God is the magnificent One of heaven! He is the One who spoke everything into existence. The One who knows the number of hairs on your head, the number of grains of sand on the beach, the number of days remaining in your life. He is the God… always has been, is, and always will be! Yet why, throughout time, has mankind sought to somehow lower God to some level that we could control, manipulate, or somehow manage?
The past couple of articles I have written about a simple four-step process that I believe best describes the “intentional” effort required to walk in a vital relationship with God. Christians talk about “loving” God, but “loving” God is actually the third step in this process. I believe the problem is that we neglect the first two steps in the process. Step #1 – Seek God; Step #2 – Know God; Step #3 – Love God; Step #4 – Enjoy God;
Picture a clock in your mind. 12:00 is seek God, 3:00 is know God, 6:00 is love God, and 9:00 is enjoy God. Then as we continue repeating the cycle we find that the more we seek Him, the more we will know Him…. The more we know Him, the more we will love Him…. The more we love Him, the more we will enjoy Him. Enjoying Him makes us want to seek Him more, so you can know Him better, so you can love Him deeper, so you can enjoy Him more.
To say it a different way, the process works this way: We should first seek God with all our heart (Jer. 29:13; Matt 6:33). Then, as we diligently seek Him we will get to know Him. Then, as we get to know Him we will naturally find ourselves falling deeper and deeper in love with Him. Then, it really gets exciting when we realize that we actually enjoy God (not just the stuff He does, but Him).
Remember, Christ-following really is an issue of love. The only way to get to the point that we actually love God is to seek Him. There is no shortcut. Relationships built on shortcuts fail. Relationships built on a foundation of trust succeed. It takes time to earn trust in a relationship, and it requires mutual seeking of one another. I believe that the struggle many people have with following Christ, obedience, surrender, life-change, etc is that relationship with God is built around shortcuts, not actually seeking and knowing Him.
What are you chasing? Titles? Free time? Money? Well-behaved kids? Position? Power? Retirement? Control of others? Control of an organization? Control of your own life? A good reputation? Respect? Rest? Security?… on and on the list can go. Maybe it is time to stop “chasing” stuff and a shortcut to a relationship with God, and start actually seeking God.