12/08/2015

The PURSUIT of GOD... Advent Meditations 2015






The LORD JESUS came to pursue a people, a People for HIMSELF+.

HE+ pursues us from the streets to the dung heaps, from serving mammona to serving, serving, serving without choosing the better part, from the fisheries to the porkers --- HE+ pursues us.

Purposeful and persistent, The LORD JESUS didn't come here to lose what HE+ came for.

Like Asahel ( 2 Samuel 2), The LORD was purposeful in His+ pursuit, not veering to the left hand nor to the right once HE+ locks onto a person’s heart, in His+ eyesight.

HE+ pursues the heart of men like Paul. Paul --- previously called Saul --- was passionately intent on destroying GOD'S people. Paul mistakenly thought they were GOD'S enemies. 

However, in His+ Pursuit of Paul, The LORD soon showed Paul that he, Saul, was that enemy of GOD that he, Saul, was pursuing!

Our LORD was and IS capable of apprehending any person --- all the persons --- HE+ wants. HE+ knows exactly how to commandeer their attention.

HE+ came to build a PEOPLE, not a system.  

High church or low, formal or casual groups, Torah-keeping or SPIRIT-led, all systems are self-propagating. Insatiable, they draw away the People of GOD from The LORD

Siphoning away the very ones whom HE+ seeks out of every kindred, tongue, family, and nation, they consume them upon their own system.

These ones whom HE+ pursues, the religious systems confuse, putting the SYSTEM ahead of The LORD... although affirming all the while that serving the SYSTEM is "serving GOD." 

Thus the Pursued ones gradually falter and fail, growing deader and drier towards The LORD, becoming a people of a religious system.

However, Our LORD is a jealous GOD, zealous to complete the work HE+ was sent to do.

Thus, HE+ allows these religious systems of every stripe and color to exist for His+ purposes. 

HE+ uses them to sift His+ Pursued People, sifting, sifting, sifting them to find out who will remain true to HIM+ and who will not. HE+ discovers whose priority is found in HIM+... and whose is not.

The LORD JESUS does not need a religious system; a religious system put HIM+ to death. They all do. In one way or another, they adroitly mingle error with Truth and find some way to deny CHRIST before men.


HE+ came to Pursue a People who will separate themselves unto HIM+, not veering to the left hand nor to the right, a people who will hold lightly to the religious systems and tightly unto HIMSELF+.

If the system veers from The LORD, then His+ Pursued People veer FROM the SYSTEM; they cannot be moved.

His+ Pursued People follow JESUS, their first love, their top priority, their TOP MAN+.  

Let us pray:

O LORD JESUS, I have been so foolish. I have allowed systems of religion to have a hold of my heart. I have followed the associations of man more than my fellowship with THEE+.

Instead of focusing on THEE+, I have been utterly distracted with the workings of the religious systems.

I have allowed the religious systems to tell me what THOU+ hast said, instead of listening to Thy+ Words myself.  I know, O my SAVIOR, that Thy+ HOLY SPIRIT is capable of teaching me and leading me in the way which I should go.

Help me to pursue THEE+ like THOU+ hast pursued me... purposeful and persistent, in SPIRIT and in TRUTH.

For THOU+ only art HOLY; THOU+ only art the LORD. THOU+ only, O CHRIST, with the HOLY SPIRIT, art most High in the Glory of THE FATHER.

Amen 



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