May 13, 2025 Devo

May 13th, 2025

Walking Through the Psalms
But may all who search for you be filled with joy and gladness in you. May those who love your salvation repeatedly shout, “The LORD is great!” – Psalm 40:16 (NLT)
“The Joy Is in the Chase!”

One of the reminders I frequently give young couples getting married is to keep the courtship alive. The reason is that the joy is in the chase! When you’re actively courting someone, you work hard to get to know them. You discover all you can. You work hard at trying to please them. You make it a priority to be with them. That “chase” fans your love into a flame and makes your heart overflow with joy.
But often, after we get married, we stop chasing. We take our relationship for granted. We stop trying to explore who they are and get to know them. We stop working to celebrate and please them. And we begin to focus on what we’re getting out of the relationship rather than what we’re putting into it. It’s no wonder many marriages begin to lose their spark and their joy.
We do the same thing with God. The joy is in chasing Him. David’s words in our verse today remind us of this. “May all who search for you be filled with joy and gladness in you.” Those words echo the words spoken by God in Jeremiah 29:13: “You will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your hearts.” Many times we get “comfortable” with God like we get comfortable with our spouse. We read the Bible, but we’re not reading it with a pursuing heart to really hear what God might want to say to us. When we pray, it’s not passionate sharing or honest vulnerability, it’s simply talking at God. And just like with our spouse, we stop chasing God to discover and celebrate all that He is. We begin to only seek Him to see what we can get from Him.
I want to suggest to you today that if your marriage seems blah, it’s probably because you’ve just gotten comfortable and stopped really pursuing each other. And I want to suggest that if you’re spiritual life seems dry and you find yourself growing bored with God’s Word or your time of prayer, it’s because you’ve stopped searching. Because when you search for God with all your heart, that’s when you find out how amazing He truly is. The joy is in the chase. That’s God’s Word for you today.