Matthew Costner

Continuing to look at this whole idea of God speaking, I can’t help but think about how hard it is for me to be discipline myself to spend time with God. I mean, I feel like I continually want to hear God speak or see some miraculous sign from God reminding me that He is still there, but during my listening for God my mind seems to always wander onto something I need to do. Or, the inevitable for me, the phone rings or I get a text from a friend.

Thinking about it now, I truly believe that if I was going to sit down and spend 30 good contemplative/conversational minutes with the Lord it would take me over an hour to get those 30 good minutes. Ashamedly, I can’t help but admit that as much as I want to hear the Lord and let God remind me of His presence I seem to have such a hard time acknowledging His presence by focusing on Him much at all during the week. The truth though is that we all make and can make time for things we want to make time for. In other words when we really want to do something we typically do it, and for me when I get my mind on something, nothing is going to stop me.

I don’t want to admit that though when it comes to talking about my personal time with God. Don’t get me wrong, I read the Scriptures fairly often, but I often find myself reading them like I would any other book not fully grasping the message being said. For me to honestly pursue God I need to read and read intentionally with an open mind and heart for me to learn more about God and for the chance that God just may speak.

The greatest compliment I think anyone could tell me is that I am like King David in the Bible “a man after God’s own heart!” However, I don’t think any of us can claim we truly are after God’s own heart or truly want to be close to God and hear God speak if we don’t pursue Him daily! I think the old warn out cliché of “our actions speak louder than our words” is appropriate here, for we can say we love the Lord but do we really love Him if we aren’t pursuing him?

Not too long ago I was dating a girl who wasn’t as in to me as I was in to her, to put it mildly. However, one thing is true about the two of us, and I think she would agree, is that she knew I was digging her and wanting more for the two of us because I constantly wanted to have long deep conversations, and spend time with her when we could. I didn’t just want to talk on occasion, I wanted to talk daily, and for each time to be meaningful! I truly wanted to get to know her, and I wanted her to get to know me and since she didn’t live in Nashville the best way for us to know each other was over the phone.

You know, I think God is like that. I truly believe that God’s presence is with us, but for us to get to know God we must pursue Him daily over the phone, meaning through prayer. During this pursuit God will reveal Himself to us. James 4:7 says it like this, “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.”

Most of us know there is a God, or at least wants to believe there is a God out there, but our relationship with God does not grow out of this head knowledge. That may be how we get started in our pursuit, but our relationship with God grows out of our experience, experience we can only have when we begin diligently pursuing the Lord. The same kind of pursuit as we would give for the people in the world we are trying to date or trying to be married to, the kind of pursuit that nothing is going to stop us from getting to know God better.

Oh how I want this for my life, and I want this for you all too. Let’s star,t now, pursuing God together and see what happens and what God may say. I know that through encouraging each other we will be more focused in our pursuit. God is going to speak, and I can’t wait to hear your stories when He does!