Seeking After the
Lord With All of Your Heart

here are two themes that you will see repeated over and over many of our articles. The first theme is the extreme importance that each and every Christian enter into a full surrender with the Lord so that He can then enter them into His perfect will for their lives.

The second theme that you will see repeated over and over again is the extreme importance that each and every Christian seek to establish a good, close, intimate, personal relationship with the Lord.

When you really stop and think about the big picture and what is really most important in this life, and then study the Bible to see where all of our priorities should be set at in this life - there is one special message and revelation that comes jumping off all the pages of the Bible. This one special message and revelation is that God the Father, His Son Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit are looking to establish and make a direct, one-on-one, intimate, personal relationship with each person He has created.

God knew beforehand that Adam and Eve were going to blow it in the Garden of Eden. God knew beforehand that every man and every woman that would be born after them would all turn out to be unholy sinners in His sight - and that none of us would ever be good enough or righteous enough to be able to enter into His kingdom on our own merits or on our own good works.

At this point, God could have easily given up on the entire human race after the fall of Adam and Eve, but for some strange reason, He chose not to do so. Why?

When you really stop to think about what unholy sinners we all really are, and how fallen and corrupt our human nature really is, you have to wonder - what does God see in any of us that makes us so redeemable in His sight?

Why would God the Father go to such extreme and painful lengths to bring us all back to Himself by sending down His one and only Son Jesus Christ to our cursed earth to go through the worst and most horrible form of physical death that anyone could have possibly undergone at the time He came down to our world - crucifixion by nails?

For God the Father to go to such an extreme and painful length to get us all back to Himself shows us only one possible thing - and that one thing is how much our God really, truly and unconditionally loves each man and each woman He has ever created.

There is no way that God the Father is going to send down and sacrifice His one and only Son on a cross if He didn't have some kind of a maximum, intense, passionate, jealous, all-consuming type of fire love for each person He has ever created.

So why does God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit have this kind of an intense and passionate love for each and everyone of us since we have all been proven to be such unworthy and unholy sinners in Their sight? What exactly do They see in all of us that makes us so redeemable and so pardonable in Their sight? God is obviously seeing something in all of us that is making us salvageable in His sight, otherwise He would have never wasted His time sending His Son Jesus down to our earth to save us.

After studying the Bible from start to finish, I believe there is one main reason that God and Jesus have gone to such extreme and painful lengths to bring us all back to Themselves - and that one main reason is for intimate fellowship.

I believe the main reason that God created the first man and the first woman was for intimate fellowship - and God was not only wanting intimate fellowship with Adam and Eve, but He was also going to want it with every man and every woman that would follow after them.

Though Adam and Eve blew it for every man and woman that would be born after them, God still has not changed His mind from what his original intentions were. God still has this incredible perfect and unconditional love for each one of us, and He has now made a way for all of us to be able to receive that love - and that way is through His Son and the Blood that His Son has personally shed for each one of us on the cross.

The Blood that Jesus has personally shed for each and everyone of us now gives us entrance back into the kingdom of God the Father. Our spiritual relationship with God the Father, which was completely torn and severed with the first sin of Adam and Eve, has now been fully restored through the Blood of Jesus Christ.

We have now all been made spiritually whole and complete again if we are willing to accept Jesus as our personal Lord and Savior. We have now come full circle again! We have now got back what Adam and Eve lost in their first original paradise. Our spiritual relationship has now been fully restored back with God the Father.

Now that we have come full circle again with God the Father, there is now one more thing that each Christian must decide on in this life.

God is now waiting with wide and open arms for all of us to approach Him. And what exactly is God waiting for? Intimate fellowship, intimate prayer and communication, intimate dialogue and conversations about anything and everything, and intimate sharing of your most personal, private and secret thoughts.

Bottom line - God is looking for seekers! God is looking for those who will not be afraid to try and establish a one-on-one, personal, on-fire, passionate, intense and willing to tell-all and share-all love relationship with Him.

God is looking for a maximum intense kind of personal relationship with no holds barred. He is looking for on-fire and passionate people who will try and tear into Him, who will try and take a hold of Him, and who will try to understand Him and all of His ways.

The Scripture verses I will list in this article are the bridge, the key and the secret to being able to find and make direct contact with the Lord in this lifetime. As result of having the Holy Spirit now residing on the inside of us, we now have a direct link and a direct connection back to both God and Jesus in heaven. We can now all pray, talk and communicate direct to God and Jesus through the Holy Spirit.

Now that the channels have been completely opened back up between us and God, each Christian must now make a personal choice in this life as to whether or not they want to make an attempt get to know this awesome and loving God of ours by establishing this kind of deep, close, intimate, personal relationship with Him.

For those of you who would really like to enter into and start to establish this kind of a deeper personal relationship with the Lord, the Scripture verses I will list below will give you the key and secret to being able to really do this in this life. You don't have to wait until you get to heaven to be able to make direct contact with God. You can learn how to establish a good, powerful, personal relationship with the Lord right where you are standing at right now.

The key and secret to being able to really establish this kind of deeper, personal, intimate relationship with the Lord in this life is dependent on one simple little thing - and this one simple little thing is that you have to be willing to seek after it!

The verses below are really spelling and shouting out this secret. Study the wording and the order of the specific words in these verses very carefully. As you will see when you study the wording in these specific verses, God is telling us that we have to be the ones to first initiate making some kind of direct contact with Him!

Seek, and then you will find God. Draw near to God, and then He will draw near to you. Ask, and then you will receive. Knock, and then the doors will opened up for you.

