THE QUEST FOR GOD (Part 4).
Psalm 63. Verses 8-10 read:
“My soul followeth hard after thee: thy right hand upholdeth me. But those that seek my soul, to destroy it, shall go into the lower parts of the earth. They shall fall by the sword: they shall be a portion for foxes.”
In today’s text, David says that his soul follows hard after the Lord. The question is, what does it mean to follow hard after the Lord. First of all, to follow means to stay behind a leader, observe his movement, and step where he steps. In our quest for God, we must not arrogate to ourselves the lead position: that is a recipe for failure. Rather, in all humility, we must be followers who look up to none else than God, as our leader. It is wisdom to relinquish the leadership of our lives to the all-knowing and all-powerful God.
Secondly, to follow hard is to maintain focus on the lead person. God’s ways are entirely different from man’s ways. Keeping God’s ways demand, maintaining our focus on him. A moment of loss of concentration could be costly or disastrous. Hard followers are good students of the discipline of focus. Hard followers are also full of drive. They derive inner motivation to forge on from God who leads them. This drive makes them unrelenting and uncompromising in their pursuit and are unperturbed by oppositions. They count on divine grace to move on until they reach their God-ordained goal.
Hard followers are always where their leader, in this case God, is because God upholds them through thick and thin. Hard followers stay beyond the reach of evil and the evil men who pursue their souls. Their pursuers get destroyed whilst they progress unharmed. This situation played out beautifully as the children of Israel crossed the Red Sea under the leadership of the Lord. When Egypt pursued them through the sea, the same protective wall of water for Israel crushed upon the Egyptians and drowned them to death in the sea. Ironically, the path of Israel’s miracle became the path of destruction for Egypt.
When our primary objective is to follow hard after the Lord, those who pursue us with evil intentions are destroyed by the situations we prevail over. Let us remain hard followers of God by:
- Surrendering the leadership of our lives to God.
- Keeping our focus on God.
- Having inner motivation that is inspired by God.
Hard followers of God are winners in life. SHALOM 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