Pressing On to Know Christ
During my first meeting with the Candidacy Committee, when I was seeking to become a Lutheran pastor, I was listing the things I like about Lutheranism, and someone asked me if I saw any weaknesses or problems in the Lutheran Church. I responded that as Lutheranism has developed there has been a tendency to so emphasize justification by faith that other dimensions of the Christian life are neglected. Even the bishop admitted to me that Lutherans, himself included, get nervous when anyone talks about discipleship, because they’re worried that this will lead to legalism, that it will undermine the doctrine of justification by faith alone. They worry that a call to discipleship will drown out the good news of the Gospel.
It’s not that they’re too aware of the legal dimension of our salvation, the truth that God, in Christ, has declared us not guilty. We can never be too aware of this; one of the great enemies of the Christian life is false, persistent guilt, guilt that we just can’t get away from. Not being confident of our acceptance in Christ cripples us, hinders us in our relationship with God. It’s not that Lutheranism over-emphasizes the legal dimension of salvation; it’s that Lutheranism has tended to focus exclusively on this and has neglected other aspects of salvation.
Justification is not an end in itself. God doesn’t remove our guilt so that we can then say to ourselves, "well, now, I’ve gotten that over with and I can get on with my life." No, the whole point of justification is to restore us to a right relationship with God, so that we can spend the rest of our lives seeking to know Him better. We can see that clearly in these words from the apostle Paul. For Paul, living as a Christian involves seeking Jesus with all our hearts and with all our strength. His overwhelming passion, the thing that grips his heart, is to know Jesus Christ.
He begins, in verses 1-6, by saying that fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ is such a priority for him that outward advantages no longer matter. He tells them to beware of the Judaizers, those who were going through the churches urging Gentile believers to be circumcised and to obey the Law of Moses. Here’s how it reads in The Message: "Steer clear of the barking dogs, those religious busybodies, all bark and no bite. All they’re interested in is appearances...." These Judaizers are only interested in appearances. They think it’s enough to just get everything right on the outside, that what God really wants is exact observance of every religious ceremony. A few years ago I was in a church where the minister rattled off the liturgy so quickly it made me tired just listening to him. It was almost like being at an auction. I think if I had been able to talk to him afterward he’d have responded that it’s enough just to say the words and go through the right ceremonies.
Paul himself had once been like that. He had done everything right. He was, he says, "circumcised on the eighth day; an Israelite from the elite tribe of Benjamin; a strict and devout adherent to God’s law; a fiery defender of the purity of my religion, even to the point of persecuting Christians; a meticulous observer of everything set down in God’s law book" (The Message). He had once seen himself as one of God’s favorite people, because he was so meticulous in observing the Law. But then he met Jesus face to face on the Damascus road, and suddenly he saw that his whole life was going in the wrong direction. He saw that all his religiosity was worthless. He was making a good appearance, but he didn’t know God.
It’s important to notice that Paul frames this whole section, from 3:1 to 4:4, with the words "rejoice in the Lord." Gordon Fee points out that "for Paul, ‘joy’ is primarily a verb, something we do rather than how we feel. The verb itself means to verbalize with praise and singing" (p. 131). To rejoice means to verbalize with praise and singing. It doesn’t mean to feel a certain way. It means to say, in God’s presence, "I will rejoice in the Lord and sing His praise." The focus of this praise and singing is the Lord. Paul had, at one time, been focused on himself and his religious attainments. But then he met Jesus face to face and everything changed. Rejoice in the Lord. Exalt Him in word and in song. Forget yourself--put no confidence in the flesh--and rejoice in Him.
