Seek and Find

 Children love to play hide and seek. They can busy themselves for hours playing that old game. Walking out of my weightlifting class last Thursday,  I ran into some students playing. One was hidden underneath an old pew outside our youth room. He startled me when he peeked out laughing. I asked what he was doing, but before he could answer he ducked back under to avoid the searching stares of other trying to find him. The seekers found him without any problem whatsoever. 

What is not nearly as common is for the people of God to be seekers of God. I assure you that He is not hiding. How can I make such a bold statement? I make it based on the truth of Jeremiah 29:13. Many Christians are familiar with Jeremiah 29:11 about God knowing His plans to give us a future and a hope. Fewer are aware of verse 13. Here it is. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. [Jer 29:13] 

This is a promise that if we earnestly seek Him with all of our heart we will be rewarded by finding Him. O, that is the catch. We have to seek with all of our heart. That means our whole heart. Every bit of it. Our entire heart. Our complete heart. There are so many distractions vying for our attention. It is common for our hearts to be divided in seeking God. We might earnestly desire to know Him while at the same time trying to keep up with the score of the ball game of our favorite team. We might desire to seek Him, but at the same time we may also desire to watch a movie or scroll on social media. We might start searching with good intention until we drift off to sleep. 

I have a very active mind. It is so easy to chase rabbits in my mind when I pray. One minute I am desiring more of God and the next moment I am thinking about a movie I recently saw, what else I have to do in the day, things I need to squeeze in to do that have long been neglected, books I need to read, and random things like tv commercials, people I have not thought about in years and I cannot remember their names, and my sons, and more. 

To truly seek God for me I need to write out my prayers. For some reason, this helps me to focus, to intentionally slow that hyperactive mind, and to zero in on knowing God better. I have dozens on top of dozens of various colored spiral notebooks filled with my passionate longings for Him and His will. Secret prayers recorded in secret places crying out to know God. I know Him better today than I did when I first started seriously seeking Him in 1991. After 35 years of diligently investigating and discovering Him, I find this only whets my appetite to know more.

I wish the people of God sought Him with the same enthusiasm, resolve, and tenacity children seek their playmates who hide. How different things would be if we served God out of the fresh encounters we have with Him daily instead of coasting on the fumes of past devotions and experiences. God is waiting to be wanted. He wants to reveal Himself infinitely more than we desire to seek Him. May the quest to seek and find God bring us bountiful treasures in our knowledge of Him.