“Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me and I will hear you. You will seek Me and find Me, when you seek Me with all your heart” – Jeremiah 29:12-13.

WHILE WE ARE saved and continue to persevere by grace unto the end, we may still walk poorly in such grace; that God shall complete the work that He has commenced in our lives, we might still walk at a distance from Him. Though we have been called and baptised into our Lord and Saviour’s death and resurrection, thus having access to all the promises in God through Him, we may still be lazy in our exploration of all the unsearchable riches in Christ.

We may know seasons where the Holy Spirit works powerfully in our lives; our spiritual senses are heightened and we are revived to pursue God in an intimate manner, but then over a short or long duration we may sometimes find ourselves waxing cold in our love towards Him. The enemy hates us no more than when we are walking wholeheartedly with God and it will always be his endeavour to throw us off the ‘straight and narrow’ to a more comfortable course that is justifiable to our minds.

Have we not known seasons of desperate prayer where God becomes our all and everything else lies secondary? We have been constant in prayer and have lived in the realm, that without such closeness with God, life becomes monotonous and wearying. Nothing else fulfils us than when we are in the presence of God and no substitute will slake this longing thirst in our hearts.

How we conduct our lives determines the atmosphere of prayer, whether weak or strong; if we lag behind in following Christ our prayer life will suffer; if the world attracts us, the desire for prayer will decrease. We may be reminded and strongly prompted to pray and watch but until we get down to it we shall not pray, we shall not watch and wait. This is where the enemy will employ his most subtle methods; distractions will come to deter us from seeking God with all our hearts until we lie content to just fulfilling our duty in prayer – and this is the danger that we need to be on guard against; no exercise should be a duty but rather, the inevitable breathings of longing after God – “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.” (Psalm 63:1)

“I will be found of you when you seek Me with all of your heart” Sometimes God will seem distant until He reveals Himself to the desperate heart. We have only to see the prayerlessness that prevails in our churches  and much of the reason as to why we don’t see revival is because of the lack of seeking God – “The reason as to why we don’t have revival is because we are content to live without it” – Leonard Ravenhill. God will not do our seeking for us. He will withdraw the blessedness of His presence; we will lose our peace and assurance until we are at the pace (as well as the place) God desires for us to walk with Him. To seek Him with all of our hearts is to place every other desirable object (that is good in nature) secondary to pursuing God and until we commit ourselves to this road we shall never know this sweet communion. I know there are those who will dispute this and will charge me with living by the works of the Law, but to such people I would say: live poorly in the grace God has bestowed upon you; be lazy in your prayer life and see how the life of God suffers in your soul. Is it not every time we commit ourselves to seeking the face of God, we have known that blessedness of Him being near? Have we not said to ourselves, when after all other loves (idols) have been torn down from our hearts to be subsequently flooded with the conscious presence and influence of the Holy Spirit, “Why did I leave it for so long; how did my heart ever become so cold and my mind so dull?”

Grace is there to support us and aid us even in our coldness. God loves honesty; if we but draw near to Him and say, “Lord, my prayers are cold, my heart is so hardened, I need you to breathe Your life into me again” God is more willing than our asking of Him to revive us.

Will we pray; will we seek God’s face with such unshakable persistence until He answers us? Will we keep on knocking until the door is opened: “God give me new life, or I die!”? God give us grace to arrive there if we are not. This is desperate prayer, earnestness to the point of anguish, for without God being very near to us, life is absolutely nothing without Him. “…Your steadfast love is better than life…” (Psalm 63:3).