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PERSISTENT PURSUIT OF GOD
The importance of being actively consistent regarding your relationship with God
2001 William R. Cunningham
March 11, 2001
INTRODUCTION
Michael Jordan. Bruce Lee. Steveland Morris (AKA Stevie Wonder). What do these people have in common? They were all considered great in their various professions. However, how did they get to this level of greatness? Do you think Michael Jordan prayed to God one day that he would be able to play great basketball and magically he could do all the great moves that he was known for? Do you think that Bruce Lee prayed and all of a sudden he was one of the greatest martial artists of all time? No I don't think so. What they did have in common is that they practiced and practiced some more. Michael Jordan practiced his moves ritually until he became probably the best basketball player of all time. Bruce Lee practiced his martial arts almost as if he was possessed. However, that ritual produced probably one of the greatest martial artists of all time. The same applies to Stevie Wonder, who was known to practice on the piano for hours as a child.
Think about this for a moment. How do you get good at something? You have to practice what you want to be good at over and over again. You cannot become a proficient piano player unless you spend the time practicing. You cannot be a great anything unless you put the time in to become good at what you do. This implies that you have to work at what you want.
Any person that is great in a particular area is great because he or she has rehearsed what they do a great number of times. I recall a television show about divers. When we look at a diver diving off of a platform, we consider the grace and form by which they travel to the water. However, acquiring that grace and form took many hours of instruction, rehearsal, and more practice. The pointed toes and other positions of the body become natural to them because they have practiced so much. Their concern is controlling the movement and timing and not on the details of the form. Their practice has enabled them to be so graceful in the air.
The same applies to us in all aspects of our lives. However, in this lesson we are going to focus on our relationship with God. How good is your relationship with God? How often do you practice your fellowship with God, assuming you want a close relationship with God?
We all know that we should have a very close relationship with the Father. However, knowing that isn't enough to implement and achieve it. There is always the question of how to do it. How do we obtain a close relationship with God? How can God become a permanent and integral part of our real everyday life in the same way as the skills of the people I mentioned above reside with them? I have been praying about this for quite some time and believe I have discovered something that will help you immensely. The answer is persistent pursuit. We have to persist at our pursuit fellowship with God so that our relationship with him would flourish.
The one thing that any great person has in common with other great people is that they are always consistent about their training. A champion boxer will get up every morning and follow a pre-described routine that will lead him to be ready for the championship fight. If he strays away from this routine then he jeopardizes his chances of winning the fight because he has tainted the preparation process. Likewise, if we want to have a personal relationship with God that is a part of our everyday life, as opposed to the religious parts of our life, then we have to follow similar types of routines. That is what this lesson is about. We are going to discuss the importance of being persistent about pursuing God so that our active relationship with Him is strong and involves all aspects of our lives.
Persistence and Pursuit
The word persist means to be obstinately repetitious, insistent, or tenacious; to hold firmly and steadfastly to a purpose, a state, or an undertaking despite obstacles, warnings, or setbacks. Therefore, persistence is when you keep at it or that you don't give up in a task. You are constantly working at it with dedication.
Now the word pursue means to follow in an effort to overtake or capture; chase; to strive to gain or accomplish. Pursuit therefore means that you are chasing after a personal and active relationship with God.
So persistent pursuit means that you are faithful in your pursuit for a personal relationship with God. You never give up striving to obtain a wonderful personal relationship with God in your everyday life.
You want God to be more than an acquaintance or the heavenly Father. You want more than the man upstairs or the creator of the universe. You want a personal relationship with YOUR heavenly Father.
You must work at obtaining an active and personal relationship with God in order to accomplish it. Consider the following illustration.
