Running hard after God-Ps. 63:8

 

We have studied God's Word and His old love letters to the churches so much that some of us claim to know all about God. But now people like you and me around the world are beginning to hear a voice speak to them with persistent but piercing repetition in the stillness of the night:

'I'm not asking you how much you know about Me.
I want to ask you, 'Do you really know Me?
Do you really want Me?' '

I thought I did. At one time I thought I had achieved a good measure of success in the ministry. After all, I had preached in some of the largest churches in America. I was involved in international outreach efforts with great men of God. I went to Russia numerous times and helped start many churches there. I've done a lot of things for God…because I thought that was what I was supposed to do.

But on one autumn Sunday morning, something happened to change all that. It put all my ministerial accomplishments, credentials, and achievements in jeopardy. A long-time friend of mine who pastored a church in Houston, Texas, had asked me to speak at his church. I somehow sensed that destiny was waiting. Prior to his call, a hunger had been birthed in my heart that just wouldn't go away. The gnawing vacuum of emptiness in the midst of my accomplishments just got worse. I was in a frustrating funk, a divine depression of destiny. When he called I just sensed that something awaited us from God. Little did we know that we were approaching a divine appointment.

I am a fourth generation Spirit-filled Christian, three generations deep into ministry, but I must be honest with you: I was sick of church. I was just like most of the people we try to lure into our services every week. They won't come because they are sick of church too. But on the other hand, though most of the people who drive by our churches, live within sight of our steeples, and inhabit our meeting halls may be sick of church as well, they're also hungry for God.

'Somewhat Less Than Advertised'

You can't tell me they're not hungry for God when they wear crystals around their necks, lay down hundreds of dollars a day to listen to gurus, and call psychics to the tune of billions of dollars per year. They're hungry to hear from something that's beyond themselves, something they are not hearing in the Church of today. The bottom line is that people are sick of church because the Church has been somewhat less than what the Book advertised! People want to connect with a higher power! Their hunger drives them to everywhere but the Church. They search in pursuits of the flesh to try to feed the hunger that gnaws at their souls.

Ironically, as a minister I was suffering from the same hunger pangs as the people who had never met Jesus before! I just wasn't content to know about Jesus anymore. You can know all about presidents, royalties, and celebrities; you can know their eating habits, address, and marital status. But knowing about them doesn't imply intimacy. That doesn't mean you know them. In this information age, with tidbits of gossip passed from mouth to mouth, from paper to paper, and from person to person, it's possible to traffic in facts about someone without knowing him personally. Were you to overhear two people conversing about the latest calamity befalling some celebrity, or the latest victory he experienced, you might be led to think that they know that individual, when really all they know is facts about him! For too long the Church has been only conversant in the things of God. We talk techniques, but we don't talk with Him. That's the difference between knowing someone and knowing about him. Presidents, royalties, and celebrities-I may know many facts about them, but I don't really know them. If I ever met them in person, they would have to be introduced to me because mere knowledge about a person is not the same as an intimate friendship.

It's simply not enough to know about God. We have churches filled with people who can win Bible trivia contests but who don't know Him. I am afraid that some of us have been sidetracked or entangled by everything from prosperity to poverty, and we've become such an ingrown society of the self-righteous that our desires and our wants and those of the Holy Spirit are two different matters.

If we're not careful, we can become so interested in developing the 'cult of the comfortable' with our comfortable pastor, our comfortable church building, and our comfortable circle of friends, that we forget about the thousands of discontented, wounded, and dying people who pass by our comfortable church every day! I can't help but think that if we fail to even try to reach them with the gospel of Jesus Christ, then He sure wasted a lot of blood on Calvary. Now that makes me uncomfortable.

There had to be more. I was desperate for a God encounter (of the closest kind).

I returned home after speaking at my friend's church in Texas. The following Wednesday, as I was standing in the kitchen, the pastor called again. He said, 'Tommy, we've been friends for years now. And I don't know that I've ever asked anybody to come back for a second Sunday in a row…but would you come back here next Sunday too?' I agreed. We could tell that God was up to something. Was the pursuer now being pursued? Were we about to be apprehended by that which we ourselves were chasing?1

This second Sunday was even more intense. No one wanted to leave the building after the Sunday night service.

'What should we do?' my pastor friend asked.

We should have a prayer meeting on Monday night,' I said, 'with no other agenda. Let's gauge the hunger of the people and see what's happening.' Four hundred people showed up that Monday for the prayer meeting, and all we did was seek the face of God. Something was definitely going on. A minuscule crack was appearing in the brass heavens over the city of Houston. Collective hunger was crying for a corporate visitation.

I went back home and by Wednesday the pastor was on the phone again, saying, 'Tommy, can you come back again for Sunday?' I heard past his words and listened to his heart. He really was not interested in 'me' coming back. What he and I both wanted was God. He is a fellow God chaser and we were in hot pursuit. His church had fueled a flaming hunger in me. They too had been preparing for pursuit. There was a sense that we were close to 'catching' Him.

That's an interesting phrase, isn't it? Catching Him. Really, it's an impossible phrase. We can no more catch Him than the east can catch the west; they're too far removed from each other. It's like playing chase with my daughter. Often as she arrives home from a day of school, we play this little game that countless fathers and children play around the world. When she comes and tries to catch me, even with my hulking frame, I really don't have to run. I just artfully dodge this way and then that, and she can't even touch me, because a six-year-old can't catch an adult. But that's not really the purpose of the game, because a few minutes into it, she laughingly says, 'Oh daddy,' and it's at that moment that she captures my heart, if not my presence or body. And then I turn and she's no longer chasing me, but I'm chasing her, and I catch her and we tumble in the grass with hugs and kisses. The pursuer becomes the pursued. So can we catch Him? Not really, but we can catch His heart. David did. And if we catch His heart, then He turns and chases us. That's the beauty of being a God chaser. You're chasing the impossible, knowing it's possible.

This body of believers in Houston had two scheduled services- vices on Sundays. The first morning service started at 8:30, and the second one followed and began at 11.

When I returned for the third weekend, while in the hotel, I sensed a heavy anointing of some kind, a brooding of the Spirit, and I literally wept and trembled. (cont ...)