Something Worth Seeking…

Matthew 6. A chapter that starts with instructions on being quiet, unseen and unobtrusive in your acts of good and ends with a simple and powerful verse that opened up an entire new reality of what it means to be in a very real and tangible relationship with God.

The verse is well known. Popular even.

Scripture, to me, is like a toolbox full of tools we use to creatively shape our lives into what God says is possible. Sharp chisels capable of creating something beautiful out of something undefined.

Isn’t that what we should do with scripture? Shape reality not simply by praying “as it is in heaven, let it be on earth” (v.10) but by saturating ourselves in God-reality until it fundamentally changes our very existence on this earth.

Actually, that’s how the Message bible phrased the verse that was key to a journey into kingdom reality that says, “Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.” (Matthew 6:33)

Matthew chapter 6 is an invitation to authenticity. A journey away from shallow religious living that is concerned with how people see us; from the worrisome cares concerning our future and the questions we often have about basic needs for food, shelter and clothing.

Years ago the Lord set me up for what I’ll call a taste-and-see moment. A moment Psalm 34:8 speaks of saying, “Taste and see that the Lord is good!“

The moment started with an invitation from my pastor to serve dinners at the local single parents dinner. The idea behind the dinner was to give single-parents a two hour break from the stresses of being a single parent.

Honestly, I had no desire to serve at the dinners. The dinner itself was a noble thing, I just had no desire to do it so I declined the invitation of my pastor. Deep inside I didn’t just want to “do” something out of some contrived religious obligation. Instead I yearned for an authentic heart to do what God wanted me to do.

Around the same time I spent a significant amount of time studying Matthew 6. Aspects of this chapter were coming alive in me and I was beginning to see that God’s provision for us is so thoughtful that I now understood I didn’t have to waste a single minute focused on praying for my needs to be met.

Simply put, I began to understand, “God’s promise of provision is a given. You don’t have to ask for it. You don’t need to cry out for it. It is a given. Our ability to rest in an understanding of His provision empowers us to truly execute the ultimate invitation found in Matthew 6:33 to ‘seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.”

God’s promises regarding provision are meant to empower us into an undistracted seeking of Him and His righteousness. Isn’t that what “all these things will be added to you” means? Jesus words in Matthew 6 provide a set of foundational promises upon which we may rest with our whole being. Freeing us up to make seeking him our foremost priority. We don’t have to waste time “seeking provision first” because His promises of provision in Matthew 6 are a sure thing.

The stage was set, the invitation extended and now I had an opportunity to embrace. Over the years I’ve learned that responding to God is as simple today as it was the day I accepted his offer to come into my heart for salvation and relationship.

Salvation was an act of confessing what He says is true. Believing in our hearts that God will honor and fulfill his word. Embracing His activity in the ways we understand and then trusting Him to do the work that gets it done.

After studying Matthew 6 for a while it was time to confess its truth, believe what it says, embrace the invitation to seek Him first and then trust Him to do the rest.

The first step I took involved identifying all of the crutches I leaned on in my life. The healthy and unhealthy things that fed my inner man on a regular basis.

The inner man, if that phrase is new to you, was a phrase Paul spoke of in passages like 2 Cor. 4:16; Eph. 3:16 and Rom. 7:22-23. The inner man refers to the unseen spiritual aspects of a person while the outer man refers to the visible external aspects of each person.

The inner man can be fed with both noble and less noble things. Consider Matthew 6:22-23 which says, “Your eyes are windows into your body. If you open your eyes wide in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light. If you live squinty-eyed in greed and distrust, your body is a dank cellar. If you pull the blinds on your windows, what a dark life you will have!“

The things we let into our hearts and minds have power to influence our inner man of the spirit. Even the secular world understands this truth concerning our focus. A few other sayings you may have heard along these lines include; “Behold Him to become Him” and “What we focus on we give power to.”

The action I felt led to embrace in my pursuit of Matthew 6:33 was to replace any crutch I used in my life with something I confidently knew would feed my inner man in ways that would produce life.

The list of identified crutches is where I started. I pondered crutch and asked the Lord what part of my inner man was being fed by that activity.

Television was a visual activity so the question became, “How can I replace, or use this activity, of television watching to seek Him first and His righteousness while bringing life to my inner man of the spirit?”

Actually, television watching if often an area passivity for me so it often needs some healthy spiritual violence.

In the end I did two things with regard to television watching. First, I significantly reduced the amount of time I allowed myself to watch television. At one point I unplugged it and turned it around on its base and forced myself to read spiritual books or do other things. The second thing I did was to only watch shows or movies that would bring life to my inner man.

