A Continual Pursuit

“The Lord says: “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught. Therefore once more I will astound these people with wonder upon wonder; the wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish.” Isaiah 29:13-14

So often we get caught up in doing things for all the wrong reasons, and I am just as guilty. This may be a tough read, this may step on your toes a little bit. I encourage you to read this with an open heart and mind to let God reveal to you any area in your life where your motives aren’t to bring glory to him and him alone.

In this passage in Isaiah, God points out how these people are saying all of the “right things” and doing all of the things that look good on the outside, but their hearts, their true inner self, doesn’t quite match up. If we’re all being honest, this is exactly what we do many times in our lives. It’s so easy to go to church every week, read your bible, hang out with your Christian friends, and do all the “Christian” things to simply keep up your outward image as being a Christian or just because it’s routine and what you’ve always done.

The way God calls us to live, is a life completely devoted to him. He doesn’t care about you just doing all of the right things, because you’re ultimately just doing that to make yourself look good. He wants everything you do to have a right heart motive, out of complete love and devotion to Him. The glory is supposed to go to Him, not us.

But it doesn’t end there, listen to this.

No matter how many times we mess up. No matter how many times we seek to bring attention to ourselves, rather than bring glory and honor to Him. No matter how many times we run after everything in this world, leaving God behind. God STILL pursues us, despite all this. He will never turn his back on you.

In this passage, after pointing out how those people’s hearts were far from Him, he goes on to say that he is going to astound them once again. He is going to bring their hearts back to Him. How amazing is that? God knew their motives, he knew they were just going through the motions with no intentions of worshiping and bringing glory to Him, yet He still chose to pursue them and astound them with His character so they were brought back in awe of who He is. And, amazingly, he does the exact same thing with us.

Are you just going through the motions in your life right now? When you go to church, read your bible, sing worship songs, why do you do it? Do you do it because it’s routine, because that’s what your Christian friends expect of you? Or do you do it because you are so in love with God, the creator of the universe, the God who has given you everything, and the Father who loves you despite everything you have done to hurt him?

#continualpursuit #glorytoHim