Ezra. Funny how so many of us Christians claim to love God and put Him first yet we have so little information (or even the desire) to really investigate who these people in the bible were. We want the easy God, the one who just gives us the security of heaven or gifts or healing or loving companionship, yet God repeatedly asks us to seek Him with all of our hearts. Following God must be about God, and not one's self. Seeking is a serious endeavor. To seek out a person's character you would want to exhaust every possible way of knowing them: spending time with them, reading about them, asking others about them, observing them, etc. So who is Ezra? Do you know?
From my brief research I found that Ezra was a scribe during Israel's captivity in Babylon.
However, the most outstanding description of Ezra is found in Ezra 7:10 (which is always interesting to read someone write about themselves, but nonetheless).
"For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the Law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach statutes and ordinances in Israel." -Ezra 7:10
Ezra was a someone who prepared. He prepared his heart. He prepared his heart to seek.
I didn't even know seeking required prior preparation in the heart. I just thought it was a decision, but according to Ezra, it was a process that had a beginning, a middle, and an end goal. I suppose I find myself most in the beginning stage of seeking God, always with the idea, cradling it, polishing it, saying it, but then leaving it behind when I walk out the front door. The middle is the most difficult part of seeking God. It is the consistency that makes the bulk of seeking.
Lately I've been trying to get to morning prayer at my church at 5 or 6am. The first week I did ok, I got up and I went, disheveled and messy-haired with my blanket wrapped around me. The following week I missed one morning because I slept in, and that made it just a cinch easier to skip the following morning as well. I had heard my alarm go off, but the heaviness of sleep was holding me hostage to my bed, and my body was trapping my spirit inside like a prison. I was very aware that I should get up because this was something I could fight and win, but I chose not to. It wasn't that I felt condemned afterwards, or even guilty, but I felt defeated as if I had given up on a fight without having fully attempted to resist it. Perhaps it is because I know I can resist it, and that knowledge will lead to more responsibility, which would lead to a fear of being incapable of more things to work on maintaining. However, this is what I would consider the "middle" portion of seeking God. It's consistency, determination, and all out war cries against everything that will try to hold you back from seeking. For me, the praying is not so much the reason I wake up at 5am to drive to my church, but it is the intentional commitment I am making to seek God. I could very well pray at home, or even pray at a later time in the day at church, I can always come before God in prayer, but to make up my mind that I want to seek Him by committing to Him my early mornings (something very precious to me- aka: sleep) is what I know to be a genuine and earnest sacrifice as my offering to God. He doesn't need anything from me, but I need Him. And just as Able recognized that God was only interested in the heart rather than mere shows of affection (as his brother Cain did), so I must offer what is most dear to my heart to God. These kinds of "real gifts" are difficult to give, because they peel away from myself, my "me", and it feels like a loss. When I give things of mine away to people I usually give what I do not want anymore or something that I don't need, however to give something that I know I want and need, that is a genuine heart sacrifice. God only wants those very things that we want so badly to keep because the more of ourselves we give to Him the more of Him we get in return.
It may seem insignificant, but waking up early consistently is one of the most genuine ways I can say "I am seeking You" to God, especially when it kills my eyelids and breathing becomes a traitor.
GET UP.
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