Seeking Jesus

Matt.6:33 - Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness...
Col.3:1 - If you then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above...

Seek? Things above? What does the Holy Spirit mean by "seek"? What "things above" are we to seek? Well these deeply Spiritual questions require perspective to fully allow the Spirit of God to rend our hearts and fill us with His desire.
The second chapter of Colossians deals with the stale, perfunctory, and structured worship of Christ that some of the believers were practicing. Paul says that everything is nothing but a shadow and Christ is the substance, the reality. Here the Scriptures prepare a corrective teaching by showing that a life of structured earthly observances and habits is nothing before God our Savior. Translated into today's Christianity God is saying that doing the same thing every day; doing the same thing every Sunday; doing the same thing at night; going every week with little or no private devotion to the Lord Jesus but "going to church" on Sunday is worthless in God's sight.
How many believers have slumped into a tired and predictable walk before God that centers around work, relaxation, entertainment, and some religious activity. What are we seeking? What does it mean to seek? In Lk.15:8-9 Jesus tells the story of the woman that loses one of her ten silver coins "seeks it diligently till she finds it". Hebrews tells us that God "is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him". What does it mean to seek diligently? We understand what diligently means but what does it mean to diligently "seek"? If your dog got out and was lost how would you and I seek our dog? Would we go out if it was raining to look for him? Would we get in the car and go all over the neighborhood? Would we get up the next morning and go out and look again? If you still could not find him and you had to go to work would it be on your heart during the day and after work would you quickly go home and look again? Is that what it means to seek something that is precious to us?
Seek is different from just believe. Seeking emanates from a burning heart, a hungry Spirit. A hungry man goes into the kitchen and opens as many cabinets and as many refrigerator shelves as necessary in order to find something that satisfies his hunger. A Spiritually hungry man goes into the Spirit and continues to seek that which feeds his hunger and ministers to his burning heart, he cannot stop seeking, it is part of him. He seeks and finds, seeks and finds, it is a Spiritual cycle that both satisfies and creates new hunger. Are we seeking? Does this burning heart speak to us all day long? Do we come home knowing we must fulfill our earthly responsibilities, but inside we are hungry to get alone in the Spirit and seek, even if it means staying up late and laying aside the weights of this world?
Oh how our Father loves us to seek Him. Fasting, praying, the Word, meditation, and a burning, diligent heart that seeks the face of Jesus Himself. Let us be honest before our Lord, He has a theological place in our lives. Another words, we believe in Him but we do not seek Him. Even the religious part of our lives are mostly taken up with activities. Church going, singing practice, Bible learning, phone talking, internet ministry, and many other religious activities consume our Spiritual lives, which are all good, but not at the expense of seeking Him. The Scripture commands us to "seek those things which are above". What things? Angels? Gates? No, the things of the Spirit and primarily Him. Not just believing in Him, but diligently seeking Him. Consumed by His presence and being changed from glory to glory. It is possible to seek Him and experience His presence for an hour. I suggest an hour because it seems like a year in our fast pace culture that we so easily get caught up in and severely neglect the deeper life of "Thy face, Lord, will I seek" (Ps.27:8).
We live in the age of utilitarian Christianity which pursues, preaches, and teaches what God can do FOR you. We do not hear much about ministering TO the Lord, waiting ON the Lord, or seeking His presence. We spend more time in the car on our way to the church building than we do in deep, time consuming, seeking of Jesus Himself. As a matter of fact the church by and large does not even believe in deep, penetrating, time consuming seeking of God's presence and face. We believe in the omnipresence of God and that's good enough for us. We preach more than we pray; we study more than we pray; we sing more than we pray; we plan more than we pray; we fellowship more than we pray; we have lost the desire to seek God, but of course we have redefined the term so as to salve our conscious, haven't we? Maybe I'm wrong, maybe we are all spending quality time in our prayer closets seeking the very heart of our Savior. Maybe our inner beings groan and burn with a fire to meet Christ in a deeper and more intimate way and it is our time consuming passion. Maybe we have to find time to read about the burgeoning humanistic movements because we are so engrossed with seeking our Lord in personal prayer and worship. Maybe even church people think we've gone off the deep end because we can't get away from the invisible and powerful pull that keeps drawing us day and night to seek His face in new and boundless ways that have separated us from the pull of this world. Maybe we all are individually fasting and desperately begging God for a revival which now will come together and reveal our enormous Spiritual lives that nobody saw. Maybe...maybe not.
I speak from within the crowd as one who longs to go into deeper waters. I feel the pull, He feels the resistance. You know what, though? I truly believe I've reached a point in my life that I really don't care much about this world. Little by little by God's grace I can feel my inner man changing. All of it, from entertainment to sports to money, let it all fall by the wayside and let us seek our Majestic Lord and Savior and press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus! Seek Him - Seek Him. Close your eyes and feel the Spirit calling, "Come and dine". You will not spend that kind of seeking time with Him until you first hear the Spirit calling. Go ahead, keep making love to the "beggarly elements" of this world and like potato chips you can't stop. It will not materialize in our lives by "turning over a new leaf" or by making up our own mind to change. No, but if once, just once, you listen to the Spirit and He connects with your heart and you hear His call as a personal revelation, and if you will surrender by faith to that call, He will plunge you into a world that you can't even put into words, you and I will never - never - be satisfied with anything else but the "rivers of living water" that God will gush from our innermost being. Wow!
So go ahead, same old, same old. 2005 - 2006 - 2007 - same deal "since the fathers slept". Some are tired of the predictable Sunday morning marionette show manipulated by the organization of man. Well intentioned but dry as toast. We're no better. Let's get on our face, Spiritually and physically, and seek the face of God and tell God we aren't moving until we get even a little glimpse of His tangible Presence. Pursue Him like gold, search under His wings, and "look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal".

Lord Jesus, we've been in Martha's kitchen working for You but we've neglected You. Spirit of God, help us to release this passing world, remove our aprons and put on prayer shawls, and walk out of the kitchen and into the sacred room of Jesus' presence and sit at His wonderful feet, listening to every Word that proceeds from His mouth, inquiring in His Temple, awed by His Person, and diligently seeking to fully embrace our Savior and Lord, and transformed by the glorious reflection of our Master, Jesus the Christ.

One thing have I desired of the Lord, that I will seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple. Ps.27:4