Every time I turn on my computer and go to my yahoo page to check mail I met by a distracting barrage of garbage. It comes in the form catchy journalistic (laughable) lines that seek to steal my attention to who’s done what or who’s with who or who’s wearing what. Then as I seek to move on to ‘login’ I have to wade through the slough of despond because I do not have the right education to do what I have always dreamed of doing, ‘be more independent, make more money and be more successful’. And I am assured that I can be helped by a highly overrated and overpriced education in the virtual world. But my favorite is when I finally reach my ‘inbox’. I have to constantly be distracted by the sidebar advertisement boasting the chiseled and buff male models with their shirts off reminding me that without the latest supplement I am wasting away as a washed up forty something. I hate this barrage of garbage as it distracts me from the beauty of resting in who God is. I am like a hungry sheep that longs to look up to be fed, a thirsty soul that longs to be satisfied, and I know that my soul finds it’s greatest joy when I rest at the feet of him who has made me, redeemed me and sustains me. What distracts you from resting in who God is?
Distractions are only as powerful as the weakness of our steadfast pursuit of God. The barrage of garbage can only slow us down from resting in God when we are not steadfast in pursuit of God. Left to our weakness the barrage of garbage will destroy us and leave us in a heap of misery. But God! God has steadfastly sought us while we were groping in the barrage of garbage. He dose a work of grace in the heart of a believer that has sets us on a course of seeking steadfastly after him to find a joyful rest at his feet. Therefore the powers of the distractions have diminished in the light of God’s pursuit of us. He has enlivened and enlightened us to rest in him by his grace. No man can come out of or through the barrage of garbage to rest in him (Matthew 11:28-30) unless the Father who sent the Son draws him (John 6:44). If there is any steadfast pursuit of God it is the outworking of his pursuit of us. “God is always previous.” But when God is previous then there is a longing, a pursuit, a steadfast pursuit that longs for your souls rest in God in the midst of that which you know will not satisfy.
The Christian life is a steadfast pursuit of God. As the Psalmist says, “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” (Psalm 63:1 cf. 42:1-2). Is this steadfast pursuit of God only for the spiritually elite who hide themselves away from the distractions and the barrage of garbage? The church is so distracted from the truth of the gospel that she has purported a gospel void of the gospel provision, a glorious relationship with the All Glorious Triune God. As A.W. Tozer said, “The whole transaction of religious conversion has been made mechanical and spiritless. Faith may now be exercised without a jar to the moral life and without embarrassment to the Adamic ego. Christ may be “received” without creating any special love for him in the soul of the receiver. The man is “saved”, but he is not hungry nor thirsty after God. In fact he is specifically taught to be satisfied and is encouraged to be content with little.” God does not give himself to his own in small portions. He gives himself to his own as their Father, the Son and the Spirit. He is one God in three persons given to his children in the earth that they may know him intimately and deeply for all eternity. Regeneration, conversion, justification and adoption begin this work of God to bring his children near him to know him. Sanctification and glorification are descriptions of the enduring grace of God toward his children to bring them into the deep and abiding relationship with him in the knowledge of his glory forevermore. Therefore in this grace his children are given to the steadfast thirsty and hungry pursuit of God in the midst of distractions.
The apostle Paul says, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness of God that depends on faith – that I may know him…” (Philippians 3:8-10a). Our souls rest in the glory of who God is begins in the salvation he provides in Christ, but it is continued in our steadfast pursuit of him through grace as we count everything else a loss compared with the worth of knowing Christ. “The man who has God for his treasure has all things in One…Whatever he may lose he has actually lost nothing, for he now has it all in One, and he has it purely, legitimately and forever.” (A.W. Tozer). Rubbish is rubbish no matter the package it comes in. The barrage of garbage is a distraction but it does not hinder the powerful grace of God toward us to steadfastly seek to know God and the rest he promises our souls in the presence of his glory. Are you steadfastly seeking after God that you may be richly satisfied in Him?
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