Having been heavily involved in youth ministry for a number of years, it’s almost guaranteed that most single guys and gals will eventually approach you with the question of love. More accurately, seeking a boyfriend or girlfriend. The same often happens with young adults, and even the older adults. While their focal point may not always be about finding a spouse, at some stage or another we have all, whilst on the christian walk sought after something that seems near impossible to obtain. And it almost makes us feel guilty that we could have desires for anything other than God.

While this isn’t the theme of my post, I will point out Psalm 37:4 tells us “To take delight in the lord and He will give us the desires of our heart.” That certainly takes some trust on His level, right? I was certainly guilty of thinking so, until I realised that when you truly delight in something, you would literally lay down your own desires, agenda’s and motives to ensure that it was front and centre in your life. Literally, you would put it before yourself. In delighting in the Lord, our desires become His. We his vessel and He our amazing God can achieve anything in this perfect partnership. So as long as you are truly delighting in the Lord, you have nothing to fear about desiring things that are in his word.

But I digress. So often in response to those young teens inquiring after relationships, I hear Matthew 6:33 quoted.

Seek first the kingdom of the Lord, and His righteousness and all these shall be added unto you.

Now, while I don’t ever think seeking the Lord is a bad thing, I certainly think that if our motives are wrong, we will never get out of it what we were hoping. Whether it’s a partner, or prosperity, or health, that new car, mortgage paid off, etc, if your motivation is to seek God to get that, we are falling into the mentality that believes that we are the one’s that move God, and he is rewarding us with the thing we desired, because we desired it, more than we actually desired to seek Him with no ulterior motive other than seeking Him.

Now that’s not condemnation. That’s just our old friend works sneaking in. As I have mentioned in a previous post. God can’t love you any more or any less than He already does at this minute. Reading your bible, praying, devotions, worship, whatever christian discipline or practice you engage in does not make Him love you more. It makes us love and understand Him more. And that’s a great thing! That’s a weight off my shoulders that I was never meant to carry. The Creator of the Universe loves me, unlimitedly, without condition. That doesn’t mean we should just throw out our bibles and stop praying. No. We should in fact engage in them more to explore the width, breadth and depths of His love for us, and build up an intimate knowledge of our Father in heaven.

Back to Seeking the Kingdom.

I pulled out my concordance and got to studying the words, to find the original meanings and see if they lined up with a revelation I had been pondering on.

And it did.

You see, I started to look at scripture and ask “How can this not be done in a way that would be considered works?” When it Hit me. God wants us to see Him as our provider. He wants us to trust him implicitly. He wants us to 1 Peter 5:6

Therefore submit yourself under the mighty hand of God so He can exalt you at the right time.

He wants us to identify that truly everything already comes from Him, and that He truly is more than capable to provide for every one of our needs. He wants us to seek Him with everything we have. Seek a deeper relationship with Him. To forsake any agenda or any motives and wildly chase after Him, to sit at His feet and listen as He tells us how much he adores us. And in that place of surrender, He wants us to know and trust that we are not going to miss out on anything. He is more than willing and capable to provide for us, but we don’t always give Him the chance.

When reading my concordance, the original greek words painted a similar and equally amazing picture. This is what it said:

Enquire after the royalty of the lord, and his equity in character, and all these things will be laid down beside.

Literally when you realise how amazing our God is, how He created everything, how He is the king of kings, and of His fairness and His justice and His inability to lie, and you explore His character and see that there is no fault in it, you will realise he has already laid everything down around us to pick up and use when we need it. He has already equipped us! He has provided for us, He did it in the atonement. He did it when He sent His son to die for us!

That’s incredible!

The way we see our Heavenly Father, directly affects just how many of His promises we will see come to pass in our lives.

And the good news is? He has made it possible for us to see them all. So, if there’s anything I can encourage you with as I sign off it’s this; Get rid of the agenda, of the burden and the guilt and just seek your heavenly Father because you can, and know that He has got your every need covered!

Be blessed,

The Kid