A Verse to Memorize. A Prayer to apply it. A Place to Keep it. Get your FREE memory verse cards
today. Dr. Charles Stanley: We
are a nation in pursuit. We pursue just about
everything you could imagine, not only wealth
and relationships, clothing, gadgets. Just think about all the
things that we pursue: sports, all kind of situations
and circumstances that crop up in our life. We're after this and after
that and after the other, that's who we are. And somehow, amidst all of these
things that are out there in front of us that so distract
us, I wonder sometimes where God fits in the way we
position things in our life. Is He first and foremost,
or is He an afterthought? Is He the most
important person in our life, or is He just one of the
many people in our life? Where does God fit? And when I think about
that, I think about where people's interest lies. And you say, "Well, how do
you know what people think?" Well, listen to
their conversations, the subject of
their conversations. What are they talking about? Find out where
people spend their money. Where do they spend their time? Who are their friends? What do they read? What do they believe? How do they act in
secret as well as in public? The truth is, people are
pursuing this and pursuing that and pursuing the other,
and somewhere along the way, I think God
probably gets left behind, except when
there's an emergency. And then all of a
sudden, He's number one. So I'd ask you this question:
Where is He in your life? Where is God in your life? When you wake up in the
morning, what's the first thing you think about? When you go
through half the day, has God been in your vocabulary? Has He been in your mind? Or have you just been
going about doing things, responsibilities and
obligations that you have, taking care of your family
or whatever it might be. But where's God in all that? And so if I ask you: Well, why
do you pursue so vigorously this occupation or this search for
wealth or whatever it might be, or this relationship? Then there has to
be some reason. Well, how vigorously do you
pursue your relationship to God? Is He an afterthought,
except in an emergency, or is He the number
one person in your life? Well, all through the Scripture,
especially in the Old Testament, we're admonished
to seek the Lord. So what in the world
does it mean to seek Him? Somebody says, "Well, why
should I be seeking Him? I've been a Christian
a pretty good while, and I don't know why I
would have to be seeking something I already have." Well, I want you to
listen carefully. And I want you to turn to
the hundred and fifth Psalm for a moment, and I want
us to look at this passage. Hundred and fifth Psalm
and just a few verses, it's a psalm of real action. And of course, look to see
what is the object of this and who it's all about. Listen to what He says
beginning in verse one, "Oh give thanks to the
Lord, call upon His name, make known His deeds
among the peoples. Sing to Him, sing
praises to Him, speak of all of His wonders. Glory in His holy name,
let the heart of those who seek the Lord be glad. Seek the Lord and His strength,
seek His face continually." So notice, it's a
Psalm of action. Giving thanks,
calling, making known, singing, speaking,
glorying, seeking, all of these things
have to do with what? With who God is,
what He's all about. So I'd ask you this. If somebody said to you,
"Do you ever seek the Lord?" what would you say? Would you have to say,
"Well, what do you mean by seek? And why should I seek
somebody I already have?" But it's interesting in the
Scriptures that many times we're admonished to seek. You go back in what Moses was
saying to Israel about seeking the Lord, what David was saying
to Israel about seeking the Lord, and Isaiah and Jeremiah. And all through the Old
Testament we're admonished to seek Him. And when we come to that
eleventh chapter of Hebrews, that whole biographical
sketch of people whose faith was so outstanding. And the Scripture says,
"When we come to Him, we must believe that He is
and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him. So when we think
about seeking Him, what are we thinking about? So, when I think about that, I
think about it in this light. If I'm already a believer
and I'm seeking the Lord, it means that I want to go
further in my relationship, not just to be saved. And you probably trusted Jesus
as your Savior some time ago, and you said, "Well, you know,
when He forgave me of my sins, wrote my name in the Lamb's
Book of Life, came to indwell me with the Holy Spirit,
what else is there?" That is just the
beginning, only the beginning. When we are
admonished to seek the Lord, that means we're to come to
Him, asking for direction, seeking to build a deeper, more
intimate relationship with Him, because that's what He's up to. He said He predestined that you
and I would be conformed to the image of His Son, and that
would involve our having an intimate relationship with Him. So when I seek Him, I
want to know more about Him. I want to have a more
intimate relationship. I want to talk to Him.