In each one of the verses making these profound statements, we have to be the one to first start out by doing the actual seeking, asking, knocking and drawing near to God. If we do, these verses are then telling us that God will allow us to "find Him." We will be able to make direct contact with both God and Jesus through the Holy Spirit if we show God that we mean serious business with Him by putting in a certain amount of intensity in our seeking of Him.

If there is one personal secret that I have learned in my own personal walk with the Lord in order to try and get Him to become much more supernaturally active and involved in my life - is that I have to be seeker after Him and all of His ways. If you are not willing to put in a certain amount of quality time to seek after the Lord with some level of intensity in an effort to try and find Him - and then to try and develop an active, dynamic, personal relationship with Him, then you will have very little, if any, true spiritual and supernatural activity coming from Him.

The verses below are all showing us that we have to be the ones to try and get the ball rolling with God on this seeking. I believe God is letting us know with the specific wording of these verses is that there is a spiritual law that is in operation in His kingdom - and that spiritual law is the seeking law. Seek after God, and then you will find Him. And the more that you seek after God, the more you will find of Him and the deeper and stronger your personal relationship will become with Him.

I believe there is a direct correlation between the quality and intensity of your seeking with the Lord and how much God will interact back with you. The deeper, stronger and more intense you seek after God - then the deeper, stronger and more intense God will come and seek after you!

Not only is God telling us in these verses to seek and attempt to draw near to Him, but He is also telling us to seek after Him with "all of our heart" and with "all of our soul." Seeking after God with "all" of our heart and "all" of our soul is showing us that God is wanting us to come after Him with maximum intensity, not with a half-hearted or lukewarm attempt.

This would be no different in how we see professional and amateur athletes compete with one another in the games they play. A true professional athlete will give it his best and give it his all every single time he goes out to compete in his particular sport. In the same way, God wants all of us to show Him the same amount of intensity in our own personal relationship with Him and in our own personal seeking of Him and all of His ways.

I know many Christians, when they first read these types of verses, get scared and a bit overwhelmed at the specific wording being used by the Lord. These verses need no fancy interpretation. They mean exactly what they are saying.

God is telling all of us that He wants us to be seeking after Him, drawing near to Him, trying to take a hold of Him, and trying to understand Him and all of His ways. And not only does God want us to initiate and make an attempt to do this type of seeking after Him, but He wants this seeking to be done with maximum effort and maximum intensity.

When many Christians first realize how much intensity God is really looking for in this type of seeking, they realize they are not operating anywhere near this level of intensity with Him, and they then back off never giving God any kind of real chance to help work this kind of intensity in their own personal relationships with Him.

Rome was not built overnight, and neither will your personal relationship with the Lord. All God is looking for is that you give Him the best effort you can at your current level of spiritual development with Him. If you do, then God will more than meet you halfway in this realm.

When two people first meet and start dating, they usually do not fall madly and passionately in love with one another. It usually takes a certain amount of time for this kind of true, passionate and intense type of love to form out and build up. It's the exact same with God the Father. God does not expect this kind of passionate intensity to be built up overnight. For many, this will be a slow and gradual process, with the Holy Spirit being the One to slowly guide you further and deeper into this realm with God.

Again, seeking after the Lord to try and establish a good, deep, intimate, personal relationship with Him is all part of the sanctification process that God would like to do with each and everyone of us.

Before I give you the verses on this topic, and then end the article with some of the different ways that you can seek after the Lord in this lifetime, I first want to make one more statement so that you can really grasp the importance and the incredible profound reality that we are dealing with - in that the one and only God of this entire universe is looking to make and establish a direct, one-on-one, personal relationship with each person He has ever created.

We are dealing with only one God - but one God in three separate and complete Persons - God the Father, His Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. All Three of Them want more than anything else in this world to be able to make direct contact with you so They can then start to establish and create this unique, special, one-of-a-kind, personal relationship direct with only you.

As I stated in my article "God is No Respecter of Persons," God the Father has an equal and unconditional love for each person He has ever created. The Bible tells us that God shows no personal favoritism to any man or woman He has ever created. What this means is that we are all equal in the eyes of God. We are all on an equal footing with the Lord. He loves you just as much as He loves anyone else in this life.

What this means is that you can establish and develop just as much of a special and deep personal relationship with God as anyone else can. God will give you just as much time, attention, effort and intensity as He would with anyone else.

Just stop and think for a moment what kind of reality we are dealing with - that the one and only God of this entire universe can become your best Friend and your one and only true Father! I repeat - your best Friend! A true best Friend who will never harm you, hurt you, mistreat you, lie to you, leave you or forsake you!

So many people in this life have been abused, hurt, wounded, mistreated and discarded by their parents, by their spouses, and by some of their so called good friends. As a result, they have a hard time in being able to trust anyone - including God Himself.

Per the article we have on "Trusting in the Lord," the Bible tells us that we have to learn how to fully trust in the Lord. God is the only One who is perfect in His very nature and personality - and He thus is the only One that you can perfectly trust in this life. All other men and women in this life are fallen and imperfect creatures. This is why each and every Christian has to learn how to place all of their faith and all of their trust in the Lord - not in the world, and not in all of the other people in this world.

God has already shown each and everyone of us how much He really does love all of us by being willing to send down and sacrifice His one and only Son. All God is asking for from each one of us is that we be willing to fully trust Him, and then be willing to enter into this special, intimate, personal relationship with Him.

