Now set your heart and your soul to seek the LORD your God.—1 Chronicles 22:19a
Those words above sound so wonderful! As I read them, I thought, such good advice from David, the man after God’s own heart to his son, Solomon. I read a lot of things in the Bible that I really want in my own life. But do I purpose in my heart to receive them and do them, or am I like the man who is a hearer of the word only? The kind that James says is a forgetful hearer who observes his natural face in the mirror and then walks away and forgets what he saw. But really, who among us is sufficient for any of this remembering. I know I am not! The older I get the more stuff I forget! There is so much to recall...so much to purpose in my heart both to do and not do. Thinking that any of this “remembering and purposing” is on me is OVERWHELMING! I am so grateful that it is NOT! My God has got it. My sufficiency, the Bible tells me, is from Him. In my self-sufficiency I am in distress...all kind of miseries come upon me. My God, however, is ABLE!! He makes His grace abound toward me so that I have sufficiency always in all things in order that I have an abundance for every good work. Beloved, it is God who does this work and leads us in triumph in Christ!
Oh Father...No matter where I am right now in my walk of faith, help me to trust You more. Draw me by Your lovingkindness deeper into Your Presence. I don’t want to just read your word and forget it...I want to live it. I want it to become the very fabric of who I am. Help me, as it says in Philippians, to work out my own salvation with fear and trembling for it is You who works in me both to do and to will for Your good pleasure. Encourage my heart in this today, Father! The closer I draw to You the more I see the ugliness of my own heart. The closer I draw to You, the more I see how little I trust You. By Your Spirit of Grace today, help me to be both a hearer and a doer of Your precious word. Set my heart and my soul to seek You. Set it to walk in Your perfect law of liberty which frees me from the power of sin and death and enables me to walk in Your love toward those around me. Love does no harm to a neighbor, therefore, love fulfills the law.
Thank you, Abba, that You remember the prayers of my heart long after I have forgotten them. Thank you that nothing overwhelms You. Thank you that all that goes on in my life goes through Your perfect hand of love first. Thank you that You rule and overrule all of it for my good. Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my anxieties; and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
Seek the LORD and His strength;
Seek His face evermore!—Psalm 16:11