I want to listen to Him. I want to have a
conversation with Him. I want to be able to
observe Him working in my life in some fashion. If I'm seeking Him, I
want to know Him better, more deeply, more
intimately than ever before. For example, if you got married
and you had this wonderful wedding, and then
starting the next day, you didn't talk to
each other much, you'd say, "I have
made a horrible mistake." Because it appears that
your husband or wife wasn't interested in anything but just
having the wedding and wasn't interested in getting to know
you and to love you so they could genuinely
adore each other. The same thing is true
in the Christian life. When you and I say, "That's
just getting in the door." Our name's written in the
Lambs Book of Life, we're on our way
to living it out. But the truth is,
in the mind of God, that is just the beginning. He wants us to get
to know Him, why? Because He desires
that you and I seek Him. That is, He does
not want us ever be, watch this carefully, He does
not ever want us to be satisfied where we are in
our Christian life. There is a sense of
satisfaction and peace and contentment and joy. At the same time,
here's the paradox. The more satisfied
I become with Him, the more dissatisfied I become. The, listen, the more
satisfied I am with Him, with what I learn in my
relationship with Him, then all that does is
just create more hunger, more yearning, more desire to
know Him because when will you and I ever, ever
fathom all that God is? We never will.
And that's the wonderful thing. For example, if I
gave you a thimble, like you sew with, a
thimble, and said, "Okay, here's the Atlantic
Ocean, be my guest." That's the way God is. He's fathomless. You and I will never
know Him to the fullest, but He desires that you and I
begin the moment we are saved. So to seek Him is
to pray to Him, to listen to Him, to talk
to Him, to grow with Him and to have a more intimate
relationship with Him. And many people, sadly to
say, are very satisfied trusting Jesus as Savior,
join the church, getting baptized, living out the
Christian life casually with no sense of real purpose,
no sense of direction. And, listen, and willing to
live it out as if it's a casual acquaintance with Almighty God. That's not what the
Christian life's all about. The Christian life is serious
business about having a serious relationship with the God who
created every single one of us, has absolute power
over all things, knows all things, and has
made us these awesome promises. That's who He is. And this is why,
throughout the Scripture, He says we're to seek Him
and we're to seek Him with all of our heart. Now, when I think about how
people seek Him and I think about the fact that we should
ask ourselves the question here, two things, and that is let's
think about it from the point of view of a lost person. So, if a lost person
says, "What am I to seek? Why should I be seeking God? I have a nice home.
I have a good family." Or, "I have a good car. I have a good job and
everything's going fine. Why do I want to seek God? I'm not a Christian.
Why do I want to seek Him?" Here's what you tell them. You say, "Well, let me give you
some very biblical reasons why you should seek God, beginning
in Isaiah chapter fifty-nine," if you want to follow
some of these verses. "Isaiah, chapter fifty-nine
is a good reason you should seek the Lord." Well, what is that? Well, here's number one,
because the Scripture says, "Your iniquities have made a
separation between you and God, and your sins have hidden
His face from you so that He does not hear you." If you've never trusted
Christ as your Savior, you don't have a
relationship with God. And He says, besides that,
standing between you and God are all these sins. And He cannot--you may whisper
prayers in your emergencies, but He does not hear you. A second thing He says
in Romans chapter one, if you want to turn
there for a moment, awesome chapter in the Bible. And here's a second reason I
would say to someone who is not a Christian, that you ought
to be seeking the Lord because here's what he says, he says in
the eighteenth verse of Romans one, "The wrath of God is
revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness
of men," or women, "who suppress the
truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known
about God is evident within them, and God has made
it evident to them." That is, he says God's wrath,
God's wrath exists upon those who have turned away. But a third reason you
should seek Him is this. In this first chapter and
this twenty-eighth verse, a very serious
verse in the Bible, when he says, "And just as they
did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave
them over to a depraved mind, to do those things
which are not proper." A depraved mind is a mind that
cannot form right judgments. When a person lives in sin
over and over and over again, refuses the gospel, rejects the
gospel, here's what happens. Their heart begins to harden. And he says a depraved
mind is a mind that cannot form right judgments. And what they don't
realize, and a person says, "Well, you know, it--I'm
not concerned about religion, not concerned about church." You need to get concerned
about God because God's wrath rests upon you. And when you live in
sin and deliberately, willfully reject Him,
refuse to seek Him, turn a deaf ear to the gospel,
what's happening all the time, as He says in Hebrews, and that
is the heart begins to harden. When does it harden?
