Dear Friends and Family of RRUMC,
Happy New Year!! I know that we are a few weeks into it already, but this is my first chance to wish you a happy and healthy and blessed 2020.
As I write this article on January 2, I am reflecting on what my coach sent me on New Year’s Eve at 6:30pm. I was at my in-laws with family all around getting ready to ring in the new year as he sent me a text and the message was so simple and yet so powerful.
His text simply read: “My hope for you in 2020 is a promise: ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added to you.’ Matthew 6:33. Prioritize God first in 2020 and be assured that God will provide for everything else.”
It’s so simple and yet so powerful. In order to seek something, it means that I am intentionally looking for it. I am going after whatever it is and chasing it down on purpose. I am not waiting for it to come to me because I am going after it. We are supposed to be doing that in our faith journey.
I am to seek, to chase, to go after, and to intentionally track it down. What I love most about that analogy is that if I am chasing after God, I am not chasing after anything else in life. I cannot be chasing two things at once, especially if they are leading in two different directions. If I chase one thing, then I am running away from the other. If I am chasing things down in this world that are not of God or for God, then I am essentially running from God. That is why my coach’s words are so simple and yet so profound. If I am chasing God, then all other things will fall into place. I don’t have to chase them if I am seeking God first. God will see to it that those things, if they are of God, are taken care of.
What will you be chasing this year, in 2020? Will you chase things that lead you away from God, or are you simply seeking God first and his righteousness?
I pray that you and I can chase, pursue, track down, and seek after God. God pursued you when he sent his one and only Son into the world, just a month ago, to make sure we are aware that we now have an Emmanuel, God with us.
God did his part to seek after us. May we all be bold enough in 2020 to seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, because if we do that, we don’t have to worry about the rest of it.
Chase God and not the “it,” whatever the “it” may be for you.
God bless you and may his peace be in your heart.
His, Rev. Daniel F. Bogre