Being Sought First, the Kingdom of God

Our faith is, more often than not, more both/and than either/or. Man’s responsibility or God’s sovereignty? Yes. Mourning or dancing? Yes. Living or dying? Yes. Our temptation in light of this is always to push for one side or the other. When we affirm man’s responsibility, some hear a denial of God’s sovereignty and vice versa. When we see someone mourning, we insist that they dance and vice versa. We ought to dance, even as we ought to mourn. And if we do it right, we find ourselves mourning while we dance and dancing while we mourn.

In like manner, we are called by Jesus Himself to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. This is not, contra too many to name, an embracing of legalism. This is not Jesus speaking during some bootstrap phase of His ministry that would later fade into a kinder, gentler message of unconditional acceptance. He is unequivocally calling us to pursue Him and to pursue obedience to Him. He leaves no wiggle room. And so we must. We are called to a single-minded passion that pursues obedience to the King, that hungers for entrance into the kingdom. We are called to lay aside every hindrance, to scale the walls, to take the kingdom by storm. We are called to run the race that is set before us—and to not grow weary in doing good. Keep reading