How long does it harden? How long does it take? I don't know the answer to
that, but this much I do know. It would be like me walking over
and touching you today on the cheek and you
would feel it, easily. It's a real tender place. But when you're
dead, you won't feel it. When you hear the gospel
over and over and over and over again, there can come a
time when you can't feel it. And that would be the most
tragic thing that could happen to anybody, to sin against God
to the point that all feeling for God, all desire for
God, all sensitivity to God, all interest in God
whatsoever is gone and you're walking like a dead man. So, when somebody says,
"Well, why should a lost person be seeking God?" I'm answering that
question for you right now. And that is simply for the
reason it is a day--it's a dangerous thing not to
listen to God and to seek Him. It is a dangerous
thing--listen, it isn't just temporarily dangerous. It is eternally dangerous
to reject the gospel of Jesus Christ. And of course, most of us
know some of these verses, but in First
Corinthians chapter two, for example,
here's what he says. He says the lost person does
not understand the Scripture. The lost person doesn't even
have the capacity to understand. You begin to understand when you
begin to recognize your need of Christ, and you begin to ask
Him to forgive you of your sins. Then all of a sudden, the Spirit
of God is working in your life when you come to the
realization that you need Him. But he says the lost
person, you talk to lost people, they don't
understand what you're saying and why you're saying it. And here's what he says in
First Corinthians chapter two, that fourteenth verse,
he says they cannot. A--because they're
spiritually discerned. The lost person
doesn't understand. Well, I thought God
was a God of love, and I thought He answered
prayer and all these things. And of course, you know
what Romans says in that sixth chapter and the
twenty-third verse. Here's one of the primary
reasons you should seek the Lord if you're a lost person. He says, "The wages
of sin is death." Three ways: there
is physical death, there is spiritual death,
and there's eternal death. And a person who rejects
the Lord Jesus Christ, refuses to seek Him,
here's what you're coming to. You're coming--you're
going to die physically, you don't doubt that part. You're already dead spiritually. And number three, you
will suffer eternal death, which is spoken of
in the twentieth chapter of the Revelation. That's eternal death,
and that is what the Bible calls the second death. I would say if you've
never trusted Jesus, there is a very specific,
definite set of reasons you should be asking God
to speak to you and to surrender your life to Him. Okay, so somebody says,
"Well now, wait a minute. I understand that
for the lost person. But here I am a Christian, and
you have explained that when you trust Jesus Christ as
your personal Savior, He comes into your life. The Holy Spirit comes in
your life and seals you as a child of God. So why should I be seeking God
when I'm already a Christian? What am I looking for? Why am I seeking anything?" Well, let's think
about it for a moment. When you trusted Jesus
Christ as your Savior, the Bible said
it's--Paul puts it this way. He says you're like
a babe in Christ. So you're born
again, Jesus said. And so, why should
you seek the Lord? Because God does not
intend for you to remain in babyhood in your
Christian life. That is, you can
quote John three sixteen, that's the only
verse you can quote. And so, you know you--that
you're a Christian and you say, "Here's what I did
and I got baptized. I know that I'm a Christian. What am I looking for in life?" You've missed the whole point. Because, listen, he said He
predestined, he predetermined that when you were saved, you'd
begin at that moment to be conformed to the
likeness of His Son. Listen, God knows us. He wants us to know Him. He wants us to
know Him intimately. He wants us to
know Him personally. He wants us to know Him in a
way that just casually knowing, getting some information
about Him is not sufficient. So somebody says, "Well
now, looks like to me that's a contradiction that I have
Him and at the same time I'm to seek Him." It's not a contradiction at all. Because what He's
saying is this, look: I want a relationship with you. I want a relationship with
you so that I can reveal to you who I really am. I want you to
understand how much I love you. I want you to understand
that you can absolutely, comfortably trust Me
in every situation. I want you to know
that I'm on your side. I want you to know that I have
made a promise that I will cause everything to work together for
your good if you will follow Me and love Me and
obey Me and trust Me. I'll turn
everything: difficulties, hardships, trials, suffering,
I'll turn it all for your good. I want you to get to know Me. Because, God,
listen, He is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent. He's unchangeable. He's truthful.
He's holy. He's righteous.
He's merciful. He's all of these things. And most people,
if you ask them, "Describe God," they could just
use a few adjectives because they've never sought Him. Listen, if you love Him, you
will seek to know Him better. And if you're a
brand new Christian, you should be seeking
to know Him better. And seeking to know Him
isn't just getting information and
reading the Bible. But it's also listening and
watching and observing how does God act? That is, when I think about all
the things that I would like to know about God and am
beginning to know in my life, one of the things that I
treasure most is I love to observe how He works. I want to know how God thinks.
I want to know how He works. I want to know why He
does this, why He does that, why He does the other. Do I have all the answers?
