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OPINION

In hot pursuit

Written by:

Pastor Terry Parkman

So I was sitting at one of our local coffee shops with one of my students hearing them tell me that all they want is to know God in the deepest way possible and that they are willing to do whatever it takes to get to that point. In the same day, another student told me that they’re “bored” in their walk with God and that they “just don’t care anymore.”

Two different students with two distinct perspectives of the one and same God that saved both of their souls and forgave their sins.

So, as any good pastor would do, I gave them the best advice I had and encouraged them both to commit to seeking the Lord in both the easy and difficult times of life. Problem solved – or so I thought.

You see, there was something bothering me about the second student that I talked with that morning. As I drove back to the office, I kept wondering how someone who has tasted the “goodness” of God in ways that would make a theologian jealous could simply give up on God because they’re bored. There had to be a better answer I could give the kid other than to simply be consistent.

Have you ever been at the place in your relationship with God? You’ve heard the messages and read the passages in the Bible. You’ve sang all the songs and attended every Sunday service; and at the end of the day you are left bored.

The answer is simple. When God hit me with it, I couldn’t believe I didn’t see it before. Ready for it? Here it is: “The proof of your passion is in your pursuit.”

If God is unchanging, and He is, then it isn’t God that has become boring – it’s us. We have ceased in our pursuit of God, the very thing that brings that growth and spiritual depth we all crave, and have instead traded our passion for powerlessness. Our pursuit has shifted from the One that never ceases to pursues us to something that cannot possibly satisfy our spiritual hunger like God can.

King David, when he was running for his life from people who wanted to kill him, says this in Psalm 63: “O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you in a dry and weary land where there is no water … Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands … My soul pursues you with all that I have.”

The chips were stacked against David when he wrote that. He was in a desert, running from people who were trying to kill him, and he had no hope. Yet, he still served notice on his soul, telling himself that that he would pursue God regardless of his situation because God is worthy of it.

And that is reason enough.

-Terry Parkman is student ministries pastor at Evangel Assembly of God. You can follow his blog at www.unorthodoxsaints.tumblr.com.

 

 

 

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