Jesus tells us, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied."
And later: "But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you."
He also says, "For everyone who asks recieves, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened."
Today in Church, during the worship service, we were challenged to write a letter as though the Lord were speaking it to us. We were challenged with questions like what would He say?Well, the Lord has spoken to me before and I've sometimes begun writing down what He says, so I asked Him to speak directly to me, and I truly believe He did!
Now, before I go on, you may be wondering how a person knows the Lord's voice. Well, it's kind of like hearing my dad's voice. I know it immediately when I hear it, but how do you really describe a voice? You simply know who it belongs to! So it is with the Lord.
Anyway, this is an excerpt of what He told me: "Remain strong in righteousness. Seek righteousness by seeking Me, and you will find righteousness because of My Holy Spirit who lives within you. The time in which you give in to your flesh's desires must come to an end! Seek Me above all else, and I will give you the strength to walk in My righteousness."
Righteousness, huh? Seek righteousness. Do we really know what this means? I've discussed similar topics in all my notes, so pardon for the redundancy! But we all need this encouragement! I already know by the Word what the Lord told me, but He still knew what to tell me because He knows what I need to hear. He needs to mature us.
But will we truly allow ourselves to be matured? It is truly my desire to be so wholly Christ's that I am trusted, in unity with the Body, with His authority! God wants to entrust us with His authority. He doesn't want to entrust us with our authority, regardless of how well we know Him. He wants to entrust us with His authority. (Don't believe me? See Matthew 16:19; John 14:12-14; John 16:23-24; Ephesians 1:19-20.) But to know exactly what His authority is, we have to know Him really well! In order to know Him really well, we have to pursue Him and righteousness!
Okay, but we run into fear or neglect. We don't want to go through everything it takes to pursue righteousness! We like to hold on to our bad attitudes! We like to hold on to our "right" to complain. We don't want to go through that really, really tough effort of getting rid of that lust we have for so and so. Guys (specifically referring to other males), we don't want to stop looking at girls with sexually oriented thoughts (it works the other way for girls, too, I'm told). We think, how can we? How can we possibly have a pure mind? That's just part of our nature, we say!
But doesn't God say: "Be holy, as I am holy"...? Doesn't He say:
"Fix your thoughts on what is:
- true
- honorable
- right
- pure
- lovely
- admirable
Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise."
Philippians 4:8...?
So where's our excuse? Do we truly love the Lord? If we do, we will seek righteousness!
I don't know about you, but the Lord's plans for my life are the most excited thing imaginable that I can do with my life! I honestly couldn't find satisfaction in absolutely anything else. Am I bragging? No! I'm praising God because He's faithful to fulfill righteousness in my life!
And yet I have SO far to go! But I want to! You know, I don't get discouraged as much when I fall into temptations as when I fall into apathy (let me clarify this term: apathy meaninganything less than a passionate resolve to seek to know Christ more and more each day). I am being totally honest. When I succumb to temptations (to which the Lord has told me to STOP), I quickly come back to the Lord and know His forgiveness! When I fall into apathy, it'shard to come back to the Lord! Therefore, I want to stay as far from apathy as possible. In fact, it's when I am living in apathy that I struggle--it's like there's a spiritual force against me--more with temptations. You see, the devil has a much greater foothold when I am not living in close communion (relationship) with the Holy Spirit.
But doesn't that make sense? I mean, who is it who have the hardest time coming to the Lord? The great sinner (the prostitute, the tax collector, the median) or the 'righteous' Pharisee?
What I mentioned a minute ago is so true, though! God is faithful to bring righteous in my life! This is because we have the Holy Spirit. I am constantly discussing going deeper and deeper into our knowledge and relationship of the Lord in my notes. Well, I'm saying it again! (Probably for my own sake more than any readers.)
Do we really want to live in the fullness of the lives God has for us? Then we can't stop where we are. We can't even choose to "clean up our act" in areas of life that we feel need the most cleansing. We need an all-pervasive cleansing. It's a hard process that includes self-determination (1 Peter 1:13), passionate/sacrificial resolve (Luke 9:23-24; Hebrews 12:1), deep love for the Lord (Mark 12:30), obedience (John 14:21), the prompting and work of the Holy Spirit (this is key; John 14:26), and (ugh) discipline (Hebrews 12:6).
I have a warning that may almost seem contradictory to what I've already said, but it's truly not. This i's a very important concept to grasp. Look at this verse:
"We do this [run the race faithfully] by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith."
Hebrews 12:2
We are running this 'race' along the 'Path of Life,' and the only way to stay on and not get stuck in the ditch is to keep our eyes on Christ. Even when we try to look ahead at where we are going in this life, or when we look down to make sure our footing is sure, we fall. This seems to defy logic...? Not really. We're blind when we're not looking at Christ. We're spiritually blind when our focus is not growing in our relationship with Him.
How else are we to know how to make a decision if we do not know His voice? How do we know His voice if we don't take the time to get to know Him? (See John 10:1-16.) How can we avoid those sickening thoughts of lust and fleshly desires if we don't know Him? We can't. Not really. We can try. We can try not to become depressed with our situations. We can try to avoid the stress and anxiety of the unknown. It won't work. But this is where my caution lies: we can get too caught up in 'pursuing righteousness' that we take our eyes off of the 'Righteous One.' Does that make sense? That's what the Pharisees did. They wanted to be so 'righteous' that it blinded them to He who's very throne is Righteousness and Justice (Psalm 94:14).
So we HAVE to keep our focus on Christ. In our school, in our relationships, in our leisure, in our joy, in our boredom, in our praise of things in life. This is how we pursue righteousness. Oh how I desire to be holy as He is holy! Let's not be intimidated by the process! Do we truly love Him? Then let us pursue Him with all our hearts, souls and minds, for He loves us!
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