Running after God

UV 855/10,000 Running after God “ But thou, O man of God, flee these things; and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness.” I Timothy 6 v 11 We should look to the God standard and not the gold standard. As people of God, we must flee from the love of money. Today, money dominates virtually every sphere of life. Newspapers who held their front page sacrosanct and reserved for headlines, now routinely sell the premium space for more revenue. This is the reason Jesus hinted that only money competes with God to occupy the space in our hearts: “ You cannot serve two masters at the same time: God and Mammon.” This uni-verse exhorts us to flee or literally make hast in running away from the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life. We need to put a distance between us and these sources of sin. In our thoughts, our conversations and our relationships we should not allow these things to ever come near again. The image that comes to our mind is that of the young Joseph running away from the adulterous wife of Potiphar. It is not enough to flee away from what is declared ungodly, but it is necessary to chase with passion and perseverance the things that God approves. Once we have taken our focus off these things ( of the world), we should focus and run after righteousness or the desire to be upright and to do the things the Lord has commanded us to do and to avoid the things He has asked us to avoid. We should aim and strive to be godly or to be perfect as the Father is. It implies that we should do our best to imitate Christ in our daily lives. We must strengthen our faith and exercise it to perceive the glory of God in the area we are facing challenges in our lives. As St Paul wrote, “ the greatest of these is love.” We need to consciously increase in the qualities of love: of patience, meekness, kindness, perseverance and hope. It is not a one time fleeing away or running after. But we should check every day and every moment whether we are running away from the negatives or passions of men and running after the passions of God. This is what qualifies a person to be called a man of God. The Lord once affirmed me by saying, “ You are running after me, running for me and running with me.” Truly we cannot run for God unless we also run after Him and run with Him. Jesus is the greatest spiritual coach who ran before us setting an example of what we should follow. He runs ahead of us and He runs with us, egging us on to the finish line, however tired or discouraged or weary we are in our pursuit. This is the reason, scripture portrays life as a race and a fight. We cannot give up in between but fight to the end , run to the finishing line. Prateep V Philip