Have you ever put all of your heart into searching for something? Shauna and I had only been married for six months when I lost my wedding ring while playing beach volleyball. In what I think was a miraculous moment, I found my ring the next afternoon on the beach. Although it seemed impossible, I put everything I had into searching for that ring.

We know what it’s like to search earnestly for what we value most – a job, a spouse, a church, a new employee, the best schools for our kids, or a wedding ring.

Every single one of us is after something. We might be after pleasure or wealth or fame or power or achievement or comfort or being liked by everyone or protecting our children or making a difference in the world or romance or knowledge or being highly productive or a million other things. But we are all after something.

What is it that you are really going after in life? I use the word “really” because it won’t help us at all to respond to this question based on what we think our answer should be. I mean, what are you and I really after in life?

There is a phrase that shows up only one time in all of the Scriptures, yet the
Scriptures are filled with this phrase being lived out. It’s a description we find in the New Testament of someone who lived during the time of the Old Testament.

Acts 13:22: "After removing Saul, he made David their king. God testified concerning him: ‘I have found David son of Jesse, a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him to do.’"

What would it possibly look like to be a man or woman after God’s own heart? I think David shows us in Psalm 63:1 - “You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water.”

What are you earnestly seeking after? What would it look like to seek God above everything else? What are you thirsting and longing for?

What is it that God is after?

1 Samuel 13:14: But now your kingdom will not endure; the LORD has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him ruler of his people, because you have not kept the LORD’s command."

God is seeking after people who are seeking after Him.

Pete Greig, in his book Dirty Glory, writes this, “The pursuit of the presence of God has been, without exception or exaggeration, the prevailing passion and common purpose of all the saints in every generation since the time of Christ.”

May we collectively become a church community that is full of men and women after God’s own heart. Imagine how this will show up in our private moments with God and our public gatherings. Let’s direct our hearts and lives to seek God first, above everyone and everything else.

Seeking with you,
Ben