Pursue God with Your Whole Heart

“The human heart has so many crannies where vanity hides, so many holes where falsehood lurks,” once lamented John Calvin, “that it is difficult to be persuaded of the simple truth that nothing is more profitable than the wholehearted pursuit of God.”

To be zealous and ignite our spiritual passion, it must be rooted in pursuit of and in a relationship with God.”

My friend and preaching colleague, Gary Henry, has written an entire one-year devotional entitled “Diligently Seeking God.” Gary’s stated goal for the book is to…

• Motivate you to take God more seriously every day.
• Encourage you to focus on God, rather than yourself
• Challenge you to make God a greater priority.

If we could imbibe these worthy goals, then spiritual passion would be a natural byproduct. We wouldn’t need motivational sermons to get us pumped up. Our realization that our most profound need is Divine communion and finding fulfillment in that relationship would fuel our zeal and point it in the right direction.

Last week’s post, “Passion: The Heartbeat of Spiritual Zeal,” identified some qualities, characteristics, and attributes of passion with an acrostic of the word. Today, we begin the first of seven posts looking at each in more detail.

True spiritual zeal cannot be achieved apart from pursuing God with your whole heart. Through the prophet Jeremiah, Jehovah implored His people, “You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart” (Jer. 29:13). God has always desired a personal, relational, whole-hearted devotion to Him.

The often-used Old Testament phrase “seek Me” implies pursuit. It embodies energy, effort, desire, and diligence.

On the brink of the promised Land, Moses challenged Israel, “But from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul” (Deut. 4:29). Be advised, however, that God was not and is not playing “hide and seek” with people. Instead, He’s calling us into a more profound devotion and a closer communion with Him.

Wholeheartedness is vividly described by David, the “man after God’s own heart,” in Psalm 63:1. “O God, You are my God; early will I seek You; my soul thirsts for You; my flesh longs for You in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water.” What a powerful metaphor! Just as a thirsty worker is seeking to quench his parched throat on a scorching hot day, so is the God-seeker pursuing to satiate the thirst of the soul.

When asked by a lawyer, “What is the great commandment in the Law? Jesus responded, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment (Matt. 22:36-38).

Jesus is calling us, not to a casual Christianity of convenience, nor a ritualistic religion of traditional rites and routines, but to a relationship with Him that is whole-hearted. As noted in earlier posts, the heart is the whole of our being–the intellect, emotions, will, and conscience. A. W. Tozer was right when he wrote, “God wants the whole person and He will not rest till He gets us in entirety. No part of the man will do.”

Spiritual passion, apart from a God-centered devotion, is superficial and will soon subside. The real pursuit of God must be on His terms and based on objective Truth, not subjective opinions. This issues itself in a zeal for His Word, worship that is “in spirit and in truth,” and a walk “worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God” (Col. 1:10).

The theologian Origen (185-254 A.D.) spoke of this Godward pursuit when he wrote, “The soul that has been ignited with the love of God is incapable of containing it within; it must speak, it must burn, it must give.”

Will you pursue God with your whole heart?

–Ken Weliever, The Preacherman