You must study well in order to do well in school. You must also make time to study and actually do it in order to obtain the goal of getting good grades and learning things in school. You may implement a scheduling system of one sort or another. The objective, however, is to get you to actually perform your studies. It's one thing to know to do something and it is another to do. Also, there are thing in between knowledge of an act and the act itself, which will lead us to the act. For example, a boxer knows that he has to practice and he does. However, there are certain elements that are necessary to get him from the knowledge of practice and the practice itself. This might include motivation of one form or another, defined routines, dedication, etc.
The same applies to our relationship with God. We know we should have a personal relationship with Him however; we don't always do the things that we should to obtain this personal relationship because we don't implement anything that will take us from knowledge to action.
Pursuit: From Knowledge To Action
Pursuit is what gets us from knowledge to action. Let me give an illustration of the concept that I am proposing here. Let's go back to our boxer. He is aware of the championship and what is required to obtain it. Also, there is the championship fight itself that he has to win in order to become the boxing champion (in whatever weight class). So there is the knowledge of the championship and the fight itself that would make him the champion if he wins it. Of course these two alone cannot get him the championship. He has to pursue it. That pursuit will involve many elements including training schedules, exercise, diet restrictions, sparring, etc. Those are the elements of his pursuit. In other words, the hope to be champion boxer will do those things in order to actively pursue and hopefully the championship.
We can pursue God in many ways as well. For example, you might develop a routine of prayer, a routine of silent meditation, times of fellowship with God, walking in the park "with God" and other such things. The objective is always to nurture a personal relationship with the Father. You want to have a championship relationship with God. I should point out that one has to know the importance of a personal relationship with God else there would be no reason to pursue it. If Christ is indeed not Lord then there is no reason why you should want a personal relationship with Him-even if you are a Christian.
Pursuit is very important because it reveals the path that we are on. In some cases we are deceived in the activities of our pursuit but still seek God nonetheless. For example, someone might be fooled by a cult teacher to believe something about God and in turn follows that teaching thinking that is will lead him or her to a better relationship with God. We'll discuss this in more detail later.
We already practice this principle in our lives however; it usually is not applied to our relationship with God. We practice this principle when we want a promotion or advancement for example. The knowledge of the promotion and what it requires motivates us to equip ourselves for that promotion. Our pursuit for the position leads us to various forms of formal education, changing hairstyles, company, etc. Now what have you done to pursue the Lord?
An Illustration By Daniel
Consider the following scripture.
Daniel 6:10 (NKJV) Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went home. And in his upper room, with his windows open toward Jerusalem, he knelt down on his knees three times that day, and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as was his custom since early days.
Daniel's activity of praying three times a day was more than a mere ritual. It had purpose. We know from the story of he and the lion's den that he was indeed very close and very faithful to God. God was personal to Him and therefore much more than the creator of the universe and so forth. His pursuit of God took the form of routine prayer. We will come back to this later.
Draw Near To God
You will never obtain a close relationship and fellowship with God if you do not go to Him. God is always available but we have to make the effort to go to him. If you want to be good at anything then you have to pursue that thing. If you want to be a good cook then you have to start cooking. You will need to spend time in the kitchen and learn the various techniques of good cooking.
The same is true with our relationship with God. If you truly want to have a close relationship with God then you are going to have to start spending time with Him. That's the first step. In order to enjoy a personal and up-close relationship with God, you are going to have to actively pursue Him. Consider the following scriptures.
James 4:8 (NKJV)Draw near to God and He will draw near to you...
Mark 12:30 (NKJV) 30And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.'This is the first commandment.
2 Chronicles 15:2-5 (NKJV) And he went out to meet Asa, and said to him: "Hear me, Asa, and all Judah and Benjamin. The Lord is with you while you are with Him. If you seek Him, He will be found by you; but if you forsake Him, He will forsake you. For a long time Israel has been without the true God, without a teaching priest, and without law; but when in their trouble they turned to the Lord God of Israel, and sought Him, He was found by them. And in those times there was no peace to the one who went out, nor to the one who came in, but great turmoil was on all the inhabitants of the lands.