Paul had more reason than most to put confidence in the flesh, but when he met Jesus he counted all this as loss. He goes on, in verses 7-11, to say that he considers everything worthless compared to knowing Christ. The name "Christ" appears 5 times in these verses. Paul is not saying that everything is worthless in itself. It’s worthless in comparison with the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ. He’s exalting the Lord Jesus Christ, rather than devaluing everything else. I’ve sometimes seen people get this backwards. They worry that maybe they love family members--spouse, children, parents--too much. They want to put Christ first, the way Paul does here, but they try to do that by loving other people less. They try to put Jesus first by denying the value of His gifts. That’s not what Paul is doing. He has seen the risen Lord Jesus Christ, and in comparison with Him, everything that he’s lost for the sake of Jesus means less to him than a pile of rubbish.
The emphasis, for Paul, is not on all the things he’s lost. The emphasis is on the fact that he knows Christ. Martyn Lloyd Jones was trained as a medical doctor and had exceptional gifts in that area. At the age of 23 he became Chief Clinical Assistant to Sir Thomas Horder, the King’s Physician, and was well on his way to a successful career in medicine. But four years later he left his medical career behind to pastor a struggling church in South Wales. This created a public sensation in London and his story was all over the news. Many people thought he was making a foolish choice, and others praised him for the great sacrifice he was making to serve the church. But he later said this: "I gave up nothing. I received everything. I count it the highest honor God can confer on any man to call him to be a herald of the gospel" (from the dust jacket on D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The First Forty Years 1899-1939, by Iain H. Murray). He didn’t like hearing people make a fuss about how much he had sacrificed, because he really didn’t see it that way at all. That’s how Paul is; following Christ has meant losing many other things, but the gain in knowing Christ is so great that it’s not a sacrifice at all. He doesn’t grieve over the things he’s lost any more than we grieve when the trash truck drives away with our week’s worth of garbage.
In verses 12-16, Paul describes how intensely he longs to be all Jesus wants him to be. He longs to be perfectly transformed into the image of Jesus, because he wants to be pleasing to Him. Everything he does is centered around his relationship with Jesus Christ. This comes out clearly in The Message: "I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. Friends, don’t get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward--to Jesus. I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back." He’s not seeking to establish his own righteousness; he’s not following a moralistic program for self-improvement. He’s seeking the Lord with all his might, and through this fellowship with the Lord he’s being transformed. His goal is to know God, and in knowing God he is transformed more and more into His image.
The author of Hebrews says God "rewards those who earnestly seek him" (11:6). This is a consistent theme in Scripture. "One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple" (Psalm 27:4). "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?" (Psalm 42:1-2). "O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water" (Psalm 63:1). God said to the Israelites who had been taken into captivity in Babylon: "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart" (Jeremiah 29:13). God is pleased when His people seek him earnestly.
In chapter 4, Paul says that he has learned to be content in all circumstances. But in chapter 3 he’s not content. He’s not content with where he is spiritually. A.W. Tozer, who was a Christian and Missionary Alliance pastor in the mid-20th century, said this: "Contentment with earthly goods is the mark of a saint; contentment with our spiritual state is a mark of inward blindness. One of the greatest foes of the Christian is religious complacency. The man who believes he has arrived will not go any farther.... Religious complacency is encountered almost everywhere among Christians these days, and its presence is a sign and a prophecy. For every Christian will become at last what his desires have made him. We are all the sum total of our hungers. The great saints have all had thirsting hearts" (The Root of the Righteous, p. 55). Every Christian will become at last what his desires have made him. What are you desiring lately? What are you hungering and thirsting for? Are your desires moving you closer to God, or further away from Him?
I’ve known many people who wish they were more spiritual. They’ll say things like, "Oh, I wish I had the discipline to spend more time with God." Or, "I wish I would spend more time in God’s Word." They see others growing spiritually, and they admire from a distance: "I wish I was more like that." But the truth is that we can spend a lifetime wishing for this sort of thing, and it will do us no good. Proverbs 13:4 describes these people: "The sluggard craves and gets nothing, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied." A sluggard, a slothful person, wishes things were different, but he won’t apply diligence and self-discipline. He craves, but he gets nothing.