No, I do not. But I have enough to keep me
so excited and searching and seeking and listening and
observing what He does, not only in my life, but in
the lives of other people. And one of the ways that God
shows us what He is like and what He wants to do in our life
is He will open your eyes to see what He's doing in
other people's lives. We watch how He operates in
other people's lives and say, "Well, Lord, You are blessing
them, and I certainly want to be obedient to You
so You can bless me." He wants us to know Him, and to
know Him on a level that most people have no interest or
even idea that they can know Him on that level. Listen, we know Him about that
thick, and He's fathomless. He's absolutely fathomless. You'll never exhaust who He is. It'll always be that. As we said before, and I say it
again, here's what happens when you begin to understand
who He is, what He's like. You want more and
more and more and more. You say, "Well, when
will I get enough of Him?" Never! And the reason people become
a Christian and nothing very exciting happens in their life
is because somewhere along the way, they got the idea,
"Well, you just get saved and sort of sit down." No, you get saved and
get up and get busy, listen, not get busy working,
though that's part of it, but busy finding out who is this
God to whom you have--listen, here's what you did. Without any proof
except the Word of God, when you trusted Him as your Savior,
here's what you did. You say--you said, "I believe
in this God enough to bet, so to speak, my whole
eternity on following Him." You don't have any proof except
the promise of the Word of God. So, if I were you, I'd get to
know this God with whom I'm going to spend eternity and this
God who controls my eternity, this God who controls my life
and death and how long we live, this God who controls every
single thing that exists, He wants us to know Him. And if you're not
interested in knowing Him, you need to stop and ask
yourself the question: Well, what's going on in my
life that I don't have that kind of excitement? Now, let's think
about it this way also. Somebody says, "Well, isn't God
omnipresent, everywhere?" Yeah. "Is He in my heart
as a Christian?" Yes, He is.
But now watch this. Let's say that you get
up tomorrow morning, you don't read your Bible. You're thinking about what
you're going to do when you get to work. You don't start
the day off praying. You're thinking about
what you're going to do when you get to work. You may live till lunch time
or dinner time or bedtime and give Him almost no thought,
unless you have an accident. Then He's number one. I think about people who live
their lives and they don't spend any time seeking the Lord. When you go to bed at
night, what's the last thing you're thinking about? What you've got to do the
next day, or that you have somebody to help you do it? Where is God--in other
words, in your thinking, in your category, and the
minutes and the hours you spend any given day, where is
God in your vocabulary? In other words, if I sat down
and talked with you for a little while and just--we
just talked about-- I wonder if God's
name would come up? Well, yeah, it would
because I'm a pastor. Okay, chalk that to pastor
business and just say one of your friends. How much conversation do
you carry on to your friends, you never mention God,
you never mention Jesus, never mention the Bible. You never talk about how
God works in your life. You never give a testimony. Then where is He in your life? Is He any kind of a priority? He says we're to seek Him
and we're to seek Him with all of our heart. And I think many people
somehow in their thinking, it never dawns on
them that if I love Him, I'll talk about Him. If I love Him, I
will pursue Him. That He'll be my
number one pursuit. Watch this. Watch this carefully. Whatever is your number
one pursuit other than God, sooner or later, you, listen,
you're going to lose it or you're going to hurt it
or you're going to be damaged by it. Whatever is number one
ahead of God in your life, I can tell you something. He already has His hand on it
for the simple reason He loves us too much to let
us get by with it. He says we're to seek Him. So, it's a daily challenge in
all of our lives and we have to ask ourselves the
question: Lord, am I in one of those stages
where I'm just sort of casually living the Christian life? Am I serious about following
You and being obedient to you. He says we're to seek Him. Now--which leads me to
the--what I want to consider here for a moment, and that is,
so we talk about listening to Him, seeking and all this,
what's required of me? What's required of us if
we're to seek the Lord. Listen, we're talking
about having a relationship with Almighty God. Well, what's required of me? Can I say, "Well, you
know, when I decide to pray, I will; and I'll
read the Bible, I will; and when I go to
church, I will." Or is this serious business? So first of all, let
me say we're to seek Him with all of our heart. And I want you to turn to the
twenty-ninth chapter of Jeremiah because here's a
precious passage of Scripture, and most committed believers
understand this passage. We're to seek Him
with all of our heart. And that means He's a priority. He's number one.