Psalm 73:28 (NKJV)But it is good for me to draw near to God; I have put my trust in the Lord GOD, That I may declare all Your works.
Psalm 145:18 (NKJV)The Lord is near to all who call upon Him, To all who call upon Him in truth.
These verses reveal one very important point. We must draw near to God. He is not going to force himself on us. If we want Him then we will have to take the initiative to RESPOND to Him. I say respond because He has already initiated the relationship. He has already revealed himself through Christ and acknowledged that he wants to be our God. It is up to us to respond to that invitation and enjoy the fellowship with the father.
So you must go to God in order to have a close relationship and fellowship with God. This means that you cannot obtain a close and personal relationship with God if you go about your everyday life without spending quality time with the Father. You cannot nurture a friendship with anyone if you don't spend time with people. The same holds true for our relationship with God.
Each morning you begin the ritual that you call, "a day." We have a ritual for the weekdays and a ritual for the weekends. We are very good at this ritual and we don't even have to think about it because we have been doing it for so long.
Let me say that if you don't take the initiative to draw near to God then you will not have a close and personal relationship with Him. To you, God will stay the man upstairs or the great guy in the sky. To you, God will be the heavenly Father, the one you worship on Sunday. However, God is not involved in your normal everyday life. So the first thing that you have to do is to draw near to God, or rather, pursue God. This pursuit can take many forms, as we shall investigate next.
The Activities of Your Life
What is a typical day like for you? There are certain things that you will definitely do. If you have a job then you will be sure to get out of bed on time so that you will eventually report to work promptly. This means that you will make the effort to set the alarm clock at a certain time to give yourself time to wash, dress, eat and otherwise prepare for your day at work.
Next you will spend your day at your job and budget your time accordingly or do whatever it is you have to do. Keep in mind that there are still opportunities during your workday that can be used for fellowship with God (and without seeming holier than thou to your coworkers).
After work you go home. Here is where the trouble usually starts. Why? You are so tired from work that the only thing you are thinking about is to eat and rest. Now this is very important. For the most part you operate on autopilot. Therefore, if something is not a part of your regular routine then you will probably not do it. The key here is to make your time with God a part of your routine
I learned something very valuable while vacationing in Intercourse, PA (an Amish Area). They for the most part do not allow television in their homes. Why? They believe that it will disrupt the unity and fellowship of the family. Family members would be inclined to turn on the television and watch their favorite soap operas and sitcoms instead of the family sitting down and talking to each other as a normal mode of operation. Consider the following scriptures.
Psalm 1:1-3 (NKJV) Blessed is the man Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, Nor stands in the path of sinners,Nor sits in the seat of the scornful; But his delight is in the law of the Lord, And in His law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree Planted by the rivers of water, That brings forth its fruit in its season, Whose leaf also shall not wither; And whatever he does shall prosper.
Note the use of the word meditate. The word, meditate means to say over and over or to roll over in your head. It is the activity of contemplating the word of God. So it is important to be aware of God and His word and ponder them. You ponder the things that you have to get done around the house or on your job so you should likewise ponder the things of God. Again, the things of God should be as important to you than anything else in your life. As a matter of fact, the Kingdom of God is more important than anything else on this earth.
Examples From The Bible
Now let's look at some examples of how people in the Bible pursued God. There are many ways that people in biblical times pursued God or actively incorporated God into their everyday lives. In the Old Testament memorials, prayer, and traditions to name a few did this. In the New Testament we have prayer, traditions, the Eucharist (Holy Communion), and various observances. The concept of the memorial and traditions are very important and worth considering when implementing your own activities of pursuit of God.
The Passover Memorial
Exodus 12:13 (NKJV) 13Now the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you; and the plague shall not be on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.
This memorial was instituted as the Passover feast every fourteenth day of the first month of the year. This was a memorial to remember how the Lord God delivered the Israelites from Egypt. This would help to ensure that future generations would know of the power and love that God had for his people.
