PURSUING HARDLY ABOUT THE HOLY GOD(Philippians 3:2-16)Our theme for the week of prayer was, “Pursuing Hardly After the Holy God.” Last week we focused on the Holy God. Today we focus on "going hard." The phrase is adapted from A. W. Tozer, whose little book, The Search for God, has a chapter titled “Intensely Following God.” Tozer wrote this book in 1948 but if anything it is more relevant today. After showing how Moses, David, Paul, and all the great hymn writers thirsted for more of God, he writes how tragic it is that we, in these dark days, have had our search done for us by our teachers. It's all about the initial act of 'accepting' Christ... and thereafter we are not required to desire any further revelation of God to our souls. We have become trapped in the coils of a spurious logic that insists that if we have found it we no longer need to look for it. This is set before us as the final word in orthodoxy, and it is taken for granted that no Bible-educated Christian has ever believed otherwise. Thus the entire testimony of the worshiping, seeking, and singing Church on this subject is starkly set aside. The experimental theology of the heart of a great army of fragrant saints is rejected in favor of a complacent interpretation of Scripture that would certainly have sounded strange to an Augustine, a Rutherford, or a Brainerd (pp. 16-17). Thus Tozer rejected the false logic that says: if you have found God in Christ you no longer need to look for him. I reject that too. And I join Tozer in replacing it with these words: "To have found God and yet pursue Him is the paradox of the soul's love, despised indeed by the religionist who is too easily satisfied, but justified in happy experience by the children of fire." heart" (p. 15). Or as St. Bernard sang: We taste Thee, O Thou living Bread, And we long to feast upon Thee: We drink of Thee, the Source And we thirst for Thee to satiate our souls. Matthew Henry has reason: "Wherever there is true grace there is a desire for more grace. When Paul said, “Do not be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Holy Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18), his purpose was to make all believers devoted to God. The Spirit is not mortal, it is addictive. The proof that you have it is that you want more.