“Grant me, Lord, to know and understand whether a man is first to pray to you for help or praise you, and whether he must know you before he can call you to his aid.” (Confessions, I.1.2)
Perhaps in our own Christian life and daily walk with God we, too, have struggled with this same question. And, perhaps it comes out this way for us: When I get up in the morning, what is the first thing I should do—pray for God’s help for the day, or begin in praise?
Augustine answers in own question this way: “Those who look for the Lord will cry out in praise to him.”Perhaps, then, it is not an either or choice, rather, seeking God’s help and praising God can be intertwined together.
The notion of knowing God and seeking Him is a concern for writers of the New Testament for their first Christian readers. For example, listen to the writer of the book of Hebrews: “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him” (Hebrews 11:6).
I think it is clear that faith in God and knowing God comes before praying and praising God. This makes sense because it means that earnest seeking after God and a personal knowing of God precedes some kind of faithful response to God because of the relationship.
Seeking earnestly after God and believing that He exists seems to be a hurdle for many. But our faithful life lived in covenant relationship with God is nurtured by prayer and praise only after we have earnestly sought after God and completed invested our destiny in believing that God exists.
Seeking earnestly after God sets the context for everything we do. "Seeking earnestly after" (ekzeteo in the Greek text) is important for the writer of Hebrews. It carries the idea of an agonized, intensive, ongoing search. It is used in 12:17, interestingly, to refer to Esau who sold his birthright, and then with an "earnest seeking after" he tried to seek the blessing again with tears but to no avail.
This lets me know that our intensive, ongoing search for God is a daily adventure. We put energy, initiative, devoted effort in our daily walk with God. The extent to which we invest in the search is the extent to which He makes himself known to us. There is no such thing as receving God by osmosis.
Think how each day is transformed from something mundane into an exciting spiritual journey when we are earnestly seeking God because we vigorously and exuberantly believe in Him! May our daily walk then be lived in the context of prayer and praise as we respond to God’s care and compassion.
In Christian love, Curtis
