If we seek God truly, we will not wander aimlessly in the realm of spirituality but will pursue a path that goes toward the doing of definite good things. The discipleship He seeks is not merely one that we enjoy, but one that produces results.
Our hearts are moved by Jesus’ words: “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him” (John 14:23). This seems much too good to be true. Only God could make it true.
We’re invited to “take hold of the life that is truly life.” There is no good reason why our God can’t be the God whom David knew: “You will show me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”
God waits for us to confess our weakness and come home to Him. The story contained in the Scriptures is the story of how God made this homecoming possible. It is the story of an infinite God in whose perfection we may find our sustenance and support.
“In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us” (Romans 8:37). To be rightly related to God is to believe that He “has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7).
We find ourselves frustrated, unable to find the complete fulfillment of our desires. Unaided by anything outside of time and space, we discover that despite short-term successes, the long-term verdict is that we’ve been “grasping for the wind.”
When we allow our lives to be driven by materialism, it must be admitted that we lead very hollow lives. Whether we face the fact or not, our hearts were made to experience much more than anything the material world can provide.
Worldliness means being preoccupied with temporal matters so that spiritual concerns are crowded out of our thinking. Paul wrote, “Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.” This is not easy to do, given the pull of this world.
We spend our lives leaning on props rather than God. We’re hiding from the truth, of course, but as long as our props are in place, we don’t worry about our alienation. Deep down, our hearts are a lonely void, but we’re too busy to think about it.
Even if we allow Christ to bring us into a redeemed earthly relationship with God, our connections in this world will only be a foretaste of the fellowship that waits for us later. Yet this hope is the single thing in life most worthy of our pursuit.
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