Recently I have been in a little spiritual slump and it comes during a time in my life that God has blessed me abundantly. My wife and I have recently purchased our first home and have moved closer to family. My wife will be starting her new job at the end of the month and I have just started my new job. In the busyness of packing, moving, and unpacking, I have spent barely any time in God’s word, very little time in prayer, and have done basically no writing. I realized my spiritual downfall and thought: “I need to get back to writing.” God showed me, however, that it was not writing I needed to get back to. Instead, it was Him I needed to get back to. I don’t need to write more. I need to spend more time with God and in His word so that when I do write it is His words I am writing and not mine. As I set out on this mission to spend more time with God, I was directed to Psalm 63 and the first verse really struck me. In verse 1 David says this: “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.” (ESV)
Part of my normal study of scripture is to read the passage I am looking at in multiple translations/versions. In the ESV Bible Psalm 63:1 states that David “earnestly” seeks God. Other versions replace the word “earnestly.” The word “earnestly” is present in the ESV, NIV, ASV, and NLT. In the HCSB version the word “earnestly” is replaced with “eagerly,” and in the NKJV you will find the word “early.” As I read this verse in the different translations God revealed to me the a combination of these three words is how I should learn to seek Him. God desires that we seek Him early, eagerly, and earnestly.
Seeking God Early
I am typically more of an evening person than a morning person. I do my best thinking, writing, and working later in the day rather than early in the morning. Unfortunately, God gets left out often because of this. I have a job that requires me to work late nights frequently, so sometimes when I arrive at home late at night I have no mental or physical energy to do anything productive. There are many days that I run out of energy or time before doing any bible study or writing. That is why God desires us to seek him early. Seeking God early does not necessarily mean waking up at 4 AM to do your bible study or reading. The word early here can be defined differently for each person’s situation. Early simply means before your day begins. Before you go in to work, or before you go to school, or before you set out to take care of your to-do list. Before our day begins, we must seek God. There is a multitude of ways we can accomplish this whether it is prayer, meditation, reading God’s word, journaling, listening to praise music, listening to a sermon or podcast, or reading a daily devotional. There are countless ways that we can seek God, but whichever way we choose, we must learn to make that a priority early in our day and seek God first.
Seeking God Eagerly
God not only wants us to seek Him early, He wants us to do it eagerly. The definition of the word eagerly usually contains words such as “strong desire” or “longing” or “enthusiastically.” That is how we should treat our time with God. When I hear the word eager my mind goes to Christmas Eve. As a child, I found it very difficult to sleep on Christmas Eve because my mind was racing with excitement and I was eager to open all of my gifts on Christmas morning. This is the same joy and excitement that we should feel about spending time with God. We should not view seeking God as an item on our to do list, but rather as a gift that we can’t wait to unwrap. Go to bed at night with excitement about getting up and spending time with God. What would our world look like if Christians couldn’t sleep at night because their heart was overflowing with excitement as they looked forward to their time in the morning with God? What if we couldn’t wait to get to work or school because God showed us something amazing and we just have to share it with others? This is the kind of joy and excitement God desires for us to have, and the eagerness that I pray He can fill us with.
Seeking God Earnestly
All three of these words fit together perfectly. As we learn to seek God earnestly we will naturally seek Him early and eagerly. Doing something earnestly means that you are serious, sincere, and/or that you have a deep feeling of conviction to do it. Deep down we all have a natural hunger and thirst for God, just as we hunger for food and thirst for water. Just as we do with our food and drink, often times we attempt to satisfy our hunger and quench our thirst with junk instead of the nutrients we really need. Junk food and drinks appear to satisfy our needs but do not truly give us what our body longs for. In Psalm 63 David says: “my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you.” This is the type of desire we must have for God. We should not seek God because it is a good thing to do or because a preacher told us we should. We must seek God because he satisfies a thirst in us that nothing else in this world is capable of doing. As we acknowledge this thirst we have for God, and turn to Him daily to quench this thirst, we will begin to seek Him in the way that He truly desires. We must learn to seek God not because it is something we “ought to do,” but because it is something we must do in order to fill our deep desire we have for Him. Earlier I mentioned that we should not view our time with God as an item on our to do list. This is important because our time with God is not a chore or a duty, but it is a need. Most people do not put eat, drink, or breathe on their daily to do lists. Why? Because it is implied that those three things need to be done in order for survival. Our body needs food, water, and oxygen, just as our soul needs God. So.. don’t view spending time with God as a daily assignment. View your time with God as a means to survival, as if your life depends on it. In an eternal sense it truly does. If we build this daily habit of turning to God to satisfy our soul’s thirst for Him then we will naturally begin to seek Him early, eagerly, and earnestly.