The Memorial Stones From Crossing the Jordan
Joshua 4:5-7 (NKJV) and Joshua said to them: "Cross over before the ark of the Lord your God into the midst of the Jordan, and each one of you take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the children of Israel, that this may be a sign among you when your children ask in time to come, saying, 'What do these stones mean to you?' Then you shall answer them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord; when it crossed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. And these stones shall be for a memorial to the children of Israel forever."
This is a consistent theme in the Old Testament. It was important that the record of the acts of God perpetuate from generation to generation. Therefore, various memorials and traditions were instituted so that future generations would know of the activities of God among and for His people.
The above scripture is just such a case. Stones were used as a memorial of how God parted the Jordan River so that the people could cross it. These things were a normal part of the lives of the people. What things do you have that remind you of the greatness of God? Do you record what God has done for you? Do you tell your children or other youth what you had to go through and how God delivered or helped you? These things are important so that they too could learn to draw close to God and have a reason for doing so.
Traditions
Now I know what you might be thinking. Traditions do have a bad reputation. However, traditions are not intrinsically bad. Traditions become a problem when they supercede something that is indeed intrinsically more important. For example, traditions become a problem if they supercede the word of God. Consider the following scripture.
Matthew 15:6 (NKJV) then he need not honor his father or mother.' Thus you have made the commandment of God of no effect by your tradition.
Jesus was referring to a practice whereby people would dedicate their possessions to God so that they could use their finances for themselves and not for others. For example, if parents needed money, the children could excuse themselves from helping because their resources were already "dedicated" to God. This trick kept people from honoring their parents by taking care of them in their old age.
However, traditions are also used to preserve the nationality of a group of people in foreign lands. For example, Italians immigrants may honor the traditions of their family in a new country to preserver their heritage. That is a good use of traditions. As a matter of fact, many of the scriptures in the Bible were first perpetuated by oral tradition.
Prayer
Prayer is extremely important in our regular diet of spending time with the LORD. How can we possibly fellowship with God without prayer. Prayer, in the context of this lesson, is to commune with God. It is a time where we talk to God. Of course you will ask God for things, thank Him for things, and praise Him. More importantly though you should just spend time talking to him as you would your best friend.
I remember in my younger days how I used to make appointments to commune with God. I used to sit in the backyard anywhere from 11:00 PM to 1:00 AM or so. I would just sit quietly and meditate on Him and talk to Him. I would have sections during the fellowship where I would just be quiet and let God talk to me. Those were beautiful times.
Prayer was so natural. I would talk to God as I walked to school and tell him how I loved Him with a passion and how great a day he had made. However, somehow during the course of my independent and more responsible life, I have not kept that type of routine up. I don't get alone with the Lord nearly as much as I would like, though that is changing now.
The point is that prayer time with God was normal for me and very important and exciting. I used to get very excited about the prospects of meeting with God during the evening and early morning. It was the same feeling as anticipating going to an amusement park or a much-desired trip. It was just exciting thinking about it.
Rituals and Routines
Let's apply the concepts of memorials and traditions to everyday life today. Typically we follow a fairly defined routine each day. Monday through Friday we go to work. On Saturday you do house work. On Sunday you go to church and repeat the cycle on Monday. The variation comes in the ritualistic free times of your weekly routine.
However, I have concluded that rituals and routines are extremely helpful in our pursuit for fellowship with God. Again, these rituals and routines are a means to an end and not the end themselves. The routines and rituals will be used as tools to get us to the time we need with God in order to build the relationship that we desire.
The usefulness of rituals and routines is in the fact that we tend to operate on automatic pilot. We tend to do the same things day to day. So if something is to be done then it has to be a part of the routine or schedule. I propose a method by which things that will lead to a better relationship with God will be added to your normal everyday life (routine). Your relationship builders will become habit or rather a normal part of your daily life and you will find that you won't have to think about prayer time because it will be a normal part of your daily activities.