The goal being, how do I seek Him and His righteousness in this area of activity!

Television, in and of itself, isn’t necessarily bad so I considered this a crutch on the more healthy side of things. A crutch that was not so healthy may have been the viewing of less than appropriate things on the internet.

The internet often attacked me in the area of my thought life. Therefore, I sought to replace that activity with something like scripture memory as a means of feeding my inner man with life-giving things to think on that what I might have sought on the internet.

The idea here is not for me to provide a legalistic list of “activities” we should/shouldn’t do. Rather, we are talking about our heart and an intentional act of “seeking Him first” as the priority in everything I did.

Identifying the crutches in my life was a tool I used to discover creative ways of feeding my inner man with healthy spiritual replacements capable of building up His life within my heart.

The first 3-4 days of this intentional pursuit were daunting. The struggle to follow through was guttural and sobering. As a single man, when I get home from work the house is deafeningly quiet. The usual routine upon arriving home from work was to turn on the television for some background noise. The television was ALWAYS on in my home. It’s hard to explain but when you turn it off for an entire evening, let alone what ended up being 2 solid weeks for me, the effects are staggering.

A strange emptiness settles in when that noise isn’t droning on in the background. Often I was left feeling bored and without purpose. I realized there were parts of my heart being stifled by the mindlessness of my television watching.

I didn’t watch television to intentionally avoid the more difficult issues of life but once that noise was turned off I understood why it was so important to have something noble to pursue in place of my usual television watching.

I recall one night in particular where I was lying in bed. I kept raising and lowering my bible in front of me. The battle to choose “seeking Him first and His righteosness” was visceral. I literally fought with myself saying, “I don’t want to read this right now. I WANT to watch t.v.!”

The next moment I would raise my opened bible back in front of my face and fight saying, “No! I’m going to seek Him first. I’m not going to cave in. This fight is noble. This fight is worth it.”

Thank God no one could see me. The scene was ridiculous but it was very real. A fight that lasted an intense 3 or 4 days before a shift I can’t explain occurred in my heart.

What unfolded after that 4th day transformed my experiences from vicious fights with my flesh to an insatiable hunger to be in His presence, spend time with Him and know Him more than I’ve ever thought possible.

Truly, something transformed deep inside of me. I found myself waking up at 5 a.m. eager to spend time with the Lord. I just wanted to read His words, hear His voice and spend time with Him in the quiet of my mornings/evenings outside of work. I authentically wanted to spend time praying and you couldn’t have stopped me.

I didn’t manufacture these feelings. The desire for time with Him was authentic.

I stepped into the reality of Matthew 6:33 as if I had walked through the doorway of a home. I had found a new reality and I wanted to explore it. The times with Him were now something I craved more than t.v. or anything else. I had stumbled into an experience with Him that changed everything.

The goodness of God surrounded me and I understood, perhaps for the first time ever, what it was like to “taste and see” just how good a life in relationship with God could be.

All sorts of things came alive in my heart. I heard him with a simple clarity so profound I found myself having conversations with Him. I’d say something and a scripture would come to mind and I’d know it was His response.

One especially precious moment occurred after I had sinned and thought I had ruined everything with this pursuit seeking Him first. I recall standing by the front windows of my east facing apartment and feeling guilt, shame and everything else the enemy uses to blind us to God’s grace.

Instead, I found the still small voice speaking to me and I heard the Father say, “Ron, I don’t want you to avoid sin mechanically because its the right / wrong to do. Instead, I want your heart to be so in love with me that the thought of introducing anything that could separate us from each other would be unthinkable.”

The fight wasn’t against sin. The fight was for intimacy!

The spiritual gifts He gave me also came alive. One weekend in particular I was in family group and we were praying for the city. During that time the Lord clearly spoke to me about a religious goliath over our city and I was reminded of the scene where David and Israelites had drawn up battle lines against Goliath and the Philistines.

What I felt was so strong I shared it with my pastor. Upon hearing what I had to say, my pastor invited me to share it with the church the next weekend.

Saturday night came and I stood before my church to share about David, Goliath and the religious spirit over our city. I shared that God wanted to kill this goliath and that we were to draw up battle lines.

The significance of that moment surfaced the following week. You see, on the same night I shared this word with my church, three men from my city, sat in a prophetic conference 400 miles away in Oklahoma.

The conference, led by a man named Graham Cooke, was also going on that same Saturday night. During the session that night Graham called out my 3 friends and asked them to stand. Graham addressed them and said, “there’s a religious goliath in your city and God wants to kill it, cut off its head and spit down its neck.”

