But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6:33)
A psalm of David. When he was in the Desert of Judah.
You, God,
are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole
being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water. (Psalm 63:1)
While
walking this morning, I prayed for three friends facing big physical
challenges and their wives. I prayed about my work, my writing, and my garden. There
are times when I pray through Jesus’ example prayer (mistakenly called “The
Lord’s Prayer,”) but today, my prayer is about needs, desires, and God’s blessings;
it was not about God.
And
we are supposed to pray about our needs and desires and those of others. We’re
to cast our cares on Him and pray for one another that we may be healed. But I
remember when I was jogging, the first half of my route was spent fussing and trying
to get past all the garbage in my mind. I spent the second half talking to God
about things. It seemed as if, no matter how hard I tried, it took about 30
minutes to quiet the noise. And if I had tried to divide my jogging time into two
half-hour sessions, I am sure I would have spent the best part of each dealing
with garbage.
With
discipline, I’m sure that the garbage part could be reduced. The tougher part
is increasing the seeking part. The problem here is that there is seeking
God and there is seeking God. Where is our focus? Are we effectively
saying, “I’m seeking! I’m seeking! See me seeking! Aren’t I doing a great job
of seeking?” or are we saying, “God, where are You? Please, I want You”?
It's
easy to decide, “I’m a horrible Christian!” because we can’t seem to get past
the “I’m seeking!” part, but that just increases the focus on ourselves. And it
just doesn’t seem like I can take an hour or an hour and a half out of my day,
even though I can’t do some of what I think I should be doing. I’m too busy
with unimportant things. Other people are too busy with important things. We might like the idea of living the way they did in the medieval
monasteries, with the day broken up so that we spend at least a little time with
God every hour or two, but I suspect we’d find our minds wandering even
then.
Some people talk about quiet times as if they are training drills at a
military base. And there is some benefit to building strict routines because we
gain strength and learn good habits, but these too quickly become “See me
seeking” times.
As
I think about this, something Dallas Willard and C. S. Lewis have discussed
comes to mind. Both wrote about seeking the spectacular as being
immature or taking us off course. So, as I seek God, am I disappointed or even
resentful because I don’t have some “experience”? If I feel cheated if I don’t
end my time with God saying, “Wow,” isn’t that putting the focus on myself again?
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