Paul presses on "to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of [him]." He strains toward what is ahead, and presses on toward the goal. But he also forgets what is behind. He doesn’t dwell nostalgically on the things he left behind to follow Jesus. He doesn’t daydream about what a great Pharisee he could have become if things had gone otherwise. But he also doesn’t spend time dwelling on his past failures. Several years ago I heard an excellent sermon on "Triumphing Over the Past." Here’s how the sermon began: "I doubt that there is any more debilitating problem for Christian people than the problem of regrets. We feel subject to the guilt of something that we have done or haven’t done: the past, with skeletons in closets, with fears that seem to haunt us, things about the past that cripple us. As a result, we constantly find ourselves drawn back like iron filings drawn to a magnet.... People turn around and say, ‘If only I had done that ten years ago, I would’ve been so much better.’" (Robert M. Norris, Preaching Today, Tape No. 65).
Regrets about the past can keep us from seeking God in the present. We think, "If only I had gotten started sooner, I’d be so much better off by now." Or the memory of some past sin plagues us and cripples our attempts to get on track spiritually. Or we begin with a program of regular devotions, but after awhile we get distracted or something happens so that we neglect our devotions for a week or two. And then we think to ourselves, "I’ve failed; I can’t maintain a consistent devotional life; what’s the use of starting again?" Paul would say, in all these cases, along with the author of Hebrews: "Now that we know what we have--Jesus, this great High Priest with ready access to God--let’s not let it slip through our fingers. We don’t have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. He’s been through weakness and testing, experienced it all–all but the sin. So let’s walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help" (Heb. 4:14, 16, The Message). Walk right up to him and get what he’s so ready to give: mercy for the past, and help for the present. And then, like Paul, we lay aside the past and keep going forward, no matter how many times we fail along the way. C.S. Lewis said, very wisely: "No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time.... The only fatal thing is to lose one’s temper and give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us: it is the very sign of his presence" (The Business of Heaven, p. 17).
For Paul, living as a Christian involves seeking Jesus with all our hearts and with all our strength. He hasn’t yet been made perfect--that will come when he is in the Lord’s presence--but his overwhelming passion, the thing that grips his heart, is to know Jesus Christ and to live in a way that pleases Him. He’s not content with anything less. How do we, in our highly intrusive and distracting culture, develop this kind of passion to know Christ? Here, briefly, are a few suggestions before I close.
1) Realize that discipline and hunger for God belong together. Paul stresses both in this passage. If you, at this point in your life, have little hunger to know God better, don’t wait for something to happen. Take yourself in hand and begin setting aside time each day to spend with God, in His word and in prayer. There have been times in my spiritual life when I’ve almost been carried along by an intense desire to spend time in the Lord’s presence, but generally those times don’t just happen. And they don’t continue indefinitely; they tend to come and go. They happen when I’ve been diligent in seeking God. God calls us to seek Him by faith, and then He sometimes helps and refreshes us with His Spirit. Hunger for God usually comes to us when we seek God by faith, whether we feel like it or not. Make it a priority to spend time in His presence, and be grateful when you sense the Spirit drawing you to seek Him.
2) In setting aside time to spend in God’s Word and in prayer, remind yourself often that your purpose is to cultivate a relationship. There are two opposite dangers in this area. On the one hand, it’s tempting to approach our devotional times legalistically, as if we were fulfilling a legal requirement. As long as we fulfil the requirement, everything is fine. This is the danger of "formalism," of just going through the motions without any concern for cultivating a real relationship with the Living God. At the other extreme, we’re tempted to think our devotional times are a failure if we don’t feel some sense of exhilaration each time. If you’re persevering in your devotional life during a dry period, you’re not guilty of formalism. Think about the relationships you have with people in this world. There are times when you’re aware of how great it is to be together, times when you’re conscious of how much you value the privilege of being with that person. But there are also times when you really don’t feel much. You continue to show love and concern for one another, and you continue spending time together, but the feelings just come and go over time. Prayer is like that. Our purpose is to know God by spending time with Him, and when we spend time with Him sometimes we feel refreshed and renewed, and other times we don’t feel much of anything. It’s as we persevere in seeking Him over a lifetime that we cultivate a strong relationship. The purpose is not to make sure we "have devotions," so that we can cross it off our to-do list, and the purpose is not to have our hearts warmed so that we feel refreshed and ready for another day. Our purpose is to cultivate a relationship with God throughout the course of our lives here in this world.
