JEREMIAH 29:11–13 – For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. 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..

THEME OF THE DAY. HOW INTENSE IS OUR DESIRE? It should not be difficult to see the direction today’s nugget theme takes if we read the opening scripture. It is about how intense is our desire to know the Lord, to seek Him in a living relationship of spiritual reality. Another portion of scripture along these lines is found in the Minor Prophet book of Hosea – Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD; his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth (Hosea 6:3). As we probe this most important area of spiritual truth, we need to be careful. It is very easy to say, “I want to know the Lord.” Get in a small group of believers and ask the question, “Do all of you want to know the Lord?”. You will not get an answer like, “No, not really. I am going to heaven. That is enough. I am all set.” But then follow up with the question, “Well, how intense is your pursuit of knowing the Lord?” Now the group talk may turn into a time of confession of spiritual neglect and laziness. Make sure our professed desire to know the Lord is evidenced by diligent pursuit to know the Lord. King Solomon gives good advice here. He wrote, “The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied” (Proverbs 13:4). Always remember how easily self-deceived we are by our never reliable heart (Jeremiah 17:9). True desire is only true by diligent pursuit of what or in our case today “who” of the desire. And when it comes to the desire to know the Lord, it cannot be half-hearted. It must be as intense as what we are about to read in an ancient story from the life of the Greek philosopher, Socrates.

A young man asked Socrates the secret to success. Socrates told the young man to meet him near the river the next morning. They met. Socrates asked the young man to walk with him towards the river. When the water got up to their neck, Socrates took the young man by surprise and ducked him into the water. The boy struggled to get out but Socrates was strong and kept him there until the boy started turning blue. Socrates pulled his head out of the water and the first thing the young man did was to gasp and take a deep breath of air. Socrates asked, ‘What did you want the most when you were there?” The boy replied, “Air.” Socrates said, “That is the secret to success. When you want success as badly as you wanted the air, then you will get it.”

Apply the principle in our desire for and pursuit of the Lord Jesus. Are we as intense as the man was for air? Think about it.

PRAYER: “Father, please help me to not only profess I want to know You but prove my sincerity by diligent pursuit of knowing You.”

QUOTE: “To say, ‘I want to know the Lord’, yet give half-hearted effort to do so is both self-deception and hypocrisy.”