This is a wonderfully encouraging message from John Mark Poole. It was a repost on The Elijah List today to commemorate Father's Day. In the article he reminds that Our Father loves us and is always calling us to relationship with Him. It is His heart's desire that we know Him as our loving Father who loves us unconditionally and desires for us to come to Him for everything.
A Deeper Relationship with a Loving Father
Have you ever felt the more passionately you chased after God, the more it seemed the enemy was a few steps ahead laying very untimely ambushes to alter your hunger for God's heart?
Ask, call out, search out His heart, look for Him, knock on His heart's door, pursuing intently Daddy God, and you will be amazed at how many secrets Abba Father has saved just for those who persistently "ask of Him"! Could it also be that one of the "great and mighty things" which would have never been known if we did not ask God are the many who will find God simply from noticing the desire of your heart seeking Abba Father's?
A Deeper Relationship with a Loving Father
In all of humanity, most seem to be searching, wandering, and inquiring about how to connect to the Source that offers them completeness. That wandering eye from ours to the Creator of the universe, Jehovah God, was placed into each person to desire one main thing – which we indeed were created for: intimate fellowship with our Creator.
As humanity searches outside the heart of our Creator, the components pursued are never intended for offering intimacy with God. However, once discovered, mankind will never again settle for a counterfeit, empty religion, which cannot compare its rules and legalisms to the ultimate and complete satisfaction in an ever-increasing relationship with our Father God. God made us to be hungry, seeking and desiring Him!
As many turn to other things or sources to fulfill them, they are always empty, yet always looking, and as one popular song from years past declared, "I can't get no satisfaction!" Even those who have known the Lord in a very close encounter, yet who have gotten lured off their path by seeking satisfaction from other sources, such as titles, ambitions, and carnal ideas of ministry success, also find this will never allow their relational base inside of a person to be completed.
Only a deeper personal relationship with a loving Father God can fulfill your hunger to be whole!
Humans were designed to look to others, seeing a reflection of God with a view of how their Creator looks! We are not made to allow the enemy to counterfeit our heart's desire from our Maker; we are completed by the affirmation of our eternal birthright, sealed in the red Blood of Jesus Christ's inkwell deep within our hearts – from our Father's plan. It is the way of our hearts to cry out to our Creator to find Him and of our God to make us completely whole.(Photo via pixabay.com)
In our "asking who He is," He then opens the eyes and ears of our hearts to call upon Him, through the plan of His Son, Jesus Christ. Consequently, the pursuit will demonstrate we love His Son.
Finding out "Who is your Daddy God?" was a set-up question God really had planted in His creation all along! Wow – God really knows about pursuit! Yes, obey God and do as He said: "Ask of Me"; then you, by believing in faith, will receive! And the best part is, since He pursues His own, that all we have to do is to obey God, and do as He said: "Ask of Me." Then you, by believing in faith, will receive!
For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day. John 6:40 NASB
Abba Father Desires Our Pursuit!
When anyone asks or inquires of God, that is not an insignificant action! In doing so, you are offering submission to God as your Lord. God does respond, although it may not be exactly what or when you wanted, nevertheless, God's response to us demonstrates His love to us as His own children! God gives the best for those who will go through the test. Remember, "No test, no TESTimony!"
Jeremiah was a prophet in a difficult time, and by all the natural standards for success, he would be considered a complete failure. However, Jeremiah is one of the best examples for obedience beyond natural circumstances. Pursue no matter the view! Jeremiah was God's voice to Judah during a 40-year span and gave the Lord's instructions to turn back to God and repent of their sins in order to be spared destruction. Jeremiah knew that inquiring of the Father's heart continually was critical.
Adverse Conditions Must Fuel Our Fire of Desire for More of God!
Have you ever felt the more passionately you chased after God, the more it seemed the enemy was a few steps ahead laying very untimely ambushes to alter your hunger for God's heart?