Again, the power here is not in the ritual or routine. The power is in what they provide you with. They provide a means to actively and effectively pursue God based on the ritualistic way we tend to operate anyway
The objective here is to incorporate things into your life that will remind you and compel you to spend quality time with the LORD. Church is not quality time with the Lord for a personal relationship so church doesn't count.
Here are some ideas that might be helpful for you to develop your own methods to compel you to pursue God.
Early Morning Prayer
Pastor Gary Whetstone of Victory Christian Fellowship strongly believes and operates by early Morning Prayer. He believes in prayer time when he gets up and before he begins the process of planning his day. However, doing this might not seem as easy as it sounds at least at first. Your normal routine now is probably to shut the alarm clock off, jump out of bed and go wash. You already have an early morning routine. Now you have to create a new one, which will take time and effort.
You might try visual aids. My brother had the habit of posting little slogans and the like at various places in his home as encouragement for him for his business. We can do the same thing regarding prayer. Here are some ideas.
- Place a nice plaque, picture, or decorative words in the bathroom or, if possible, at a place that you will see it when you first get up.
- Place the same type of items as above on your refrigerator
- Have a gospel station on the radio that will remind you of your commitment to God and prompt you to fellowship.
After Work Prayer
Perhaps you are the type that likes to get up and in a short while head for work. Perhaps you are not a morning person. In this case you might try prayer time or fellowship time when you come home from work. This especially works well if you are the first person home and have thirty minutes to an hour alone.
You will also need to put up reminders as I indicated in early Morning Prayer above because you probably already have a ritual that you follow when you come home. That ritual will have to be adjusted to incorporate regular time with God.
Late Night Prayer
This is probably my personal favorite. I like the tranquility of late night or very early morning (before 3:00 AM). Again, this might be difficult to do depending on your work schedule. However, perhaps you can do this on the weekend or do it at scheduled times as special prayer time with God.
Again, you might have to change your current routine to incorporate this or you might wake up every morning groaning about missing your fellowship time with God the night before.
Prayer Room
A friend of mine said that he was going to build a prayer room in the basement of his brand new home. I thought that was a great idea. A former pastor of mine, Pastor Effie Blumentoe, had a prayer room as well. A prayer room is just a designated room or area in your house where you can go to pray without any distractions.
So a good idea would be to designate an area in your home where you can go to pray. Of course you have to make prayer a part of your routine or schedule and now you have a place to go.
Bible Study
I am a strong believer in Bible study. Though Bible study is not crucial to a personal relationship with God, it is crucial for you to know how to live godly. Bible study will also give you the information that you will need to pray effectively or according to biblical principles. Consider the following example.
1 John 5:14-15 (NKJV) Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him.
The key point here is to know the will of God so that your prayers (requests) are consistent with His will. Bible study will help you in knowing God's will.
Listen to Christian Music
I have found that listening to Christian music to be very helpful in my quest for fellowship with God. It is especially helpful in that it conditions your mind to be in a disposition of praise and worship and therefore sensitive to God. I am not suggesting that Christians should only listen to Christian music. However, Christian music is very helpful for a disposition for fellowship.
You can set aside some time to sit down and just listen to praise and worship or whatever specific type of Christian music that you like. This could actually be a part of your fellowship time with God. If you are like me and play a musical instrument, you could play the music yourself and worship God with it. The main point is to make this act a normal part of your life (not that you have to do it every day).
Listen to Christian Teaching and Preaching
I also find listening to preachers on Christian radio stations very helpful. I admit that you have to be careful here because there are so many teachings that will take you away from God instead of helping you to draw near Him. The prosperity or Word of Faith teaching is one such example.
Perhaps you have a favorite minister that really makes a difference to you and your relationship with God. Well take the time to listen to him or her. This will definitely be a routine because most likely that minister is aired a certain time of the day. You might even take the time to listen to some of the tapes that you have of various biblical teaching.
