Pursuing hard after God

Authentic Christianity begins with one main experience: pursuing hard after God. What does it mean to pursue hard after God?

My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me

~ Psalm 63:8, ESV ~

A. W. Tozer writes:

We pursue God because, and only because, He first put an urge within us that spurs us to to the pursuit (The Pursuit of God, 2013).

We approach the Sovereign creator because he first calls us into relationship with Him. Not of any good we have done in our own lives. He regenerates us by creating a new heart and gives us a new spirit (Ezekiel 36:26). We are drawn to Christ because it is God who draws us (John 6:44). Tozer continues:

…it is by this very prevenient drawing that God takes from us every vestige of credit for the act of coming. The impulse to pursue God originates with God, but the outworking of that impulse is our following hard after Him; and all the time we are pursuing Him, we are already in His hand…

This idea of pursuing God requires we hunger and thirst after righteousness (Matthew 5:6). It is our genuine response to what has already occurred in our own lives. We cultivate a genuine and personal relationship with the Savior because of God’s grace in that while we were yet sinners, Christ had died for us (Romans 5:8).

Being made in His image we have within us the capacity to know him. … The moment the Spirit has quickened us to life in regeneration our whole being senses its kinship to God and leaps up in joyous recognition. That is the heavenly birth without which we cannot see the Kingdom of God. It is … not the end but an inception, for now begins the glorious pursuit, the heart’s happy exploration of the infinite riches of the Godhead (Tozer, 2013).

Are you pursuing hard after God? Have you experienced the power of God’s sovereign grace in your life and received a new heart and spirit whereby you hunger and thirst after His righteousness? Have you truly been saved and been born-again by the simple message of the Gospel and have truly received Christ as your Savior? Where do you stand in relation with God?

The days are growing short, the time is almost at hand. Come unto Christ and know that through God, we receive eternal life because he sent His only Son to die for each and every one of us. Through Christ, we receive forgiveness of our sins and it is through Christ we may enter into the Kingdom of God.