and when they had found Him the finding was all the sweeter for the long seeking. Moses used the fact that he knew God as an argument for knowing Him better. ‘Now, therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, show me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thy sight’; and from there he rose to make the daring request, ’I beseech thee, show me thy glory.’ God was frankly pleased by this display of ardour, and the next day called Moses into the mount, and there in solemn procession made all His glory pass before him.

David’s life was a torrent of spiritual desire, and his psalms ring with the cry of the seeker and the glad shout oft he finder. Paul confessed the mainspring of his life to be his burning desire after Christ. ’That I may know Him,’ was the goal of his heart, and to this he sacrificed everything. ’Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but refuse, that I may win Christ’ (Philippians 3:8)

This month Heart2Heart will be posting excerpts from A. W. Tozer’s “The Pursuit of God” We hope this series will bless and encourage you in your own pursuit of a deeper relationship with our Lord.