All I want is Jesus

Nearly everyday the material world takes more hours to get into order than there are hours in the day

Following Jesus is not a following of the rules, it is a passion for Christ: to seek after Christ until He is found. At one level we find him easily. Just an honestly seeking heart will take us to Him but our relationship will go deeper than that all the days of our lives. Isaiah gives us an example of how God can lead a believer on. For 5 chapters he is more than a believer and follower of God he is a prophet with an unpopular message. He speaks it, although an unpleasant job, and does God’s will in delivering it. But then in chapter 6 God takes him to a new level of relationship with himself. God reveals a vision of himself that this earnest believer had not seen or known before and we get a glimpse of God taking a believer to a new level of relationship.

Amen.

Sometimes God withdraws that feeling of closeness to make us seek after him harder.

Deeper

God does not always seem close. We must not think that the cause of this seeming lack of closeness is always that we have done something which has grieved his Spirit and caused him to withdraw. This certainly could be the case and we must examine ourselves to make sure this is not so. We must confess any resultant revelations of sin so bringing restoration. However, as I said, this is not always the case; sometimes God withdraws that feeling of closeness to make us seek after him harder.

The first verse of our reading says, “All night long on my bed I looked for the one my heart loves.” It reminds us of the passion of seeking after the one we love. There is no sense that the relationship is in a slump and the “beloved”, as the Bible calls her, is trying to get back to where they were before. No, the love is just as strong as it ever was but they are parted and she wants more.

Do you so hunger after a deeper relationship with Jesus that you are prepared to spend extended periods seeking harder after Him?

Do you so hunger after a deeper relationship with Jesus that you are prepared to spend extended periods seeking harder after Him: all night in this case? Are you willing to shut yourself away in prayer and private worship? It is God who has loved us and brought us to Himself, through grace that we had nothing to do with, but it is in response to that love that we now in turn to Him in love. It is a maturing faith that says, “I must now pursue Christ.” It is not enough to say that if we ignore the feeling of longing for a deeper relationship for long enough it will go away, or we will feel better in the morning.

“All night long on my bed I looked for the one my heart loves; I looked for Him but did not find Him.” Seeking does not guarantee success. But the Beloved wants him. Her longing for her lover does not allow her to give up even after this lack of success.

How many of us give up after a prayer time because we have not felt we have got anywhere? She does not give up. Tired though she must be after tossing and turning through the night verse 2 tells us she says “I will get up now and go about the city, through it’s streets and squares; I will search for the one my heart loves.” It would be much more convenient to call her lover on the phone and ask him to come to her but her seeking takes her out into the uncomfortable places of the city. She seeks.

It has often been said that we should not mistake the signs of Gods presence as His presence. A good seeker looks for signs of what they are looking for. The signs for us as we seek after Jesus might be special worship times, words of encouragement, particular feelings or knowings. These are signs of His presence but they are not the Jesus that we pursue. We must keep searching beyond these. Our Beloved does not stop at the anything but continues searching through the city still looking for the lover. Great worship and special moments encourage us on our way but we have not arrived. “So I looked for him but did not find him”

Continue looking. Pursue him. Following after Christ is more than a great game. It is the very life of the growing Christian, as Colossians 3v4 says he is “Your very life”. You cannot go on without him any more than you can go without air to breath or water to drink.

Verse 3 continues the story, “The watchmen found me as they made their rounds in the city. “Have you seen the one my heart loves?””

I wonder what you think of people you have met who are uncompromisingly seeking after Jesus. Perhaps they have come along side you to see if you can point them to the “One their heart loves”. Do you see them as encouraging and seek to join with them with an attitude of ‘they are right and I must be encouraged to do the same?’ Do you find them faintly irritating, always banging on about more prayer, better worship, not compromising? Perhaps worse than this you wish they would shut up and leave the church. This can be a difficult one both for the seeker and the church. They are not wrong, and yet somehow they can be unsettling to others on their own journey which is, perhaps, moving on at a different pace.

The church is too comfortable and a challenge to seek harder can be unsettling.

The church is too comfortable and a challenge to seek harder can be unsettling, but if we react with a feeling of being judged, that we are not doing well enough and they are making us feel bad, then we are not listening to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit’s job is also to help us to pursue and find Jesus. Yes, it is true to say that their journey is not our journey but it would be wrong of us to say that we will not journey because we find them challenging.

And how do they feel? They can become accused of being smug and holier than thou when all they want is Jesus and others to seek Him alongside. We may say “yes, yes” to them because we know they are on the right track but do nothing. How upsetting is that?

Who are the watchmen in our modern day church? The prophets and leaders maybe. We ask the same question, “Have you seen Jesus?” We do not know from our passage whether the watchmen are able to point the Beloved on her way, but we do know that she continues searching because they are not her lover.

There have been a few people in my life who have been watchmen to me and who were able to point me on my way. Maybe you can think of a few who have influenced you most particularly. Once again though we must not stop the pursuit. If we stick with these people who see Jesus more clearly than we do then some of their lessons will rub off on us. We should accept them but we must still not get distracted and keep on pursuing Jesus. We must not say, “Hey this is a great church I will settle down here.” or “I can feel Jesus in the meetings, that is enough” When we get home we may find that He is gone—It was not us who brought Him to the meeting because we have not found him.

This is the greatest reason to keep up the pursuit. WE WILL FIND HIM! 

With or without their help, we don’t know, the beloved leaves the watchmen. Then verse 4 says, “Scarcely had I passed them when I found the one my heart loves.” This is the greatest reason to keep up the pursuit. WE WILL FIND HIM! We have promises in the Bible to guarantee it.

The verse goes on, “I held him and would not let him go till I had brought him to my mother’s house, to the room of the one who conceived me.” Where do we take Jesus when we have found him? What is our equivalent? We take Him to the church for others to find. If the house is empty we need Him there.

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This article © Linda Faber 2006-2009.