3) Remember that Paul frames this whole section with the phrase "rejoice in the Lord." Be intentional about including this element of rejoicing in the time you spend with God. Some devotional approaches reduce everything to Bible study. We’re not just seeking to learn more information about God’s Word. We’re seeking to know Him, and part of the process is intentionally giving thanks and rejoicing in Him: "Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs" (Psalm 100:1-2). Spend regular time giving thanks and praising God for who He is and what He has done. I recommend including some singing, both hymns and praise songs, as a way of rejoicing in the Lord.
4) Develop the habit of turning to God at specific times throughout the day. Our goal is to walk with God all the time, to invite Him into every area of our lives. Our personal devotions can help tune our hearts and realign our priorities. But we don’t want that to be the only time we spend with God. It’s often helpful to memorize a few short phrases that we can use to just pause briefly and turn our hearts to the Lord. This really doesn’t require much time or effort, but if you persevere with it you’ll increasingly see the Lord’s presence in the details of your life.
When the nation of Israel was at its worst spiritually, when they seemed beyond hope, the prophet Hosea issued a call to repentance which included these words: "Oh, that we might know the Lord! Let us press on to know him! Then he will respond to us as surely as the arrival of dawn or the coming of rains in early spring" (Hosea 6:3, NLT). Let’s press on to know Him, like Paul did, laying aside the past and seeking Him with all our hearts. He will respond to us as surely as the arrival of the dawn. He rewards those who diligently seek Him.
Philippians 3:1-16
Shiloh Lutheran Church
16th Sunday After Pentecost
During my first meeting with the Candidacy Committee, when I was seeking to become a Lutheran pastor, I was listing the things I like about Lutheranism, and someone asked me if I saw any weaknesses or problems in the Lutheran Church. I responded that as Lutheranism has developed there has been a tendency to so emphasize justification by faith that other dimensions of the Christian life are neglected. Even the bishop admitted to me that Lutherans, himself included, get nervous when anyone talks about discipleship, because they’re worried that this will lead to legalism, that it will undermine the doctrine of justification by faith alone. They worry that a call to discipleship will drown out the good news of the Gospel.
It’s not that they’re too aware of the legal dimension of our salvation, the truth that God, in Christ, has declared us not guilty. We can never be too aware of this; one of the great enemies of the Christian life is false, persistent guilt, guilt that we just can’t get away from. Not being confident of our acceptance in Christ cripples us, hinders us in our relationship with God. It’s not that Lutheranism over-emphasizes the legal dimension of salvation; it’s that Lutheranism has tended to focus exclusively on this and has neglected other aspects of salvation.
Justification is not an end in itself. God doesn’t remove our guilt so that we can then say to ourselves, "well, now, I’ve gotten that over with and I can get on with my life." No, the whole point of justification is to restore us to a right relationship with God, so that we can spend the rest of our lives seeking to know Him better. We can see that clearly in these words from the apostle Paul. For Paul, living as a Christian involves seeking Jesus with all our hearts and with all our strength. His overwhelming passion, the thing that grips his heart, is to know Jesus Christ.
He begins, in verses 1-6, by saying that fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ is such a priority for him that outward advantages no longer matter. He tells them to beware of the Judaizers, those who were going through the churches urging Gentile believers to be circumcised and to obey the Law of Moses. Here’s how it reads in The Message: "Steer clear of the barking dogs, those religious busybodies, all bark and no bite. All they’re interested in is appearances...." These Judaizers are only interested in appearances. They think it’s enough to just get everything right on the outside, that what God really wants is exact observance of every religious ceremony. A few years ago I was in a church where the minister rattled off the liturgy so quickly it made me tired just listening to him. It was almost like being at an auction. I think if I had been able to talk to him afterward he’d have responded that it’s enough just to say the words and go through the right ceremonies.
