The Agressive Pursuit of Yourself
I know that the title is goofy and that you may be thinking that this is going to be one of those "right wing" rants about how the world is evil and too consumed with pleasure and the pursuit of self gratification to be of any lasting good. Well, you are wrong. What I have been thinking about is nothing like that at all. I keep coming back to something that Jesus said in Matthew 6:33. Jesus says that we should seek first the Kingdom of God. That is such a profound statemnt. We must make the Kingdom of God our first priority.
That leads however, to a question. What does seeking the Kingdom look like after one has been "seeking" for a while? I have said it before and I will say it again, our life is a journey. I know that life is filled with changes and that nothing stays static for long. But where do we look for aspects of the kingdom as our lives continue? I would like to focus for a moment on one that I think that we ignore.
I feel that the internal aspects of the Kingdom get overlooked in the face of doing Kingdom work. For example, a man or a woman may be out doing a bunch of things that he or she truly feels are God's work. That may even be the case, what they are doing mey even be vital, but how often do we really look at ourselves? The Apostle Paul gave us the instruction in 1st Corinthians 11:28 that we should examine ourselves. Yes he was talking about doing that before partaking of the "Lord's Supper". Perhaps part of the problem is that we only do that when we are partaking.
The willingness to look inside ourselves is becoming a rare thing. Are we willing to pursue the parts of ourselves that do not please God? Am I the only one who finds that hard sometimes? I would wager to say that I am not. I try to be consistent in this. Because there are those moments that I find something that that God wants to remove or change. What then? Am I willing, are we willing to allow God to change things that He may want to change? Will we let God "kick our furniture around"? What happens when one of our core character issues is confronted? What will we do? This is the hard stuff about the Kingdom. When we come to times like this in life, I think that they either make us or break us. The writer of Hebrews says that discipline is hard when it is received. He is so right. He also says that it is worth it later (Hebrews 12:11). So I say that we must be willing to confront the things in our lives that hinder us. We should, in Christ, be willing to deal with and overcome the flaws that keep us from growing. Let us all be diligent in the agressive pursuit of the parts of our lives that God wants to change. It opens us up to a new paradigm of life. Happy hunting.
PJ
That leads however, to a question. What does seeking the Kingdom look like after one has been "seeking" for a while? I have said it before and I will say it again, our life is a journey. I know that life is filled with changes and that nothing stays static for long. But where do we look for aspects of the kingdom as our lives continue? I would like to focus for a moment on one that I think that we ignore.
I feel that the internal aspects of the Kingdom get overlooked in the face of doing Kingdom work. For example, a man or a woman may be out doing a bunch of things that he or she truly feels are God's work. That may even be the case, what they are doing mey even be vital, but how often do we really look at ourselves? The Apostle Paul gave us the instruction in 1st Corinthians 11:28 that we should examine ourselves. Yes he was talking about doing that before partaking of the "Lord's Supper". Perhaps part of the problem is that we only do that when we are partaking.
The willingness to look inside ourselves is becoming a rare thing. Are we willing to pursue the parts of ourselves that do not please God? Am I the only one who finds that hard sometimes? I would wager to say that I am not. I try to be consistent in this. Because there are those moments that I find something that that God wants to remove or change. What then? Am I willing, are we willing to allow God to change things that He may want to change? Will we let God "kick our furniture around"? What happens when one of our core character issues is confronted? What will we do? This is the hard stuff about the Kingdom. When we come to times like this in life, I think that they either make us or break us. The writer of Hebrews says that discipline is hard when it is received. He is so right. He also says that it is worth it later (Hebrews 12:11). So I say that we must be willing to confront the things in our lives that hinder us. We should, in Christ, be willing to deal with and overcome the flaws that keep us from growing. Let us all be diligent in the agressive pursuit of the parts of our lives that God wants to change. It opens us up to a new paradigm of life. Happy hunting.
PJ
posted by PJ | 12:51 PM
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