He's first. He's the most
important person in our life. Listen to this,
Jeremiah twenty-nine, verse eleven, "For I know the
plans that I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans for
welfare," that's for our good, "not for calamity to give
you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me
and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you." Listen to this now,
"I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find
Me when you search Me with all your heart." Here's what that says to me. It says to me in my seeking
Him, it's not a casual thing. If I said to you, "I love you
with all my heart," you'd have a right to expect some things. Anybody who says to you, "I love
you with all my heart," it's going to affect their
attitude toward you, their time with you,
what they spend on you, whatever it might be. We're to love Him, He
says, with all of our heart. And I think when a person
thinks in terms of loving God, what do you think about when
you think about loving God? Doing something for Him? Or is there an
emotion within you? A deep, abiding, hungering,
thirsting, yearning within you, listen, to go deeper and
further in your relationship. If you really love somebody,
and you're married to them, for example, or even if you're
not married but it's a friend or whatever it might be,
then if you really love them, what happens? You want to do
something for them. Or you want to be with them. But most of all, listen,
most of all, you want to get on the inside of them
and find out how they think. And so, if I'm to seek
Him with all of my heart, then this is not a
casual business. But, if I'm going to
do that, here's something I have to remember. In Isaiah, fifty-five, look at
one more passage here. Isaiah fifty-five,
because this is very, very, very important. If I'm going to seek the
Lord with all of my heart, here's something I
have to remember. In this fifty-fifth chapter
and the sixth verse says, "Seek the Lord
while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake His
way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him
return to the Lord." Now, watch this. Watch this carefully. I cannot seek the Lord over here
and be living in sin over here. In other words,
that doesn't work. I'm either going to live
in sin or seek the Lord. I'm not going to do both. I--there may be a time in your
life when you're seeking Him, and maybe there's some
weakness in your life, but listen, and you're having
to struggle with something, but listen, if you're
seeking the Lord and there's a struggle,
that's one thing. If you're seeking the Lord and
living in sin and not connecting the two, you, listen, you
can't seek and find what you're looking for and hold on to some
sin in your life because He says your iniquities have
separated you from Him. That doesn't mean you're going
to be lost if you're a Christian, but you cannot play
both sides at the same time. If I love Him, if
I'm seeking Him, I'm willing to get rid of all of
the stuff and things in my life that don't fit who I am
as a follower of Jesus. Then when I seek Him,
I'm going to discover, I'm going to find out something. I'm going to have a
relationship that is so deep beyond my comprehension. But I must seek Him
with all of my heart. Now, you have to ask yourself
this question: What ever--what other desires are in your life? Here's a very
interesting passage in Deuteronomy chapter four. Look at this fourth chapter
and the nineteenth verse. And sometimes Christians
get caught up in these things and they should not. And listen to this
very clear Word of God. We're talking about if
you're going to seek Him, you can't have other
stuff in your life. Listen to this, verse
nineteen of the fourth chapter, "And beware not to lift up your
eyes to heaven and see the sun and the moon and the stars,
and all the host of heaven, and be drawn away and
worship them and serve them, those which the Lord your
God has allotted to all the peoples under the
whole heavens." Now, you say, "Well, I'm not
worshipping anything up there." Well, let me ask you a question. What is that piece in
the paper that has your month of birth on it? What's that piece? The horoscope. That what it is? You say, "Well now, that
doesn't mean anything." Why do you read it? Did you know that if you
read that seeking guidance, He says don't do that. Because what do
they--they're talking about, you know, what's in the heavens
and if you're born under this and under that or
under the other. You need to be born again,
you get out from all of that. What I want you to see, what I
want you to see here is this: that from God's perspective,
that doesn't fit who we are. He says we're not to be
looking at those things. We are to be doing what? With all of our heart,
we're to be seeking Him. And you remember
what David said? He said, "My heart pants after
the Lord God like the deer pants after the water brook." So I would ask you: What are
you the hungriest for today? What is it that
really stirs you up? What is it that motivates you? Who is it you want to know? What is it you
want to accomplish? What do you want God
to do in your life? If God said, "Okay,
here's a blank paper, write it out," what
would you write down? And after you wrote it
down, would it fit His will and purpose and plan for your life? Would it fit the Word
of God for your life? Sometime somebody says, "Well,
I just don't know how to live." Well, I can tell
you how to live. Just decide you're going
to be obedient to God. And you say, "Well, how am I
going to know what that means?" In the Word of God, He
makes it very, very clear. We are to seek Him
with all of our heart. Here's what most people do, they
say, "Well, I'll tell you what I believe about seeking God. I have a whole list of
things I'm seeking God for. Here's what I'm seeking God." You're not interested in God. You're interested in what God
can give you or do for you. What He says is: I just want
you to be satisfied with Me. Now, if you're not a Christian,
that won't make one bit of sense with you, and I understand that. But most of you are and
a lot of you who are watching and listening are. You're believers. Where does He fit in
your desire pattern? And if you'll think about
it, if He's not number one, then I have an idol in my life. If He's not--you say,
"Oh, my wife's not an idol." Is she number one or
is God number one? Are your children number
one or is God number one? Is your job number one
or is God number one? What do you treasure most? What do you possess
that you treasure most? You possess Christ. Do you treasure Him most? Or is there something
else in your life that you treasure more? Whatever it is, I can tell
you, because He loves you, He's going to
knock on your door. So, I'm to seek Him
with all of my heart. Secondly, I'm to
seek Him diligently. Listen to what he
says in Proverbs, chapter eight and
verse seventeen, Proverbs eight seventeen,
listen to what he says. He says, for example, "I
love those who love Me, and those who diligently
seek Me will find Me." Now, why does He say diligently? Here's the reason: because we
have a thousand things to divide our mind, many
things to steal our time. If I'm going to
diligently seek Him, it means I'm
willing to work at it. I'm willing to set
aside other things. Diligently doesn't mean
that I just casually think about it once in a while. Diligently means it
becomes a priority. I'm willing to work at it. I'm willing to
sacrifice other things for it. I'm willing to put
other things aside. It becomes number one,
it's a priority in my life. I'm going to work at that,
that above everything else. He says when we
diligently seek Him, because most people do not. And see, let me just say this.