Paul himself had once been like that. He had done everything right. He was, he says, "circumcised on the eighth day; an Israelite from the elite tribe of Benjamin; a strict and devout adherent to God’s law; a fiery defender of the purity of my religion, even to the point of persecuting Christians; a meticulous observer of everything set down in God’s law book" (The Message). He had once seen himself as one of God’s favorite people, because he was so meticulous in observing the Law. But then he met Jesus face to face on the Damascus road, and suddenly he saw that his whole life was going in the wrong direction. He saw that all his religiosity was worthless. He was making a good appearance, but he didn’t know God.
It’s important to notice that Paul frames this whole section, from 3:1 to 4:4, with the words "rejoice in the Lord." Gordon Fee points out that "for Paul, ‘joy’ is primarily a verb, something we do rather than how we feel. The verb itself means to verbalize with praise and singing" (p. 131). To rejoice means to verbalize with praise and singing. It doesn’t mean to feel a certain way. It means to say, in God’s presence, "I will rejoice in the Lord and sing His praise." The focus of this praise and singing is the Lord. Paul had, at one time, been focused on himself and his religious attainments. But then he met Jesus face to face and everything changed. Rejoice in the Lord. Exalt Him in word and in song. Forget yourself--put no confidence in the flesh--and rejoice in Him.
Paul had more reason than most to put confidence in the flesh, but when he met Jesus he counted all this as loss. He goes on, in verses 7-11, to say that he considers everything worthless compared to knowing Christ. The name "Christ" appears 5 times in these verses. Paul is not saying that everything is worthless in itself. It’s worthless in comparison with the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ. He’s exalting the Lord Jesus Christ, rather than devaluing everything else. I’ve sometimes seen people get this backwards. They worry that maybe they love family members--spouse, children, parents--too much. They want to put Christ first, the way Paul does here, but they try to do that by loving other people less. They try to put Jesus first by denying the value of His gifts. That’s not what Paul is doing. He has seen the risen Lord Jesus Christ, and in comparison with Him, everything that he’s lost for the sake of Jesus means less to him than a pile of rubbish.
The emphasis, for Paul, is not on all the things he’s lost. The emphasis is on the fact that he knows Christ. Martyn Lloyd Jones was trained as a medical doctor and had exceptional gifts in that area. At the age of 23 he became Chief Clinical Assistant to Sir Thomas Horder, the King’s Physician, and was well on his way to a successful career in medicine. But four years later he left his medical career behind to pastor a struggling church in South Wales. This created a public sensation in London and his story was all over the news. Many people thought he was making a foolish choice, and others praised him for the great sacrifice he was making to serve the church. But he later said this: "I gave up nothing. I received everything. I count it the highest honor God can confer on any man to call him to be a herald of the gospel" (from the dust jacket on D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The First Forty Years 1899-1939, by Iain H. Murray). He didn’t like hearing people make a fuss about how much he had sacrificed, because he really didn’t see it that way at all. That’s how Paul is; following Christ has meant losing many other things, but the gain in knowing Christ is so great that it’s not a sacrifice at all. He doesn’t grieve over the things he’s lost any more than we grieve when the trash truck drives away with our week’s worth of garbage.
In verses 12-16, Paul describes how intensely he longs to be all Jesus wants him to be. He longs to be perfectly transformed into the image of Jesus, because he wants to be pleasing to Him. Everything he does is centered around his relationship with Jesus Christ. This comes out clearly in The Message: "I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. Friends, don’t get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward--to Jesus. I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back." He’s not seeking to establish his own righteousness; he’s not following a moralistic program for self-improvement. He’s seeking the Lord with all his might, and through this fellowship with the Lord he’s being transformed. His goal is to know God, and in knowing God he is transformed more and more into His image.
