GOD'S GREATEST ENEMIES

God’s Greatest Enemies Recently, I have been convicted about what Brian preached about on Sunday. He preached on pursuing God with everything you have. I live a good life. I take care of my family. I don’t drink. I don’t do drugs. I work hard. I do my best at treating people as Christ would have me treat them. There is nothing really big that I am doing to draw me away from God. But, am I pursuing God? Do I have a hunger for the things of God? Do I live an abundant life for Him? I can honestly say that I struggle with this. Most believers are struggling with the same issue. God wants us to hunger for Him and pursue Him with everything. He wants to be the center of our lives. He promises us that if we pursue Him, we will find Him. “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart (Jeremiah 29:13).” That promise is conditional though. God said that we will find Him when we seek Him with all our heart. So what things distract us from seeking God with “all our heart”? I propose that some of the things that keep us from pursuing God with all our hearts are the simple, good things in life. It’s not poison but steak. “It is not the banquet hall of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world.”1 A man once gave a great banquet and invited many. And at the time for the banquet he sent his servants to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’ But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them. Please have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come. (Luke 14:18-20) The greatest adversaries of God are sometimes not His enemies but instead His gifts to us. Jesus said in Luke 8:14 that some people hear the Word of God, and a desire of God is wakened in them, but then “as they go on their way they are choked out with worries and riches and pleasures of this life.” Jesus is not teaching us that the pleasures of this life and the desire to want these things is intrinsically bad, but anything that takes the place of our hunger for God can become a poisonous substitute for God. Hungry, I come to You, for I know You satisfy I am empty, but I know Your love does not run dry So I wait for You. So I wait for You. I’m falling on my knees, Offering all of me. Jesus, You’re all this heart is living for. Aaron Hodges 1. Piper, John. A Hunger for God. Pages 14-15.