Reminder Signs
I mentioned this previously in the section on prayer. You might put plaques in strategic places in your home where you are sure to see them. This could encourage you or remind you of the need to fellowship with God such as prayer or quiet time.
There are many such plaques and pictures that you can purchase from Christian book stores and other stores as well. You could even create your own if you have the proper tools. I learned this technique from my brother.
Schedules
This is a very powerful technique to ensure that you have quality time with God each day, though it might seem intrusive to some extent. In this electronic age there are many devices that can maintain a schedule of appointments for you. There are electronic organizers, palm pilots and the like, and even some digital watches. You can set a recurring schedule that will beep you every day at a certain time to remind you of your prayer or fellowship time. This is very effective but not conducive to variations of schedules.
Daily Devotionals
Another helpful resource for getting God into your routine is the daily devotion. These exist in many forms. There are daily devotional books, as well as daily devotional programs. These help because they definitely get you thinking about godly things and can lead you into prayer as your mind relaxes into the presence of God.
Avoid Fellowship Destructors
Avoid those things that will interfere with you building a lasting and fruitful relationship with God. There are many things that could hinder the progress of a personal relationship with God. I have listed some below.
- Drugs
- Infidelity
- False teaching
- Crime
- Addiction to television (one of the greatest hindrances)
- Excessive leisure and partying-even if it is Christian oriented. Time spent elsewhere is still time not spent with God.
The Prosperity Teaching
I would like to mention the prosperity preaching at this point since it is one of the greatest hindrances in the Christian community to you obtaining a personal and fruitful relationship with God. The prosperity teaching actually takes the focus from God and places it upon yourself and wealth.
For example, prosperity teachers in the Word of Faith movement insist that God wants us to have an abundance of things. People begin to pursue those "things" so much that they in no way pursue God. Their life is defined by the perceived blessings that they have from God, which is measured by their prosperity.
These preachers rarely discuss the prospering of a personal relationship with the Lord so be careful and don't fall for this trap. I will talk more about this movement in another study. Suffice it for me to say that any teaching that would take you away from the LORD should be avoided. Consider the following scripture as a final comment on this topic.
Galatians 1:6 through Galatians 1:7 (NKJV) 6I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you in the grace of Christ, to a different gospel, 7which is not another; but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ.
Conclusion
The Bible says,
Matthew 6:33 (NKJV) But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.
This is well and good but how do you do it? How do you seek the LORD? Typically we pursue those things that are important to us and usually we operate daily on automatic pilot. I believe that we can use our normal mode of operation to our advantage. Since we tend to live daily by a routine then we can make fellowship with God part of that routine, which will ensure that we actually spend time with God and nurture our relationship with Him.
The pursuit of God can take many forms as described in this lesson. There are rituals and traditions. Within that principle are prayer, Bible study, Christian music, listening to preaching and teaching, and mnemonic devices.
The main objective is to incorporate fellowship with God in your normal everyday life. You want to structure your regular activities in such a way that you normally go and spend time with God just as you normally watch the weekly football game or your daily sitcom or soap opera. Your objective is to make fellowship time just as normal as the rest of the stuff you do regularly each day.
I have proposed a method that hinges upon the basic routine that we typically follow each day. Why not incorporate God in that routine so that you ensure that you build a relationship with Him.
It is important to realize that the power is not in the routine. The routine is only a tool that you use to get you to actually spend time with God. The routine takes you from the knowledge of the need for fellowship and prayer to the actual act of doing spending time with the LORD.
So why don't you begin to incorporate fellowship time in your own life. Today develop a schedule, routine, or plan to incorporate God in your life in the same way you have incorporated your work schedule, children schedule, leisure schedule, and others. Make God an integral and normal part of your life so that you can indeed enjoy a fruitful and beautiful relationship with Him.
Be persistent about your pursuit for God. Persist in your pursuit for the truth, which is in Christ Jesus. Amen.