For those of you who are really looking for true love - true love can only be found in a perfect Being - and God is the only perfect Being in the entire scheme of things.

Though we are to do the best we can in establishing good, healthy, personal relationships with all of our friends, our mates and the other members of our family - realize that only God is totally perfect in His very nature and essence - and only God can give you a perfect, true and unconditional love that no one else will be able to give you in this life.

If you place all of your love and all of your trust in the other people in this life rather than direct to God Himself, then sooner or later you will find yourself hurt, wounded and bitterly disappointed. Imperfect people are not capable of giving you any type of perfect and unconditional love - no matter how hard they try, and no matter how hard they will try and tell you otherwise.

So many people are chasing after other people and other material things in this life in an effort to try and find perfect happiness, perfect peace and perfect fulfillment. And then sooner or later it happens. All of their marriages, all of their good friends, all of their earthly wealth and possessions, and all of their personal accomplishments leave them feeling dead, empty and lifeless on the inside.

All of the good friends they may have made, and all of the earthly material wealth they may have acquired and accumulated in this life fail to fill the void and emptiness that is on the inside of each and everyone of us.

God has purposely created all of us with a void and a vacuum on the inside of each of us, and the only thing that can fill that void and emptiness is the Lord Himself. There is nothing else in this world that can fill that little hole that is in all of our souls. This hole can only be completely filled by God the Father, His Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.

Some people manage to find this revelation and truth in their lives, but sadly, most people do not.

As Christians, we all have something that no one else has in this life - we have the real God in God the Father, we have the one and only real Savior of this world in Jesus Christ, and we have the one and only Holy Spirit who will come and live on the inside of us once we have accepted Jesus as our personal Lord and Savior. As the Bible has told us, we literally have the kingdom of God residing on the inside of us once we have become saved and born again.

We literally have the one and only true fountain of perfect happiness, perfect peace and perfect fulfillment - and that is the Lord Himself! And it is all there for the taking for those who are willing to dive into Him and start to seek and drink from Him.

Jesus has already told us that He Himself is the fountain of living waters and that we will never hunger or thirst again if we would only be willing to drink directly from Him. The water is Him - and the drinking is our seeking to establish a close, intimate, personal relationship with Him.

God is waiting for each and every person He has created to come to Him to try and establish this kind of powerful, intimate, personal relationship with Him. The bridge, the link and the connection to the Lord will be your willingness to seek after Him with all of your heart, with all of your mind and with all of your soul.

Now here are some of the main verses from the Bible giving us this incredible and profound secret and revelation direct from the Lord Himself. I will break these Scripture verses down under 5 separate captions so you can see exactly what the Lord is trying to convey to us in these verses.

1. God Is Looking For Seekers

These first two verses will perfectly set the stage for all of us in reference to us learning how to develop a personal relationship with the Lord.

This first verse will tell us that God the Father is actually looking down on this earth from His heaven for those who will seek after Him and who will try and understand Him. The second verse perfectly completes this first verse when it tells us that God is looking for those who will try and take a hold of Him.

Put these two verses together side by side, and God the Father is telling all of us, loud and clear, that He is looking for passionate and intense seekers who will try and take a hold of Him, who will try and figure Him out, and who will try to understand Him and all of His ways.

Here are two powerfully profound verses giving us this incredible piece of revelation:

1. "The Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there are any who understand, who seek God." (Psalm 14:2)
    
2. "And there is no one who calls on Your name, who stirs himself up to take hold of You ..." (Isaiah 64:7)

To think that this one and only all-powerful God is actually looking down on this earth from His heavenly throne to try and find people who are willing to seek after Him. This verse is shouting from the roof tops two very powerful words - open invitation!

God the Father is giving every single one of us an open invitation to come in and make some kind of attempt to seek after Him. And what will happen next if we make some kind of attempt to seek after Him? This will now lead us into the next set of verses.

2. Seeking After the Lord

These next set of verses will tell us that not only does God the Father want us to seek after Him, but they will tell us that if we make some kind of attempt to seek after Him, that we will actually "find Him." In other words, we will end up making some kind of direct contact with God.

Think of the ramifications of what these next set of verses are trying to tell us - that if we make some kind of attempt to seek after God, that we will be able to find Him, that we will be able to make some kind of direct contact with Him where He can then start to communicate back to us in any way that He should choose to do so.

Study these next set of verses very, very carefully. Meditate on what the Lord is trying to tell us. These verses in particular are giving all of us of a major and profound secret in that this incredible and awesome God of ours can actually be "found" to some degree in this life if we are willing to make enough of an effort on our end to seek after Him.

1. "Draw near to God and He will draw near to you." (James 4:8)
    
2. For thus says the Lord God to the House of Israel: "Seek Me and live ... Seek the Lord and live ..." (Amos 5:4,6)
    
3. "Seek the Lord and His strength; seek His face evermore!" (1 Chronicles 16:11)
    
4. "And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart." (Jeremiah 29:13)
    
5. "... and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul." (Deuteronomy 4:29)
    
6. "Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord! Blessed are those who keep His testimonies, who seek Him with the whole heart!" (Psalm 119:1)
    
7. "For it is time to seek the Lord, till He comes and rains righteousness on you." (Hosea 10:12)
    
8. "With my soul I have desired You in the night, yes, by my spirit within me I will seek You early ..." (Isaiah 26:9)
    
9. "Then they entered into a covenant to seek the Lord God of their fathers with all their heart and with all their soul ..." (2 Chronicles 15:12)
    
10. "If you seek Him, He will be found by you; but if you forsake Him, He will cast you off forever." (1 Chronicles 28:9)
     
11. "O God, you are my God; early I will seek You; my soul thirsts for You; my flesh longs for You in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water." (Psalm 63:1)
     
12. "As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God." (Psalm 42:1)
     
13. "... and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him." (Hebrews 11:6)

When you read each one of these verses one right after the other - the message is coming through loud and clear. God is looking for intense seekers who are willing to seek after Him with all of their heart and with all of their soul. He will not settle for anything less.