And God knows I love you all. When people just go to
church, for example, and they say, "Well, you
know, I've sort of done it for this week." What have you done? You've satisfied some
sense of guilt you have. If that's all the relationship
you have with Jesus Christ, there's something
desperately wrong. We're to seek Him diligently. For example, if you have
a--you students would know this. But if you were
looking for a job, for example, and they give you
a test and you're diligently studying, you're not
saying, "Oh, my goodness! I'll just read this
part and that part, I'm going to skip this
part and skip that part. They're not going to
ask me any questions." You wouldn't do that. If you knew that your livelihood
and your future was determined by how you did well on this
exam, what would you do? You would diligently study it. I mean, you'd stay up all night. And I can remember times in
college when they have two exams on the same day,
four-hour exams on the same day, staying up all night
was not even an issue. I had to.
I was forced to. I diligently studied
to be sure I passed. What are you diligent about? Are you diligent about anything? You're willing to exert
the effort and the time. For example, are you
diligent about your children, spending
time with them? Are you diligent about
your wife or husband? Are you diligent about how
you handle your finances? Are you diligent
about your health? Do you exercise?
Do you eat right? Do you get enough rest?
Or do you not care? And we have a lot of sick
people because they're not diligent about their health. To be diligent
means it's important. And I'm going to give it time.
I'm going to study. I'm going to pray.
I'm going to seek. How can I do my very, very best? To seek the Lord diligently
means I'm not putting some else--something
else in front of it. And then we should
seek Him continually. Let me ask you a question: Can
you name anything in your life that you should
never pray about? Anything. Is there anything that you don't
need to pray about at all? You say, "Well, I don't need
to pray about what I'm going to dress--how I'm going
to dress tomorrow." Well, that depends on who
you are and how you dress. Can you name anything of any
significance at all that you shouldn't be praying
about and asking God about? Living in the society
in which you and I live, we should be praying
and seeking the Lord. In other words, every time you
and I have a decision to make, He is the number one
person to consult, number one. You say, "Always?"
Always, why? We're to seek Him diligently and
we're to seek Him continually. Not sometimes, but all the time. Go back to Isaiah again, and
here's a passage that says yes, I should be
diligently seeking Him, but I should also, listen, I
should also continually do so, and here's the reason why. Let's say, for example,
this week you're going to face some decisions. We may all face decisions this
week that we had no plans for whatsoever because we didn't
know it was going to crop up. But whatever the issue may
be, here's the reason you and I should be seeking
Him at all times. Because He says, "For My
thoughts are not your thoughts, nor My ways your
ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are
higher than the earth, so are My ways higher
than your ways and My thoughts higher
than your thoughts." So if I want to make a, listen,
if I want to make the right decision in the situation, I
should go to someone who has the highest of thoughts,
the highest of ways, who knows every single solitary
thing there is to know about this situation or circumstances. For example, you're
planning to get married. You think you love somebody,
and I would simply say to you, "You need to be very diligent
and you need to be continually seeking the mind of God
about whether this is the right person or the right time." You say, "Well, I know
it's the right person." Has God--let me just say this. Everybody needs an alarm system. Now, you can buy one real
cheap and put it on the table, but that's not what
I'm talking about. I'm talking about on the inside. And you do have one
whether you're listening or not. Now, I can tell
you how mine sounds. Mine doesn't have
an audible sound, but it sounds
like, in my spirit, static. [making static noises] Something's not right. When I get static in my soul, I
know I'm heading in the wrong direction, I'm
thinking the wrong thing. I need to back
off and say, "Okay, God, what are You saying to me?" You say, "Well, God doesn't
operate in my life that way." Yes, He will. Your static may not
be the same mine is, but what He does, it's
that sense of uncertainty, that sense of lack of assurance. Can't put your finger on it,
you can't exactly name it, but you know it's static. And every time I have
ever violated that, it was the wrong thing to do. 'Cause listen, God has given you
a conscience and He's given you knowledge and understanding. And if you have a
relationship with Him, listen, if you want your
alarm to work every single time, obey God. Commit yourself to
live obediently to Him, and you know what
