Weekly Overview:
This life is marked by a single choice: who or what will we center our lives around? This choice takes each of us down a path of decisions that shape who we are, what we feel, who or what we value, and what we will have accomplished at the end of our days. To center our lives around ourselves or the things of this world leads only to destruction. But, to center our lives around meeting with God fills each moment with the glorious abundance of God’s love, provision, and transcendent peace. May your life be marked by union with your Creator as we explore what it means to center our lives around meeting with God this week.
Scripture:“How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you.” Psalm 139:17-18
Devotional:
I used to view my time spent in secret with my heavenly Father as something for which I needed to drum up desire. I pictured God waiting for me in a room, ready to bless me for sure, but I felt the weight of choosing him was all on my shoulders. The truth of God’s heart is far from my previous misconceptions.
We serve a God who constantly, sweetly, and powerfully pursues us. Revelation 3:20 says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” God is knocking on the door of your heart right now. With every gentle fall breeze that moves sweetly across your face, with every beautiful sunrise, with every breathtaking star in the sky, God is declaring his love for you.
God pursues us in any and every way he can. The greatest desire of his heart is for communion with his people. So it’s in knowing and receiving his overwhelming affections for us that our hearts will be stirred to meet with him. It’s in taking time to notice his constant pursuit of us that we will naturally begin to center our lives around meeting with our heavenly Father.
You see, the reason we should center our lives around meeting with God is because at the center of his heart is a deep, insatiable longing to meet with us. The Creator of the universe deeply longs to continually, consistently meet with you. God, who is Almighty, all-knowing, filled with grace, and is the fulfillment of perfect love, longs to be known by you. We are created to be drawn by the desire of our Creator. We are made to be known and to know our heavenly Father. We are created to walk with him every moment of every day. It’s not that we “should” center our lives around meeting with God, it’s that we were created to and must.
Song of Solomon 7:10 says, “I am my beloved’s, and his desire is for me.” May you grow in the awareness of God’s desire for you today. May you come to know yourself as “my beloved’s.” May your life be marked by the natural response to your Creator’s unending pursuit of you. And may you center your life around meeting with God, not out of obligation, but because he so desperately longs to meet with you.
Guided Prayer:
1. Meditate on God’s desire to meet with you.
“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” Revelation 3:20
“You did not choose me, but I chose you.” John 15:16
2. What does it mean for your life that your loving Creator continually pursues you? What would it be like to live a life marked by responding to God’s love in every moment?
3. Take time to meet with God. Ask him how he feels about you. Ask him to reveal his desire for you. Respond to his affections with your own. Tell him honestly how you feel.
“I am my beloved’s, and his desire is for me.” Song of Solomon 7:10
“How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you.” Psalm 139:17-18
All you have is today. Centering your life around meeting with God is all about the choices you make today. The way you choose to live right now will impact your days to come. Don’t worry about your track record. Don’t concern yourself with the idea of meeting with Jesus every day for the rest of your life. Simply choose to enjoy him today. “Sufficient for the day is its own trouble” (Matthew 6:34).
Extended Reading: Psalm 139
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