SEEKING GOD

Seek me with all of your heart... This is God’s invitation to us along with the promise that in seeking we will find Him.

What does it means to seek God with “all of our heart?” There is one sense in which we are incapable of that. I cannot seek God so fully that, by myself, I can find Him. Seeking is not a “work” that God rewards if we do it good enough. Unless God graciously chooses to reveal Himself, no one can find Him. The Good News of Christian Faith is that, not only has God chosen to reveal Himself, God has both revealed Himself perfectly in Jesus Christ and — through the death and resurrection of Jesus — removed every barrier that would get in the way of having intimacy with Him.

And yet, as part of this revelation, we have the invitation-exhortation: Seek me with all of your heart. What is it that God is wanting us to do? Some Christians want to argue “nothing,” that Jesus has done everything and there is nothing for us to do but “accept” what He has done — that anything else is “adding works.” While it is true that Jesus has done everything necessary to save unto God a people for Himself, being one of God’s people means responding to God. That is why God created us — to live in response to Him, and one way we respond to God is to seek Him.

So again, what does this mean? Is “seeking” merely something we initially do to “find God” (but once having "found God," do we put “seeking” in the “been there, done that” category)? I hope the question, put that way, shows the folly of such a thought.

Is seeking God something we primarily do in times of crisis, when we become aware that we need God in some fresh and powerful way? Who would want to say that God only desires sporadic attention from His people?

Is seeking God something we do only at “ordered” times of the day? The Lord used “ordered prayer” (The Liturgy of the Hours) to renew my life in Him, but learning the discipline of ordered prayer — having consistent “devotions” or “quiet time” in Evangelicalese — is meant to provide a foundation for ongoing prayer and trust. Seeking God is not limited to our specific but time-limited spiritual exercises.

So, how do we seek God with all of our hearts? I would like to offer that it is an attitude we bring to every situation of every day. When we are perplexed (over relationships, finances, health, etc), we seek God and affirm our trust in Him. When we are hurting or grieving, we seek God and affirm our trust in Him. When we are comfortable and relatively happy (or even ecstatic), we seek God and affirm that all our blessings come from Him.

Seek me with all of your heart.... This is something we do all day, every day. Seeking God takes a lifetime. And when we do it, the reward — through His grace — is an eternity of continuing to live unto our Lord.