He's going to do? Anytime you're heading the wrong
direction, static comes on, why? Because He loves you, and
because He cares for us, and that's why we're to
seek Him continually. And I can't think of anything in
my life that's important at all that should leave out of
my relationship with Him. Because, listen, He's so
willing, He's so willing to accurately guide you in
every single decision you make. And this is why
people say, "Well, I don't have to pray about that,
that's just natural." You know what
natural is in the Bible? It's bad news. The natural man is the lost man. And it's our naturalness
that gets us in trouble. And so, we're to seek Him
continually, and the reason we're to seek Him continually
is just what He said. He said, "Seek Me continually
because My ways are higher than your ways, My thoughts are higher
than your thoughts. And if you're always seeking Me
and seeking My direction and My divine guidance, I'm going to
protect you from making the wrong decision, which could be a
terrible decision in your life." Then of course, we're
to seek Him confidently. And you see, this is
part of the issue. Some of you've been
sitting here already and saying, "Well, that's what
He does in your life, but He won't do
that in my life." Yes, He will, because He
loves every single one of us. And that's why He says those
who come to Him must come to Him believing Him,
trusting Him, seeking Him. Is God willing
to--let's put it this way. Is He willing to
tune up your alarm? Is He willing to tune up
your alarm so that there's no question any longer that God
says, "Don't do that," or He said, "Yes, I
want you to do this." Because living this
Christian--listen, think about the society
in which you and I live. It is--it has never
been more uncertain in the life of this nation. More homes, more
people, more trouble, more trial, more heartaches, but
more uncertainty for the future than ever before in the
history of this nation. We need a personal, intimate
relationship with God second to none, seeking Him
above everything else there is in life. And when we do, we're
going to come out wise. Then, he says we're to seek
Him, for example, humbly. And, Psalm, let's see,
Psalm chapter ten for a moment. Listen to this passage. Everything that we
need some direction about's in the Word of God. Listen to what he says in the
fourth verse of the tenth Psalm. Watch this, "The wicked, in the
haughtiness of his countenance, does not seek Him. All his thoughts are,
'There is no God.'" Here's the worst thing that
can happen to you. When you get to the
place in life you think, "Don't need to go to church. I don't need God." And you think, "Well,
people don't say that." Yes, they do.
Here's what they'll say. They'll say to me,
"Why do I need God? I have my family, I have a nice
home, I have a nice car, I've got a good job,
I've got income, I've got plenty of
money in the bank. Why do I need God?" And I want to say to them, "The
only assurance you and I have in this life is Jesus. He is the only
assurance we ultimately have. And because He's the Lord,
and He's the Lord of our life, whether we
acknowledge it or not, we ought to be pursuing that
relationship above everything else in life
because the truth is, we're totally
dependent upon Him. And pride and arrogance is
absolutely destructive every single time, no exception." He says we're to seek Him. And that is we're to come to Him
because we know we need Him and we desire Him and love Him. Now, there are so many--lot
of other things I could say, but I want to bring this
down to when should the unbeliever seek the Lord? I could spend time telling you
what God promises to do when we seek Him, and
there's a list of things. For example, He
says He'll reward us, bless us, be good to us,
do good things for us. We won't miss out on any good. In other words, His
promises are multiple. But what about the unbeliever? When should the
unbeliever seek God? So I want to give you
a couple of verses. I want to go back to
Isaiah fifty-five for a moment. When should the
unbeliever seek God? And here's what he says,
read it to you already. There's a key word here.
Look at this. The Bible says,
watch this, verse six. You listening, say amen. That's a little light.
Amen? "Seek the Lord
while He may be found." Secondly, "Call upon
Him while He is near, while He may be found." If you sin and sin
and sin and sin, and you become hardened
to the things of God, what happens is you don't care. It isn't that God ceases
to care, you don't care. This is why it's so
absolutely dangerous to listen to the gospel. He said, "Seek Him
while He may be found." When you listen and you
sense something in your heart, it may be
conviction, it may questions, doubts, whatever
it is, but listen, while He may be found. Oftentimes God is knocking
on your heart's door and you don't
even realize it. You think it's something
somebody else is doing. Seek Him while He may be found. Listen, He says, "Call
upon Him while He is near." That is, a sense of
the nearness of God. You can't put your fingers on
it, you can't explain it. You just know that God's there.