These verses are not only telling us that God wants all of us to seek after Him - but He is also telling us that we will be able to find Him to some degree and to some extent if we keep pressing in to make this kind of direct connection with Him. Our seeking will not be in vain. The last verse tells us that the Lord will reward those who are willing to "diligently seek" after Him.

3. God Created Us For Intimate Fellowship

As I said at the top of this article, I believe the main reason God created the human race was for intimate fellowship - and that is intimate fellowship direct with Him, His Son Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit.

The different Bible dictionaries and commentaries describe the word "fellowship" as the following:

• Sharing together
• Communion with God 
• Sharing things in common with others
• Companionship, friendly association, mutual sharing
• The bond of common purpose and devotion that binds Christians together and to Christ

Not only does God want us to learn how to fellowship with other people in this life, but He also wants us to learn how to fellowship direct with Him, His Son and His Holy Spirit. Here are two very powerful verses giving us this revelation that we can have fellowship direct with all three Persons of the triune Godhead.

1. "... that which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ." (1 John 1:3)
    
2. "Therefore if there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit ..." (Philippians 2:1)

The first verse tells us that we can fellowship direct with both God and Jesus. The second verse tells us that we can have fellowship direct with the Holy Spirit Himself. Put both of these verses together side by side, and God is telling all of us loud and clear, that He wants us to have intimate fellowship with both Him, His Son and His Holy Spirit.

4. Talk to God Like You Would Talk to a Best Friend

Probably one of the greatest stories in the Bible about someone who was not afraid to approach God and attempt to commune and talk to Him like you would a best friend has to be the story of Moses.

In the Bible Stories section of our site, we have two articles on the Story of Moses and the incredible adventures he personally had with God the Father over the last 40 years of his life. The title of these two articles are "The Story of Moses" and "Lessons From the Story of Moses."

As a result of his incredible face-to-face encounters with the Lord, God ended giving this man two of the highest compliments any human could ever hope to receive from the Lord in this lifetime. Here are the two verses giving Moses these two incredible compliments:

1. "But since then there has not risen in Israel a prophet like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face." (Deuteronomy 34:10)
    
2. "So the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend." (Exodus 33:11)

The first verse says that Moses "knew" God face to face. The word "knew" is implying that Moses had established a very good personal relationship with the Lord. The second group of words, where it says that Moses knew the Lord "face to face," is also implying that he made a good type of personal connection with the Lord in an effort to try and get to know Him better.

Notice that Moses was seeking after the "face" of God, not after His hand. Too many Christians only seek after the hand of God, which represents what He might be able to give you or help bring your way. Seeking after the "face" of God means that you are seeking after God in an effort to try and get to know Him better as a Person. You are seeking after God to get to know His personality.

The Bible tells us that no one can see the face of God and live. God told Moses, when He was getting ready to manifest His presence before him, that He would not be able to show him His actual face, but only His backside. So when the Bible uses the words that Moses knew God "face to face," it is showing us that Moses ended up coming to know God in a very personal and intimate way. It is not referring to Moses being able to actually see the face of God.

This now leads us to the revelation that is in the second verse. This second verse then goes one step further and tells us that Moses spoke to God face to face "as a man speaks to his friend." This is where I am picking up the revelation that we are to learn how to talk to God as we would with a best friend.

When God the Father Himself is isolating and spelling out these specific words in that we are to commune and talk with Him as we would with a good friend, then you know we are dealing with a major and profound revelation from the Lord. This is why I have been using the best friend analogy to help try and explain what kind of personal relationship God is really looking to establish with each one of us.

Jesus Himself further expounds on this friend analogy with what He has to say in the following verse:

"You are my friends if you do whatever I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you." (John 15:14)

Jesus is calling us His friends. God the Father is telling us that Moses learned to how to speak and talk to Him like you would a good friend. Put all three of these verses together, and God and Jesus are telling us that They want a best-friend type of personal relationship with each one of us. If God has to be number one in your life, then it is only logical to conclude that God wants to become your best Friend, over and above any other best friends that you may have in this life.

These two verses on Moses' personal relationship with the Lord may only be two short one-line sentences in the Bible, but they are both giving us an incredibly profound secret in the Lord - and that secret is that we learn how to develop a best-friend type of personal relationship with the Lord. God does not want to settle for anything less.

What Moses managed to accomplish with the Lord should serve as a powerful example for all of us on how we are to interact with God and what we should really be seeking and striving after in this life.

Without question, our number one goal and priority in this life should be to establish a close, intimate, personal relationship with the Lord. I believe that trying to establish this kind of close personal relationship with the Lord is even more important than completing whatever divine assignments and calls He may be asking you to complete for Him in this life.

You could end up doing great and mighty works for the Lord in this lifetime, but if all those works are not being done operating in a good, close, personal relationship with Him, then you could end up feeling sad, lonely and despondent.

All of the good works that you can do for the Lord in this lifetime will not fill that hole and void that is on the inside of your soul. The only thing that can fill that hole and void is the Lord Himself, not the actual works that you are doing for Him. And the only way that you can get the Lord to fill that hole and void is to enter into a good personal relationship with Him.

