Seeking God

Seek (verb)

·      to go in search or quest of

·      to try to find or discover by searching or questioning

·      to try to obtain

·      to try or attempt

·      to go to

I’ve been thinking lately about what it means to “seek God.” The Bible is full of verses about seeking God, but what exactly does that mean?

When my oldest grandson was two, he loved to play what he called “game,” which was a simplified version of hide and seek. He would hide, but always right there in plain sight. I would pretend he was well hidden and make a rather showy production of seeking and finding him, to which he would squeal, laugh, and act altogether surprised, and then command, “again!” To little kids like Augie, hide and seek is fun. He likes to hide, and he likes to be found. He also likes to look for little things I have “hidden” (usually leaving an edge peeking out for him to catch sight of.) For Augie, and for us, discovering things that are hidden is just plain fun.

So, when God says, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.  I will be found by you…” (Jeremiah 29:13-14a NIV), is he hiding from us and waiting to be found? Is he a game playing God? Does this mean God is somewhere other than right here and right now with us that we would have to hunt for him?

No, it doesn’t. The whole of Scripture points to God’s omnipresence. He is as close as the air we breathe. He reveals himself to us in a multitude of ways—the beauty and wonder of creation, the tingling knowledge of truth as we read his Word, that still small voice in our spirit when his Spirit speaks, and sometimes in the spectacular or miraculous. God is in the business of revealing himself to us in myriad and personal ways.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean God will break into our lives and reveal himself in vivid technicolor at every turn. God is a relational being and he created us to be relational as well. He is intimately acquainted with all our thoughts, needs, desires, and fears, and it is often through these avenues he invites us to notice him. To get a whiff of the Divine and to be drawn to “follow our nose” — to seek. We were created with free will. We are decision making creatures. We can choose who to interact with and how. We can choose who to listen to, who to speak to, and who we turn to in times of need. We choose who to love. We choose who or what to worship.

The God who loves us wants us to love him. The God who chose us wants us to choose him. The God who pursues us wants us to pursue him.

Hence, the seeking.

Before God directs the Israelites to seek him in Jeremiah 29, he says this:

… you will call on me and pray to me, and I will listen to you. (Jeremiah 29:12)

It seems like the seeking is in the praying, the act of turning from other people, places, and things and choosing to turn to God through the two-way communion of prayer, through the speaking and the listening.

We don’t seek God because he is lost, we seek God because we are. Even if we already know God, we still seek him daily. We will always be a little lost this side of eternity—continually needing forgiveness, direction, comfort, security. The irony is this: we are naturally prone to seek what we think we need, which does not necessarily provide what we really need. Seeking God himself, will.

Something shifts inside us when we seek—a laying down of our demands and expectations. Consider this: seeking always indicates need. Looking for something means you lack something you feel you need, and in the seeking, you have some level of hope that you will find whatever it is. Imagine all the needs you have in one week, or even one day: rest, energy, guidance, encouragement, peace, hope, faith, purpose, comfort, security … and the list goes on. We tend to look for the fulfillment of our needs from specialized sources. Energy from our diet; rest from an expensive mattress; guidance from friends, the horoscope, or the nightly news; peace from yoga; faith from a creed or religion; purpose from our career; comfort from human relationships; security from our financial portfolio, our watch dog, or our alarm system. You get the idea. But God is the ultimate source of all we need.

When we seek him, we will find him—and along with finding him, find all we need.

What—or whom—do you seek today?

… those who seek the LORD lack no good thing. Psalm 34:10b