Seek first the Kingdom

There’s a beautiful verse in Isaiah 26:8 that says, "Yes, Lord, walking in the way of Your truth we wait eagerly for You, for Your name and Your renown are the desire of our souls." It got me thinking that what our souls desire our souls pursue. So, in the core of your being, what do you desire right now, because that is the thing you will be pursuing.

Psychologists tell us that for emotional health (and we can add spiritual health), there are 3 basic needs that need to be satisfied: the need to be loved, the need to feel secure, and the need to feel significant. It’s not difficult to see how we spend most of our lives trying to satisfy these basic needs. We’ll do whatever it takes to win peoples love and affection. We’ll also do whatever it takes to build a safe and secure life. And finally, we want to be significant. We want to feel worth something. We want to be noticed, recognised and highly thought of. And unfortunately fifteen minutes of fame won’t satisfy this basic need. Why? Because feeling significant isn’t something we earn, it is something we possess when we know our lives count for something or someone.

So when Jesus showed up on the scene 2000 years ago he found a group of people with those exact same longings and needs – they wanted to feel loved, secure and significant. So what did Jesus say to them? He said, ‘SEEK FIRST THE KINGDOM’, and all that other stuff, all those other needs, they will be satisfied as well. And you can imagine these unschooled fisherman doing the maths, and asking the question, ‘How will seeking first YOUR kingdom satisfy OUR needs?’ In other words, ‘what’s in it for us?’ But the answer is pretty simple: in seeking first God’s kingdom you can’t help but encounter the King - the one who is the source of all love, the one who holds us securely in his hands and the one who gives meaning and purpose to our lives.

And because this is what the King is like, when we are in his presence (at home with him) all these needs and desires are satisfied. The problem is that we all have a strange tendency to wander off from ‘home’, and as soon as we wander away we have to find alternative ways to satisfying those basic needs. So we unconsciously bring those needs to other people and places asking them to love us, to make us feel safe, and to make us feel significant. We turn to sex, work, people and all sorts of other addictions in a desperate attempt to satisfy these needs that drive us. But all along, there is a place called home (where God lives) where all those needs will be fully met in the perfect love of a perfect Father.

And this is what I feel God has been saying to me in the last few days: “Come home. Stop looking to everyone else to tell you that you are ok. Start listening to me, and tune in to the voice of a proud Father saying ‘This is my Son, whom I love, with him I’m well pleased.’” And in stilling myself to hear those words, I know I’ll feel the love, security and significance that my soul desires.

It’s one of the beautiful paradoxes in the Christian life, that as soon as we begin to live for sake of another (Jesus), our own needs are met. It’s only when our souls desire his name and fame (or renown) above our own that we find peace and contentment. Jesus put it this way: ‘Whoever wants to find his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.’

Augustine once said: 'Our souls are restless until they rest in God.' So here’s to seeking first God’s kingdom, and finding the rest that our souls have been craving our whole lives.