5. God is Looking for Passionate and Intense People

Not only are the above verses telling us that God is actually looking for seekers, but He is also looking for people who will seek after Him with a certain amount of intensity in their seeking of Him.

These next three verses will put the icing on this entire cake. The first verse will tell us that Jesus Himself will spew us out of His mouth if He finds that we have become too lukewarm in our own personal relationship with Him and in the works that we will do for Him in this life. This verse is so extreme, that Jesus is telling us that He'd rather find us to be too cold than too lukewarm. At least if you are too cold, you are operating at the other extreme end of the scale.

I believe the reason Jesus is telling us that we have to learn how to seek after Him with a high level of intensity is because nothing will kill a personal relationship faster than if one or both of the parties start to go dead and lukewarm in the way they interact with one another.

Many spouses end up wandering into the arms of another lover behind their spouses back as a result of the deadness and lukewarmness that has infected their marriage relationship. Just as this same kind of lukewarmness can kill a good marriage relationship, it can also hurt or possibly kill our personal relationship with God Himself.

God has made all of us after His own image and likeness. As a result, God has created and wired all of us for maximum intensity. Just as our God is a God of maximum intensity, this same God has created and wired all of us for this same kind of maximum intensity. This is why God will not settle for any type of lukewarmness in our own personal relationship with Him.

This is why so many people are such avid sports fans. Sporting games and sporting events give all of us a chance to release maximum intensity for the teams or players that we are rooting for.

When you really study this part and aspect of God's personality - we are seeing a God who is not dull, boring or lukewarm. We are looking at a God who is extremely passionate and intense.

In the same way, God is wanting all of us to learn how to live this life at a higher level of passion and intensity. He is wanting all of us to learn how to live more of this life at a full throttle - at a full pedal to the medal type mentality in how we serve Him, in how we interact with Him and how we work for Him in this life.

There is nothing more contagious, more infectious and more energetic than to be around a true Spirit-filled Christian who is fully alive in the Lord, and who is serving and working for the Lord with maximum passion and maximum intensity.

Now here are three very special verses from the Lord showing us what He is really looking for in how we interact and work for Him in this life.

1. "I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of My mouth." (Revelation 3:15)
    
2. "These people draw near to Me with their mouth, and honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. And in vain they worship Me ..." (Matthew 15:8)
    
3. "For My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn themselves cisterns - broken cisterns that can hold no water ... Know therefore and see that is an evil and bitter thing that you have forsaken the Lord your God, and the fear of Me is not in you," says the Lord God of hosts. (Jeremiah 2:13,19)

Not only is the Lord looking for on-fire, passionate and intense people, but this passionate intensity has to be coming from our heart. Notice in the second verse that Jesus is ripping on those who are just paying Him lip service. These types of people may talk a good game, but they are not really talking about God and serving God from their heart with any kind of real passionate intensity. It's all words and show, with no real substance behind their words, actions and behaviors.

The last verse perfectly sums up what God the Father is thinking about people who end up eventually forsaking and leaving Him. He is telling anyone who is willing to forget, forsake and leave Him - that they are committing an evil and bitter act against Him.

Bottom line - God the Father has made all of us for Himself. God has made all of us with a hole, a void, a vacuum and an emptiness inside our souls that can only be filled up by His presence.

We can thus either learn how to start seeking after God so we can enter into this powerful, personal and intense relationship with Him - or we can turn our back on God, completely forsake Him, and trade Him in for all of the carnal and fleshly pleasures of this world.

I'm afraid with all the luxuries and material wealth this world has to offer, many Christians have forsaken and abandoned their God and have traded Him in for a life of total carnal pursuit.

The last verse stated above is a real bone-chilling verse when it says that is an evil and bitter thing to have forsaken the Lord for all the material wealth of this world that has nothing but leaks and holes in it and will never hold any real water. All of the earthly wealth you may be able to collect and accumulate in this life will never be able to hold any real water because it will eventually rot and perish away.

In other words, all of the earthly wealth and possessions that this world has to offer has leaks in them, and they will all sooner or later completely perish and be taken away from you on your deathbed. And the only thing that will be left standing, when everything is all finally said and done, is you standing totally alone before the Judgment Seat of Christ, with Jesus judging you on how well you have served and followed Him in this life. None of your earthly wealth and possessions will be going over with you when you finally die and cross over to meet Jesus head on for this personal judgment.

God has so plainly and so clearly laid out how He wants all of us to live this life and exactly what it is that we all should be seeking after - but yet so many Christians keep missing the mark and fail to get their priorities straight in how they should be living this life, and exactly what it is they should be seeking after in this life with the Lord.

Our two main goals in this life should be to first seek to enter into a full surrender with the Lord so that He is free to guide us into His perfect plan and destiny for our lives. The second thing that each fully surrendered Christian should be willing to do is to seek after God with all of their heart and with all of their soul so they can start to establish and enter into this maximum intense kind of personal relationship with Him.

5 Ways To Seek After the Lord

Now that we know the Lord is definitely wanting all of us to seek after Him - exactly how do we go about really seeking after Him?

I will give you 5 basic ways in which you can seek after the Lord in this life so you can improve the quality and depth of your personal relationship with Him.

1. Your Prayer Life With the Lord

Without question, the number one way that you should seek after the Lord is in your own personal private prayer life with Him. Your personal prayer life with the Lord has two sides to it.