You know what that is? That's the Holy Spirit making
you aware that you are sitting or standing or lying in the
presence of Almighty God and He is ready to do
something in your life. And if you're willing to ask Him
to forgive you of your sins and to cleanse you based on
what He did at Calvary, He's willing to radically change
your life in that given moment. You will have responded to the
conviction of the Holy Spirit, and in doing so,
He forgives you, cleanses you, writes your
name in the Lamb's Book of Life. Your life is changed forever. He says seek Him, listen,
seek Him while He's near, while He can be found. Or if you let your
heart get hard and you, listen, you walk out
of church and you say, "Well, I got some
friends I'm meeting with." And you go out tonight and you
drink and you carouse around, and you know what happens? You just got a
little bit harder. It's dangerous. It's dangerous to hear the
gospel and to reject it. The hardness of your
heart, you become callous. You've--"I've heard that for
years and years and years and it hasn't made any difference in my
life," could be one of the worst things you could ever say. He says we are to seek Him
and we're to seek Him with all of our heart. And there's no point in
our--no time in our life when we shouldn't be seeking Him. And when He says when He's near. You say, "Well why--how--what
do you mean near?" I mean--and if
you're a believer, you understand what I'm saying. I'll give you an
example in my own heart. There are times, for example,
and this is not the only time, especially when I'm studying and
I'm sitting there reading the Word and I'm not trying
to get something for me. I'm just sitting there reading
the Word of God and sometimes I'm just working on a message. All of a sudden, I
break out crying. It used to confuse me. And then I began to realize,
God, You're just giving me the awareness of Your
awesome presence. I have no explanation. I don't have to
explain anything. I just know He's there. And sometimes I just get on my
knees and weep and weep and weep and weep,
and you know what? When I get up, you ask me,
"Well, what happened?" I guess God was just loving me. That's all I can tell you. Watch this, it has nothing
to do with being a pastor, nothing, nothing,
nothing, nothing, nothing. It has to do with if you and I
are available for the Lord to show up sometime and just love
on us and remind us how good He is, and realize why we
should be seeking Him because He's seeking us. He's seeking to sit on
the throne of your heart. He's seeking to be
number one in your life. He's--He's seeking you to listen
to Him so He can position you, so He can bless
you with His best. It's God working. It would be a shame for you
to walk out of here today. It would be a shame for you
to listen to this message and just lay it aside. It'd be worse than a
shame, because remember this. You and I are responsible for
all the truth that we hear. And all you've done
is hear the truth. And all I've
really said to you is, listen, seek the Lord. Talk to Him, listen to
Him, build a relationship. Watch how He works, observe
His work in a way that you can profit from it, that you
can be drawn closer to Him, more intimately with Him. So He can use you to the
maximum, your potential. You don't want to
waste your life. You don't get but one trip. And that's my prayer for you. If you've never trusted
Jesus Christ as your Savior, here's what you can do. Realizing that you've sinned
against God and that your sins, the Bible says and God says,
have separated--in other words, between you and God is that sin. And that sin blocks
out His blessing. It hinders what He
wants to do in your life. He will radically
change your life for good. Listen, you will be eternally
grateful that He put up with you and was patient with you
until the moment you trusted Him as your Savior. If you ask Him to
forgive you of your sins, not based on how
good you've been, you don't have any goodness, but
based on the fact that He went to the cross, laid down
His life, paid the price. You say, "What's this price?" God is a just God.
Watch this carefully. God is a just God, which
means He only does what's right. Here's what He said. "In the day that you eat
of the tree of this garden, in this garden,
you're going to suffer." What He was
saying is simply this. When He said, "The soul that
sinneth, it shall die." "The wages of sin is death." Well, how can God forgive
you when He says the soul that sinneth, it shall
die spiritually, eternally? Here's how He did it. When God the
Father, who gave the Law, sent His Son to
die on the cross, He was His perfect Son,
the perfect sacrifice. He killed His Son on the cross
as an atoning sacrifice for your sins, the only sacrifice
that could possibly have been acceptable
because He was perfect. And it's His death and God's
acceptance of His death as payment for the
sin of the world, so that any person who comes to
Him based on the fact they're accepting Jesus Christ
as their personal Savior, you're forgiven of your sins. Your name is written in
the Lamb's Book of Life. You're forever a child of God. That's what can
happen to you right now, if you'll let Him do it. Surrendering your life to Him,
and from this moment on make Him the priority of your
life, everything changes. And Father, how grateful we
are we don't have to beg. We don't have to plead.
We don't have to wonder. We don't have to doubt. We just know that
everything You've said is absolutely the truth. And that anyone who is willing
to ask You to forgive them of sin and surrender their life to
Your Lordship, to Your way, and to Your will, everything
changes for all eternity. And we are grateful beyond our
ability to express thanksgiving, in Jesus's name, amen.