The author of Hebrews says God "rewards those who earnestly seek him" (11:6). This is a consistent theme in Scripture. "One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple" (Psalm 27:4). "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?" (Psalm 42:1-2). "O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water" (Psalm 63:1). God said to the Israelites who had been taken into captivity in Babylon: "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart" (Jeremiah 29:13). God is pleased when His people seek him earnestly.
In chapter 4, Paul says that he has learned to be content in all circumstances. But in chapter 3 he’s not content. He’s not content with where he is spiritually. A.W. Tozer, who was a Christian and Missionary Alliance pastor in the mid-20th century, said this: "Contentment with earthly goods is the mark of a saint; contentment with our spiritual state is a mark of inward blindness. One of the greatest foes of the Christian is religious complacency. The man who believes he has arrived will not go any farther.... Religious complacency is encountered almost everywhere among Christians these days, and its presence is a sign and a prophecy. For every Christian will become at last what his desires have made him. We are all the sum total of our hungers. The great saints have all had thirsting hearts" (The Root of the Righteous, p. 55). Every Christian will become at last what his desires have made him. What are you desiring lately? What are you hungering and thirsting for? Are your desires moving you closer to God, or further away from Him?
I’ve known many people who wish they were more spiritual. They’ll say things like, "Oh, I wish I had the discipline to spend more time with God." Or, "I wish I would spend more time in God’s Word." They see others growing spiritually, and they admire from a distance: "I wish I was more like that." But the truth is that we can spend a lifetime wishing for this sort of thing, and it will do us no good. Proverbs 13:4 describes these people: "The sluggard craves and gets nothing, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied." A sluggard, a slothful person, wishes things were different, but he won’t apply diligence and self-discipline. He craves, but he gets nothing.
Paul presses on "to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of [him]." He strains toward what is ahead, and presses on toward the goal. But he also forgets what is behind. He doesn’t dwell nostalgically on the things he left behind to follow Jesus. He doesn’t daydream about what a great Pharisee he could have become if things had gone otherwise. But he also doesn’t spend time dwelling on his past failures. Several years ago I heard an excellent sermon on "Triumphing Over the Past." Here’s how the sermon began: "I doubt that there is any more debilitating problem for Christian people than the problem of regrets. We feel subject to the guilt of something that we have done or haven’t done: the past, with skeletons in closets, with fears that seem to haunt us, things about the past that cripple us. As a result, we constantly find ourselves drawn back like iron filings drawn to a magnet.... People turn around and say, ‘If only I had done that ten years ago, I would’ve been so much better.’" (Robert M. Norris, Preaching Today, Tape No. 65).
Regrets about the past can keep us from seeking God in the present. We think, "If only I had gotten started sooner, I’d be so much better off by now." Or the memory of some past sin plagues us and cripples our attempts to get on track spiritually. Or we begin with a program of regular devotions, but after awhile we get distracted or something happens so that we neglect our devotions for a week or two. And then we think to ourselves, "I’ve failed; I can’t maintain a consistent devotional life; what’s the use of starting again?" Paul would say, in all these cases, along with the author of Hebrews: "Now that we know what we have--Jesus, this great High Priest with ready access to God--let’s not let it slip through our fingers. We don’t have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. He’s been through weakness and testing, experienced it all–all but the sin. So let’s walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help" (Heb. 4:14, 16, The Message). Walk right up to him and get what he’s so ready to give: mercy for the past, and help for the present. And then, like Paul, we lay aside the past and keep going forward, no matter how many times we fail along the way. C.S. Lewis said, very wisely: "No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time.... The only fatal thing is to lose one’s temper and give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us: it is the very sign of his presence" (The Business of Heaven, p. 17).