The second part to your prayer life, and this is the one that I really want to concentrate on for this article, is where you walk and talk with God much like what you would do with a best friend. This is not where you are asking God for anything in particular. You are just walking and talking with God just like you would do with a best friend.

If there is one major whopper secret that will open up the door to God's heart, it has to be the secret of learning how to talk and communicate with Him much in the same way as you would do with a best friend. For those of you who have a best friend or who used to have one - you will know exactly what I am about to talk about.

A true best friendship is without question, the most unique and special of all the personal relationships that you can have with anyone else in this life.

Granted, there is nothing like the bond and love that exists between parents and their own natural children. But as great and powerful as that bond is, a true best-friend relationship can actually go farther and go deeper than what can transpire between some parents and their natural children. It would really be nice if all of the relationships between parents and their children could turn into and develop into true best friendships, but for many in this life, this never really happens.

This type of best friendship should really be occurring between parents and their children, and between spouses in their marriages due to the large amount of close interaction that occurs in a family unit. But for many different reasons, this type of best friendship really never develops in the way that it should in many households across this world, and you thus have many parents and their children living and breathing right next to one another with no real passionate love and intimacy ever being established and forged with one another. As a result, many people are forced to try and find a true best friend outside the family unit.

There is obviously nothing wrong in making best friends with other people outside the family unit, but every family, if they are walking right with the Lord, should also be making and developing many of these best friend relationships right there in the middle of their own household - husbands with wives, parents with their children, and children with the other siblings in the household. There is so much quality time that everyone is spending with one another in a family unit, that this kind of quality time should be leading to more people in a household becoming best friends with one another.

But as we all know, for many different reasons, this does not occur with everyone in the family unit. As a result, many people are forced to try and find a true best friend outside the family unit. I can't even begin to count the number of married men and women I have personally met who no longer feel their spouse is their true best friend. And they are now stuck feeling totally isolated and alone right in the middle of their actual marriage.

As I said at the top of this article, the real reality is that imperfect people are incapable of giving perfect love to one another - so most people have to be very careful when they start to search and seek after a true best friend. But when you do find one, you have found a true treasure in this life.

The one thing that is so unique and so special about a true best friendship is the incredible comfortableness you will feel in the relationship. All guards and shields will start to come down. You can totally trust this person. You can totally be yourself around this person.

As a result of being so comfortable with this person, you feel totally free to express your most intimate and secret thoughts with one another. There is literally nothing that you can't talk about or freely discuss. You can tell your best friend things that you could never tell your spouse or your own children. You feel like you and this best friend are one in spirit and one in mind. You start to get to the point where you can sometimes read each other's thoughts and mind. You can sometimes feel their pain to the same degree as they are feeling it.

For those of you who have this type of best friendship with someone, you know exactly what I am talking about.

This type of special, unique, close and deep personal relationship is exactly what God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are looking for from each one of us. The Bible tells us to seek after the "face" of God, not after His hand, which represents what He might be able to give to you. Seeking after the face of God means that we are to seek directly after who God really is. We are to seek directly after His personality so we can start to get to know Him in a much better, deeper, and closer way.

Bottom line - we should seek after God in the exact same way that we would seek into a true best friend. All of the above verses are telling us that we will be able to "find" this awesome God of ours if we are willing to expend some quality time and energy to seek directly after Him. And once we find Him - then the doors will be opened up between Him and us!

God will now be willing to open up His heart, His mind, His ways, some of His thoughts, and some of His actual emotions direct to us. In other words, God is looking to share a part of His personality with us if we would only be willing to do the same with Him - just like what we would be willing to do with a true best friend. Except with God, we are dealing with a Being who is totally and completely perfect in His personality.

We are thus looking and gazing on a perfect Being who has the ability to transmit and release perfect, true and unconditional love in a way that no other human will ever be able to do in this life.

If there is one major, whopper, profound, can't shout it out loud enough secret that God is looking for from each one of us - it has to be this revelation that we try and seek to establish this type of best-friend relationship with Him.

Talk to God just like you would talk to your best friend. Share your most intimate, private and personal thoughts and feelings with Him that you would never, ever, consider sharing with anyone else.

Be willing to completely open yourself up to the Lord, with no holds barred. Be willing to lay yourself totally bare. Be available to God 24/7, not for just 2 hours a week in a Sunday church service. Be willing to talk and communicate with God anywhere and at anytime.

Just like you have total freedom to call your best friend up anytime you want, do the exact same thing with God. The Bible tells us that God never sleeps or slumbers. He is always on duty, day or night, rain or shine, storm cloud or no storm cloud. He is always there for you, 24/7, 365 days every year.

God already knows all the thoughts of your mind and heart, so there is nothing you can hide from Him anyway. And not only does He know every single thought and word that is floating around in your mind and heart to begin with - but He knows what you are going to say and think before you even begin to say it or think it, since He has perfect knowledge on all future events, including what will be coming out of your mind or mouth.

If you are willing to open yourself up to the Lord with this kind of open and honest intimacy with Him, then you will have just touched the heart of God - and He will now more than blow you away with what He will do with you and how He will handle your life from here on in.

I believe this best friend type of personal relationship that God is looking to establish with each one of us is the main reason that He has created the human race. God is so jealous and so possessive of the human race that He has created, that He has purposely made all of us to only be able to live in this life and the next life to come only if we are willing to bond and graft directly into Him through the Blood that His Son Jesus has already shed for us on the cross.

In other words, we either learn how to directly bond and graft into our Lord with the kind of close, intimate, personal relationship that He is really looking for - or we will eventually die and be cast off from Him forever.

