pressing on

"Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD; his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth."
-Hosea 6:3

i've been thinking a lot about this verse, because it is becoming increasingly harder for me to come to God recently. i have pretty much no desire, and when i pray it is as if God is silent. and yet, i know that i have to continue to press on, to keep on going. there's no turning back. i know that i love God, but i definitely don't feel it right now. there's no passionate love relationship right now. its just bland-ness, silence, confusion, and frustration. i don't understand this life. one minute you can be awesome, and the next minute you have returned to the valley. there's nothing really all that constant in life. so, trying to have my love for him remain constant through changing circumstances and feelings is definitely a lifelong challenge.

i continue to pray that God would do whatever he needs to do with me in order that i may be closer to him. i trust him. he is the only one that can do it, and its not going to be my own strength that brings me closer to God. its tough right now, but i must press on to know the LORD. i must keep that goal in sight, so that although i might not desire it right now, i want to will to know God and to keep on going towards him. one thing that has stuck with me since last year's trial is this quote from c.s. lewis,

"[The enemy's] cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do [God's] will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys."

so, we press on...

"But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. "

philippians 3:7-14