For Paul, living as a Christian involves seeking Jesus with all our hearts and with all our strength. He hasn’t yet been made perfect--that will come when he is in the Lord’s presence--but his overwhelming passion, the thing that grips his heart, is to know Jesus Christ and to live in a way that pleases Him. He’s not content with anything less. How do we, in our highly intrusive and distracting culture, develop this kind of passion to know Christ? Here, briefly, are a few suggestions before I close.
1) Realize that discipline and hunger for God belong together. Paul stresses both in this passage. If you, at this point in your life, have little hunger to know God better, don’t wait for something to happen. Take yourself in hand and begin setting aside time each day to spend with God, in His word and in prayer. There have been times in my spiritual life when I’ve almost been carried along by an intense desire to spend time in the Lord’s presence, but generally those times don’t just happen. And they don’t continue indefinitely; they tend to come and go. They happen when I’ve been diligent in seeking God. God calls us to seek Him by faith, and then He sometimes helps and refreshes us with His Spirit. Hunger for God usually comes to us when we seek God by faith, whether we feel like it or not. Make it a priority to spend time in His presence, and be grateful when you sense the Spirit drawing you to seek Him.
2) In setting aside time to spend in God’s Word and in prayer, remind yourself often that your purpose is to cultivate a relationship. There are two opposite dangers in this area. On the one hand, it’s tempting to approach our devotional times legalistically, as if we were fulfilling a legal requirement. As long as we fulfil the requirement, everything is fine. This is the danger of "formalism," of just going through the motions without any concern for cultivating a real relationship with the Living God. At the other extreme, we’re tempted to think our devotional times are a failure if we don’t feel some sense of exhilaration each time. If you’re persevering in your devotional life during a dry period, you’re not guilty of formalism. Think about the relationships you have with people in this world. There are times when you’re aware of how great it is to be together, times when you’re conscious of how much you value the privilege of being with that person. But there are also times when you really don’t feel much. You continue to show love and concern for one another, and you continue spending time together, but the feelings just come and go over time. Prayer is like that. Our purpose is to know God by spending time with Him, and when we spend time with Him sometimes we feel refreshed and renewed, and other times we don’t feel much of anything. It’s as we persevere in seeking Him over a lifetime that we cultivate a strong relationship. The purpose is not to make sure we "have devotions," so that we can cross it off our to-do list, and the purpose is not to have our hearts warmed so that we feel refreshed and ready for another day. Our purpose is to cultivate a relationship with God throughout the course of our lives here in this world.
3) Remember that Paul frames this whole section with the phrase "rejoice in the Lord." Be intentional about including this element of rejoicing in the time you spend with God. Some devotional approaches reduce everything to Bible study. We’re not just seeking to learn more information about God’s Word. We’re seeking to know Him, and part of the process is intentionally giving thanks and rejoicing in Him: "Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs" (Psalm 100:1-2). Spend regular time giving thanks and praising God for who He is and what He has done. I recommend including some singing, both hymns and praise songs, as a way of rejoicing in the Lord.
4) Develop the habit of turning to God at specific times throughout the day. Our goal is to walk with God all the time, to invite Him into every area of our lives. Our personal devotions can help tune our hearts and realign our priorities. But we don’t want that to be the only time we spend with God. It’s often helpful to memorize a few short phrases that we can use to just pause briefly and turn our hearts to the Lord. This really doesn’t require much time or effort, but if you persevere with it you’ll increasingly see the Lord’s presence in the details of your life.
When the nation of Israel was at its worst spiritually, when they seemed beyond hope, the prophet Hosea issued a call to repentance which included these words: "Oh, that we might know the Lord! Let us press on to know him! Then he will respond to us as surely as the arrival of dawn or the coming of rains in early spring" (Hosea 6:3, NLT). Let’s press on to know Him, like Paul did, laying aside the past and seeking Him with all our hearts. He will respond to us as surely as the arrival of the dawn. He rewards those who diligently seek Him.
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