Jesus Himself is telling us that He will spew us out of His mouth if we ever get to the point of taking Him too much for granted or start to get too lukewarm in our own personal relationship with Him. The last verse above perfectly spells it out for all of us in that if we ever forsake or turn away from our Lord, then we will have committed an evil and bitter act in His sight.

2. Reading and Studying From the Bible

The next big way that you should attempt to seek after God is by reading and studying from the Bible. The Bible is God's only true Word to us in this life.

God has given us everything that we will ever need to be able understand Him, His Son, His Holy Spirit and all of His ways in just this one Book. And all of this information, knowledge and revelation is all contained in just one simple Holy Book.

Just as God made it as easy as possibly He could for Adam and Eve by telling them to stay off one simple tree - in the same way God has made it as easy as He possibly could by putting all of the information, knowledge and revelation that we will ever need to find and understand Him in one special Holy Book. And yet most Christians will go their entire lives having never read this one special Book in its complete entirety. As a result, they never really get to learn much about God, His ways, and how He likes to work and operate.

I believe the Bible is serving as a real litmus test between us and God in this life. If you are a true, saved, born-again, on-fire Christian, then God is going to sit back and see how much of a desire you really have to try and get to know Him. There are two main ways that He is going to do this.

The first main way that God is going to test you on this is to see how far and to what extent you will attempt to make some kind of personal contact with Him in order to try and establish a good personal relationship with Him. The second main way that God is going to test you is by watching to see if you will make some kind of attempt to learn more about Him by reading and studying from the Bible.

If you are really in love with God, and are really wanting to increase the depth and quality of your own personal relationship with Him, then you will have a strong natural desire and hunger to want to get into His Word so that you can start to feed off all of the knowledge and revelation that is in this Book.

There is simply no other book on this earth that we can feed off of that will give us the amount of direct revelation and knowledge about God and who He really is as the Bible can. And again, God has made it as simple and easy as He possibly could by putting everything that we would ever need all in this one Book.

This is why I say the Bible is the real litmus test between us and God - as it will be what will separate the true, passionate, on-fire seeker from the lukewarm, lazy, carnal and worldly Christian who could really care less about God and any of His ways on how we are to live in this life.

With the Blood that His Son Jesus has shed for all of us on the cross, God the Father has now opened up the gates to His heaven and the gates direct to Himself.

All we have to be willing to do is to believe and accept Jesus as our personal Lord and Savior - be willing to seek after God by making some kind of an attempt to enter into a good personal relationship with Him - and then seek to learn more about Him and all of His ways by reading and studying from His Word. If we do, then we will spiritually grow and mature in this life beyond anything that we ever thought was possible.

3. Reading and Studying From Other Christian Books

In addition to the wealth of knowledge and revelation that is in the Bible, there is also an enormous amount of information and knowledge in other good anointed Christian books.

God the Father has anointed many teachers in this day and age to be able to teach from His Word. Many of these teachers have written some very good books covering a wide range of issues and topics that will also help us grow in the knowledge and ways of the Lord.

For the real seeker in the Lord, there is a whole treasure chest of goodies at your local Christian bookstore. You can find good anointed books covering just about any topic or issue you may be interested in. In the Christian Book section of our own site, we have a list of some very good books covering a wide variety of topics.

If you can combine the study of Scripture with the reading of other good anointed books, you will spiritually grow at a rate that will truly astound you. Going into this kind of heavy seeking mode trying to acquire as much knowledge as you can about the Lord will really move the Holy Spirit to want to work on your behalf.

If you are willing to spend some good quality time trying to increase your knowledge base on the Lord and all of His ways, then the Holy Spirit will really start to move to help you out in understanding and assimilating what you are reading so that true spiritual growth can occur in this life. This is a direct supernatural work that the Holy Spirit can do for every single believer who is willing to put forth the time and effort to try and learn more about our Lord.

4. Fellowship With Other Believers

Another powerful way that you can seek after the Lord is by being willing to fellowship with other like-minded believers. When you are attempting to fellowship with other believers, you are willing to share your walk, your testimonies and your knowledge base with them - and they in turn will do likewise with you.

As a result of sharing your stories, your testimonies and your knowledge base with one another, you will get to learn more about the Lord from these other believers. God will be doing different things with some of them than maybe what He has done with you. As a result, you can each learn from one another in the personal experiences that you have had in the Lord.

I can't tell you how much more my knowledge base has increased in the Lord over the years as a result of learning from some of my other close seeker-friends and what God is doing in their lives. And I'm still continuing to learn from each and everyone of them as they continue to share their walk and their journey in the Lord with me.

By being willing to learn from other believers, you will be showing the Lord your strong desire to want to learn more about Him and all of His ways and that you are leaving no stone unturned in your seeking and pursuit of Him.

God loves to be the center of attention, and He loves it when His people sit around and talk about Him and share their knowledge base with one another. When you do this with other believers, you are seeking after the Lord.

5. Watch For the Lord to Move in Your Everyday Life

This next area is one area that many Christians are missing out on. Once you enter into a full surrender with the Lord where He is now free to guide you into His perfect plan and destiny for your life, and then you combine that with seeking directly after Him in order to establish a strong personal relationship with Him - you will have opened up major supernatural door with the Lord, and He will now start to move in many areas of your life to help you maximize your walk and call with Him.

And this is where it really gets fun, interesting and exciting. Once you put the pedal to the medal with the Lord in your seeking of Him, then God is now going to move very strongly on your behalf and He will now start to show Himself to you in a wide variety of miraculous ways.

