January 5th Devotional

Dear NEGST team,

Do you begin and end your day with prayer? It is the perfect opportunity to communicate with God to seek direction for the day in the morning and forgiveness at the end of the day. With 13 days to departure, I would encourage you to journal today on prayer, your direct line to God. How does prayer shape your personal, family, spiritual, educational, and business lives.

JANUARY 5
Determine to Find Him

My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O LORD; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up. —Psalm 5:3

I want deliberately to encourage this mighty longing after God. The lack of it has brought us to our present low estate. The stiff and wooden quality about our religious lives is a result of our lack of holy desire. Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people. He waits to be wanted. Too bad that with many of us He waits so long, so very long, in vain.

Every age has its own characteristics. Right now we are in an age of religious complexity. The simplicity which is in Christ is rarely found among us. In its stead are programs, methods, organizations and a world of nervous activities which occupy time and attention but can never satisfy the longing of the heart. The shallowness of our inner experience, the hollowness of our worship, and that servile imitation of the world which marks our promotional methods all testify that we, in this day, know God only imperfectly, and the peace of God scarcely at all.
If we would find God amid all the religious externals, we must first determine to find Him, and then proceed in the way of simplicity.

Tozer on the Almighty God: A 366-Day Devotional.