My pastor spoke with these three men the next week and discovered the connection between what I said that Saturday and what Graham had said.

The prophetic was something I’d been cultivating for several years. Taking risks. Sharing God’s heart and learning through trial and error.

Yet, nothing like this had ever occurred. Imagine my excitement upon discovering that a prophetic word I felt for our city had just been confirmed by a man who’s books had taught me just about everything I had learned about the prophetic.

On the same night I shared the word about David and Goliath the man I learned from, now 400 miles away from our city, spoke the same word to the 3 men of our city in attendance at his conference.

One might think that this moment is one of ego and self-importance. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was exhilarated by what had happened. Yet, as the prophetic has often proved to be for me, I found the confirmation of this “David and Goliath” word was an incredibly intimate moment for me with the Father. I felt his approval on me in that moment and it quieted my fears and questions about walking in that gift.

No one can ever take that experience from me. He gifted it to me and I’m sure you can tell I treasure it to this day.

The pursuit of seeking Him first reached its pinnacle at this point. It also reached its end for that small 2 week season.

I tasted something of the Lord in the season and to this day I still want more. I’ve seen and felt what it means for His truth to become reality.

One of the things I also learned from that season of my life is that the enemy did not like what happened. He was exposed. I can’t say that any stones were thrown. I don’t think that Goliath came down in my city but I stepped into a reality of life in God that was authentic and as real as the tea I’m sipping on as I write.

Lest I leave any loose ends, I want to revisit the single parents dinner I mentioned earlier. You know, the one I declined to join!

During my 2 weeks “seeking Him first and His righteousness” God added something more to me than just a trust in His ability to take care of me while I’m 100% focused on seeking Him.

One other thing He “added unto me” was His heart. You see, when my heart was set on seeking Him and His righteousness the overflow of that pursuit is that we walk away with His heart.

The unforced rhythms of grace and His heart will consume you and His desires will rise up within you in ways you couldn’t manufacture if you tried. Without thinking, His desires become our desires and we stand in the places we’re meant to stand.

The entire journey started with me not wanting to perform a ministry activity simply because it was a “good” thing. Mind you, there’s nothing wrong with doing so. Yet, for me, and knowing now what God was doing in my life just doing it because it was “good” was not good enough.

During this 2 week pursuit of Him I had completely moved on from the single parents dinner. Yet, in a mere 2 weeks while I was busy seeking Him first, He had been cultivating His heart with me.

I didn’t expect it. I wasn’t even thinking about it. Yet, at the conclusion of those 2 weeks I felt my heart drawn toward these single parents and their kids.

I hadn’t given it a second thought. Yet, my pursuit of God shifted my heart and I ended up serving at the single parents dinner for several years following.

I wasn’t doing it for my pastor. I wasn’t doing it because it was a “good work”. I did it because God gave me His heart for those people and I knew it was where I wanted to be.

Remember, “Taste and see that the Lord is good!” Psalm 34:8.

The “things added to [us]” when we pursue God and His righteousness are so much more than just the food, shelter and clothing He promises.

He “adds unto [us]” His very heart. A heart the rises up in you, unprovoked. You know your place. You carry His heart. You share His words. The yoke is easy and the burden is light.

I’ll say it again, our responsibilities in the kingdom of God are simple. Confess what He says is true. Believe in our hearts that God will honor and fulfill his word. Embrace His activity around you by joining Him and then trust Him to do the real work that gets things accomplished.

Reality changed for me during this two week experiment to seek Him first and His righteousness by replacing crutches with things I knew would feed my inner man of the spirit.

A foundational truth of this pursuit for me was the verse, “the kingdom of God suffers violence, and the violent take it by force!” (Matthew 11:12)

The spiritual act of violently embracing Matthew 6:33 opened up a level of relationship with the Father that still calls to my heart to this day. A doorway of relationship was opened for me that no man can take from me.

The list of things “added unto us” when we put Him first is more than just having our needs met. God is more generous that just meeting our needs. Read Psalm 34 if you need convincing…He longs to give us the desires of our hearts because that’s what a good dad does for the kids He loves.

The best advice I can give to anyone inspired by this writing is to read Matthew 6. When you do, embrace the words found in verse 6 where Jesus says,

“Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace.” (Matthew 6:6)

Make space for Him in your life. Life in relationship with God is not meant to be a dutiful obligation. He came to give us an abundant life of real fellowship and intimacy with Him. Perhaps its time for you and me to step back and “seek Him first and His righteousness.”

I wonder what might unfold if we do?