What this means is that you now have to keep your radars up each and every day, as you never know when, where or how God will move next. Your job will be to try and pick it up when God does move in some kind of supernatural way to help you out.

God can move in your life in a wide variety of ways and in a wide variety of matters. God can move to help give you favor with your bosses and supervisors at your places of employment. He can supernaturally open up doors to the next new job that He may want to promote you into.

He can help you with the everyday activities of your job. He can help you with the raising and parenting of your children and all of the everyday activity that goes on in the family. He can help you solve problems, handle different types of emergencies and help warn and protect you of oncoming dangers.

There are literally an infinite number of things or situations that God can get actively involved in within your normal everyday life. God is much more active in people's lives than most people actually realize or see.

If you are willing to go into this kind of intense seeking mode with the Lord where you have your radars up each and everyday looking for God to move in your life in some way or some fashion - then the Holy Spirit will help open up your eyes and help increase your ability to be able to spot it, recognize it and actually see it when it does occur so that you can fully appreciate it and be very thankful for it when it does happen.

The Bible calls the Holy Spirit the Helper, and there is no area of your life that is too small or too trivial that He will not be willing to give you a helping hand on when His help is really needed.

Conclusion

For those of you who have never attempted to draw close to the Lord in your own personal relationship with Him, study the specific wording in all of the above verses very, very carefully.

All of these verses are giving us a major life changing secret - and that secret is that the Lord is calling each and every person that He has ever created to come into intimate fellowship with Him.

If a person is willing to come to God the Father by accepting Jesus as his personal Lord and Savior, then all roadblocks and barriers between them and God will now be totally removed forever - I repeat, forever! Any true born-again believer now has direct access to God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit 24/7, 365 days a year. There are now no more barriers between us and God.

Since God is no respecter of persons, you will have just as much of a chance in being to establish a close, intimate, personal relationship with Him as anyone else would. God will not be playing favorites with anyone in this realm.

You seek - and then you will find God. You draw near to God - and then God will draw near to you. The more you seek of God, the more of God you will find. You give God a 100% effort on your end - and God will more than give you a 100% effort from His end.

Of all of the articles that we have in our site covering a wide variety of topics and issues, the revelation and knowledge that is contained in the above verses are in my opinion, the most important of all for each Christian to try and get worked into their personal walk with the Lord.

Once you have become saved and born again by accepting Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, then the next big step that will await you is whether or not you will attempt to enter into an intense, passionate, personal relationship with the Lord.

God cannot make you come to Him. All God can do is give you the knowledge from His Word that this is what He is really looking for from each one of us more than anything else in this world.

All of the above Scripture verses are as clear as they can be. God has created all of us to have intimate and close fellowship with Him. God has created us to come into close communion with Him. God not only wants to be your perfect heavenly Father, but He also wants to become your perfect best Friend.

He has nothing but your best interests at heart. He will never hurt you, harm you, bad-mouth you, forsake you, leave you or abandon you. He wants nothing more than to be able to draw you close to Him so that He can help you get through this life in one piece and accomplish everything that He would like for you to get done in this life.

I know some people have a fear of drawing close to God as a result of being terribly hurt or wounded by some of the other people in their lives. But if you believe that our Bible is truly the inspired and infallible Word of our Holy God, then you have to believe what all of the above verses are trying to tell you.

If the Bible tells us that God has no darkness in Him and that He cannot commit any kind of evil, then you have to believe and ground on these types of statements and learn how to override all of the hurts you may have suffered in your past from other people.

Our God is a faithful, loyal, loving and perfect God. He is totally trustworthy since He is totally perfect in His personality. This means you will be on perfectly safe ground once you decide to approach Him and enter into His realm. He will perfectly handle you at whatever level of spiritual development you may be operating at, no matter how low of a level you think that may be.

This kind of an intense personal relationship with the Lord will not be built up overnight. God will work to bring you up into this level at a nice, slow, comfortable pace that you will be very comfortable in working with.

As I said at the beginning of this article, most romantic love relationships between men and women do not start off with any kind of maximum intensity. It usually takes a awhile for the real true sparks of love to build up. It's the exact same way with God the Father. All God is asking for is that you just give Him a few baby steps to work with and He will more than prove Himself to you that you can learn to fully trust Him and eventually fall passionately in love with Him.

This kind of a close, intimate, personal relationship with the Lord can happen in this life. You do not have to wait until you get to heaven to be able to establish this kind of intimate personal relationship with the Lord.

You already have the Holy Spirit residing on the inside of you. He is already there, ready and waiting for your green light to help draw you closer to the Lord. The Holy Spirit will help you in being able to draw much closer to God and Jesus in your own personal relationship with each of Them if you let Him know that you really want to take this kind of a plunge.

But the choice will always remain with each individual believer. All God can do is let you know that He is there for you.

God has done everything that He possibly can to draw each person back unto Himself. He has sacrificed His one and only Son to pay the penalty for all of our sins and transgressions - and He has given us His Word, which has given all of us the knowledge and revelation that we will ever need in this life to be able to understand Him and the big picture on how everything has been set up.

Be willing to seek after the face of God like Moses did in order to establish a best-friend type of personal relationship with Him - and I guarantee that you will find the fountain of true youth, happiness and fulfillment that you will never find in all of the worldly pleasures of this life.

 

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Michael Bradley
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Scripture taken from New King James Version.
Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2005-2008 by Michael Bradley.


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