Seeking Jesus with a deep desire for Him has tremendous results. Evidently, it is asking to be intimate with Him. I come across people with various needs and complaints. When I suggest a personal relationship with Him will suffice, they quickly say it is what they do. Yet, they speak of their incessant sorrows and inadequacies born from ill health. Having a personal relationship with Him and being unable to overcome dissatisfaction or disappointment do not go together; they cannot exist as one, simply because He strives and accomplishes for our well-being. He sits at the Father’s right hand for the single reason of helping us, which is the reason for Him to have all authority, power and rule.
Jesus is all we need to have. In Him everything is fulfilled. Often people forget that the Jesus who lived on the earth and the Jesus who is now in heaven are the same and has the same work ethic with same nature. Just because He is now in heaven doesn’t mean He works any different or is any different from what He was on earth. Remember, the Hebrew writer insisting Him as the same yesterday, today and forever? A believer or anyone for that matter can go to Him just as those people did when He was in the flesh. They can implore Him and by faith can receive from Him just as they did by touching Him. This is how unchanged He is. It is a wonderful thing to know, for it gives undying confidence and strength for life. If you can seek or follow Him for what He is and wishes, He will do all things for you. “And large crowds followed Him, and He healed them there” (Matt. 19:2).
There are many that are indulged in healings and miracles rather than the gospel that saves and that leads one to a personal relationship with Christ. Consequently, many are being fooled. People fail to realize they shouldn’t follow impure faith for supernatural help. These can follow them, i.e. if the latter are actually intimate with Him, and then receive from Him. Do not misunderstand. If you are intimate with Christ and pray for someone in need with remorse for their actions or acknowledging Christ or both, there is no doubt Christ interferes for them. Consider the above verse. Multitudes followed Him and He healed them there. They followed Him just as He desired, i.e. believing Him alone. They did it knowing what kind of person He was. Those that followed Him for healing were unlike those who followed Him for food. The latter were greedy while the former with genuine need. If anyone is in genuine need, his or her following Jesus is true and just. You can do just as they did and receive, be healed or be saved. He will do it, and only in the case of some He gives additional grace that they bear whatever is bothering them.
Seeking Jesus has its do’s and don’ts. It has nothing to do with what you offer Him materialistically. The things you give Him in material form are always second to that which you give Him in spirit. See Him say the following. “But woe to you Pharisees! For you pay tithe of mint and rue and every kind of garden herb, and yet disregard justice and the love of God; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others” (Luke 11:42). Don’t just assume that giving tithe of every kind is following Him. He couldn’t care any less for them. To follow Him is to regard justice and the love of God. One must be fair as He is in all matters, which include understanding and application of God’s law. One must regard the love that is of God. He or she must view it like Him no matter what. One can exercise anger or discipline, but the means to it must be God’s love so its end is love. Meaning, anger and discipline should not negate love.
The next principle to following Jesus is listening to Him closely, i.e. exercising obedience. “Moses said, THE LORD GOD WILL RAISE UP FOR YOU A PROPHET LIKE ME FROM YOUR BRETHREN; TO HIM YOU SHALL GIVE HEED to everything He says to you” (Acts 3:22). Now we are left with the wonderful person Jesus. If anyone desires to receive, be healed or be saved from any harming situation, he or she should be in the act of obedience. If you are in disobedience, you must first come into obedience confessing your wrongdoings. Jesus may keep your life until you cast away disobedience, but He will not heal you while you are in it. Sometimes you will need to take the yoke upon your shoulders when He personally asks you of it. This too is heeding Him. If you wish to be intimate with Him, you must accept the many things He leads you to from His nature, Word and acts.
An important act many miss, reject or disregard is praying to Jesus. There are those who deny Him as the Son of God claiming Him to be a mere man. Some others claiming Him as God’s Son say He is not to be worshipped. God bears them for a while so that He can show them the adverse effects of such claims. However, you ought not to be like them, except like the sanctified. “To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling, with all who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours” (1 Cor. 1:2). If one is a saint by God’s calling, he or she will no doubt call on the name of Jesus Christ. It is a sign of following Him and the foreground to experiencing Him just as those who followed Him when He was on earth. Evidently, Paul and all his companions did it when he says “their Lord and ours.”
Heeding Christ’s word inherently includes succeeding at it. Only then it is exercising obedience. One can pay attention to the details of the Word, but not rightly carry it out. Paul in the Spirit spells out how to do it. “That you keep the commandment without stain or reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Tim. 6:14). Unless a commandment is practiced with purity, it brings no pleasure to the Lord. A good number of church-goers do not do it. The only time a person stains a commandment is when his or her desires become bigger and significant than Jesus. Then he or she listens to their mind and to people who act as liaison to their thoughts. It is for this reason that many do not receive healing from Jesus. With impure obedience one cannot be intimate with Him. Therefore, though they seek Him for help, they do not see it coming, since insufficient faith and considerably less confidence in Him takes precedence. The worst effect of it is concluding He no longer performs healing as He once did. Then they begin to speak against Him and His nature which leads to God’s wrath. God breaks loose all troubles on them.
But if you are intimate with Him, you have His perpetual favor. You will come out of anything that troubles you. Furthermore, He does it to help His cause. “Who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God” (2 Cor. 1:4). You and I can go out and say our God in Christ is more than capable of helping all who wholly trust Him.