Not for everyone.

Caution: This is not for everyone. I wasn't the best person in life in my early 20's. My friend Christine sent this to me today and I felt I should share this with you all. It's not too late to change your ways. It's not too late to be aware.

Seeking God with All Your Heart

Nothing worth having in life comes easily. The best relationships, the most rewarding work, the highest prizes, championships, salaries and trophies all come through hard work and effort. It is a law of life that the best things in life are the most difficult to attain. If it was easy, it would be cheap; if anybody can have it, then it really is without value.

Understanding the importance of effort, we should also understand that there are many things in life available to anyone willing to put the effort forth to achieve or obtain it. You can make a high salary, achieve recognition and be rewarded if you put forth the effort in the field best suited to your natural abilities. Beyond that, there are many areas of life in which ANYONE can succeed if they are willing to work at it. For example, you can have good relationships with people if you are both willing to work at it. A really great relationship does not come without effort. You must make the effort to talk, to listen, to ask, to inquire, to care, to help, to share, to encourage. However, you can make this happen with effort.

Yet, somehow, we often don’t believe that these same principles apply to having a strong relationship with God. On the one hand, we see it as something too difficult to attain. In our hearts we say, “I can’t see Him and it is not worth all the effort to pursue One that I cannot even see with my eyes or touch with my hands.” So we don’t put forth the effort. On the other hand, we see our relationship with God as one which requires no work on our part. We see it as something so easily achieved because God does all the work to make it happen. Now certainly, God did all the work to make it possible. That is undeniable. But what about our part in having a close relationship with God? Do we make the effort to seek Him, to know Him?

Praying may be free, but we must do it. Reading, studying and meditating on His word may be free, but it takes costly effort to do it. We will not know God any more than we know someone living on the other side of the earth unless we make the effort to know Him, to seek Him out, to be His friend.

And this takes maybe the greatest effort of all… the effort driven by faith in what is unseen. God is not seen by our eyes, He is not heard with our ears. Our sight and hearing of Him come spiritually. Our eyes tell us that no one is there when faith tells us that God is there and listening to us. Our eyes tell us that he doesn’t care while faith tells us that He cares very much.

It takes a lot of work to seek God. Don’t think that it doesn’t. However, with the seeking comes the promise that you can be as close to God as you want to be. The Bible says it like this: “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you… Seek me and you shall find Me when you seek after Me with all your heart.” So the question is: how close do you want to be to God?

- Written by David Liesenfelt Copyright © 2004