Pressing
On
With
Allen Bach and Clay O’Brien Cooper
As told to Dee Ann Burkes
“I press on toward the goal to win the prize for
which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:14
It’s All About Him
Clay: Sometimes people don’t understand what it means
to "walk with God." Our walk is really our faith and how it works in
our life. It is about what God can do in our life and how he can move through
us and work through us to help other people. Our walk results in closeness and
commitment to him. We can get caught up in thinking about how why we should
serve God or why we should choose to be a Christian. Sometimes we get to
thinking it is because of the good things it will
bring us - we will have lots of blessings, things will go right in our life,
etc. So we are doing it for the benefits, but that is really the wrong
perspective. That is part of it, it is a by-product of our relationship with
him, but it is really all about his love towards us. The Bible says we love him
because he first loved us (1 John
Allen: And along with that, it’s important to
understand that God’s heart isn’t like ours; our heart is like his. I don’t
know if somebody can understand what the heart of God is all about until they
are willing to sacrifice some of their heart to him. If we draw close to him,
he will draw close to us (James 4:8). And like you said, Clay, the by-product
of that is that he rewards those who diligently seek him. He is like a father
wanting to bless his children. As we seek after the heart of God, we start
realizing that he is awesome and he is all about us having awesome lives.
Clay: In Ephesians 3:18, Paul tells us the width,
length, height and depth of God’s love passes all
understanding, and by his power that is at work in us, he is able to do
immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine. That is who God is - full of love
and power, and by his Spirit, that is all available to us. Even though man fell
from his grace, he had a plan to bring us back. He reconciled us through is
son, Jesus Christ. It is what he did through Christ that we get the message:
It’s all about him and his love towards us. When we start meditating on that
and seeking God’s face, our desire for Jesus will come about in a more intimate
way -- what he did, who he is and what he means in our life. Then we can
acknowledge God in our life and understand that it really is all about him and
his love towards us.
Allen: To truly walk with God, we need to return his
love. Matthew
Clay: I look back in times of my life when I have had
such a refreshing, moving experience with God, when I just felt the real
presence of God and those are the times when I blocked everything out of my
life and focused completely on him. It was then that I would realize I was
nothing without him and that I have to come to him broken inside, humble and
totally focused on what he has done for me and that he does love me personally.
It is when we get focused on him that God can really begin to move and we can
feel his presence and power in our life. I have to keep focused that it is all
about him, not about me. There needs to be less of me and more of him in my
life, day by day.
Allen: During the hard times in my life, the most
crucial times, it was always a heart issue. It took me looking into myself and
analyzing my own heart to see what was wrong. Any time I did, I asked
repentance and started seeking God’s heart. I then had to give myself back over
to God and do it his way. When I started learning to take inventory of my own
heart is when things would turn around for me. A person develops that heart by
listening to and reading God’s word.
Clay: For me, I’ve just got to set my perspective
and keep going over the big picture and the real truth about life. The Bible
says, "What good does it do to gain the world, but to loose your
life?" (Matthew 16:26) I see people and read books about people where God
moved in their life so powerfully that there are so many lives affected by them
through their ministry. Reading about these people, I realize that is where
they were, they had brokenness about them so that the main goal of their whole
life was seeking Christ and desiring to know him more, to have a deeper
knowledge of what he did. You hear the story of God giving his son and how he
went to the cross to die for us and now sits at the right hand of the father.
It’s hard to imagine all that took place around that. It takes us committing
ourselves and pressing in with everything we’ve got that gives the Holy Spirit
the opportunity to minister that revelation to us. God transforms our life by
the power of the Holy Spirit, but that doesn’t just fall on us like cherries
off a tree. It takes us pressing in and coming to a place in our life where we
realize that we need and desire a relationship with Jesus more than anything
else in our life. That’s when we realize it really is all about him.
Allen: I write Proverbs 3:5-6 on every autograph sheet I sign. That verse says, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight." I’ve written it thousands of times, but it really is hard to live by the scripture. To trust him with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding is hard sometimes, but that’s what he wants us to do. Then it says "in all your ways acknowledge him." That means not just in one thing, but in everything in your life, your work, your friendships, marriage, business, etc. People think "God has better things to do than worry about me" or "God made me strong, I can take care of myself" or "I feel selfish asking God for anything." The thing they don’t understand is that God is like a parent that wants to help his children, he wants to bless them, but he needs his kids to give them the opportunity. He wants to be a part of our life; it is selfish not to let him in. I need God 24/7, not because I am a weak person, but because I’ve learned that he has the world at his beckoning call, but his number one priority is to take care of us and love us. Its when we learn more about who God is that we realize its not about us....it’s all about him.
Challenge from Allen and Clay: We would like
to challenge you to pick up the Bible and read the gospel of John. Read it by
the time our next article comes out, one chapter a day. No one is ever going to
know if you do it or not, but if you do, we would love to hear from you and see
if God doesn’t show himself as being real to you.
If you have any questions or a
response to this article, you can submit it to Allen and Clay via e-mail: claycooper@cactusropes.com or allenbach@cactusropes.com