Notice on this assignment, and the reason I like God's prophetic messenger, Jeremiah, he never saw his listeners transformed and was given unmitigated Hell in the process for obeying God, but still he did not waver! We desperately need this lesson in our nation today! Let Abba Father increase your passion for Him when the enemy comes in like a flood! (Photo via elijahshopper.com, Lillis Boyer art)
I wish it were instant, but it is not. There are no shortcuts to becoming a prophet. Gifts are given, but character to carry the gift is forged in the fire of affliction. Believe me, I know! [Excerpt of James Goll's foreword to Path of a Prophet, Understanding the Journey by John Mark Pool, Destiny Image Publishers, May 2007.]
Like all prophets, he understood the cost of his obedience to the Father God. Jeremiah's willingness to obey God at all costs, such as being thrown into prison (Jeremiah 37), into a cistern (Jeremiah 38), and taken to Egypt against his will (Jeremiah 43), shows that we must always trust God no matter how the circumstances look! In the natural, it appears Jeremiah had a very lonely life, yet his intimate communion and satisfaction from Abba Father's love is evident by his actions.
Jeremiah stayed on his difficult assignment during the years of increased adversity as his own people's hearts grew harder each year. The hard message he had to deliver caused Jeremiah to utterly call out and depend upon God for total consolation. Jeremiah was known as the "weeping" prophet called to a nation who lost their pursuit for the "Lover of their souls"! Jeremiah inscribed words that would resound for all eternity:
"Call out to Me!" Perhaps we can see a similarity in our country today during the heart-cry of so many voices of God prophesying that today is the day to turn our hearts back to our Father. Call upon the Lord! Seek Him while He may be found!
Ask Me and I will tell you remarkable secrets you do not know about things to come. Jeremiah 33:3 NLT
God wants His creation to dialogue with Him. Fathers love it when one of their children jumps into their lap and says, "Dad, I don't need anything but to talk to and be with my friend, my Dad!" Like most dads, as your son or daughter pursues your undivided attention and wants to simply commune as your special son or daughter, it displays the great love our heavenly Father has for us! Asking tells "Daddy God" our hunger is not so much for the answers as it is for the time with Him in a love relationship that Abba has set as a desire in each of His own.
We may not ever get the answers, but in the journey, no matter the severity as Jeremiah demonstrated, we will know that we have a loving Father who always takes great care of those who ask, receive His words, and continue to obey! Wow, how could someone not want that kind of pursuit? So why not demonstrate to a desperate nation and world that all God wants is all of us always asking, seeking, knocking and finding all of Him!
Just as David was known as a "man after God's own heart," this was surely in part because, no matter the dilemma, David never stopped pursuing God's heart! He wrote words demonstrating this so others would follow in that "asking of God." King David's son, Solomon, wrote words in Proverbs that must have been inspired and observed through a relationship of being with his father, David, knowing David was always running after God like a deer after the water! "As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for You, O God" (Psalm 42:1 NASB). Solomon wrote, "I love them that love Me; and those that seek Me early shall find Me" (Proverbs 8:17).
Ask of Him
Ask, call out, search out His heart, look for Him, knock on His heart's door, pursuing intently Daddy God, and you will be amazed at how many secrets Abba Father has saved just for those who persistently "ask of Him"! Could it also be that one of the "great and mighty things" which would have never been known if we did not ask God are the many who will find God simply from noticing the desire of your heart seeking Abba Father's?
Fellowship, communion and intimacy with God are like going from the Outer Court to the Inner Court, and then to the Most Holy Place. (Photo via johnfehlen.com)
Father God is allowing us to demonstrate our pursuit of Him, which exhibits to the hurting and lost people that His heart founded creation upon relationship. People want a real genuine love relationship, and that is what God has placed into each of His own as a spiritual DNA that yearns until connected to our Creator and is not settled until our Maker becomes Abba Father! The Lord told us that as we come to Him He would not keep anything back from us!
Every person the Father gives Me eventually comes running to Me. And once that person is with Me, I hold on and don't let go.John 6:37 The Message Bible
Just ask of Him, and you can be sure He will surely show you great and mighty things that both we and the world need to know more of – Abba Father!
No comments:
Post a Comment