seeking God – Learn To Be Wise

Ever since we have set our hearts on seeking God together, it seems that I have been supernaturally aided in my searching.

1. God has helped me to have the heart to seek Him. I am learning that as we respond to God’s invitation, the Holy Spirit gives us greater thirst. Yesterday, for example, I had plenty to do. But I felt so hungry spiritually that I was almost compelled to spend more than double my normal devotional time in seeking God. I praised God, then prayed for things I thought of. When I was finished, God laid more things on my heart for intercession. I was experiencing the levels of prayer I had just read about in David Yonggi Cho’s book.

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. Jn 6:44 NIV

2. I keep running into more resources to encourage my search and help me to encourage others. Now, if I am thinking about something and run onto an article now and then, I can easily credit it to coincidence or just mental pre-occupation. But I have worked on sermons for many years and know about how often one normally runs into things that are relevant without doing specific research. In the last three weeks, such a high percentage of articles, devotionals, books I’m reading, DVD’s and music I’ve played have been directly helpful that it has amazed me. To give one example–last night, I picked up a worship video that has been on my desk for months. I thought it might be relevant to the sermon. I discovered quickly that it was more relevant to last week’s sermon so I could have stopped watching and saved time. But I kept watching for the personal inspiration just when I needed it. It was awesome–a true worship generator. I don’t think it added material for the message this week, but it sure helped fill the preacher’s heart.

And you, my son Solomon, acknowledge the God of your father, and serve him with wholehearted devotion and with a willing mind, for the Lord searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts. If you seek him, he will be found by you; but if you forsake him, he will reject you forever. 1 Ch 28:9 NIV

Stay tuned, I have a feeling this adventure is only begun!

Here are two sections by E. Stanley Jones from a daily devotional book I highly recommend. I have followed them with my own conclusion.

Truly you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Savior (Isaiah 45:15 NRSV).

Here is the hidden God, like the hidden thought…we cannot know what he is like unless he communicates himself through a word.
If you say, “I can know God in my heart intuitively and immediately, without the mediation of a word,” then the answer is: “But your ‘heart’ then becomes the medium of communication and knowing the heart as you do with its sin and crosscurrents and cross-conceptions you know it is a very unsafe medium for the revelation of God.”
God must reveal himself.

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God (John 1:1).

Here is the hidden God and he expresses himself through the Word…
Jesus is called the Word because the word is the expression of the hidden thought. Unless I put my thought into words you cannot understand it. Here is God; we sense his presence, but he is Spirit, hence hidden. We want to know what he is like—not in omnipotence, nor in omniscience, nor in omnipresence; a revelation of these would do little or no good, but we would know his character, for what he is like in character, we, his children, must be. So the Hidden Thought—God—becomes the Revealed Word—Christ. (365 Days with E. Stanley Jones, Mary Ruth Howes, editor, Dimensions for Living Nashville, 2000, pp. 74,75)

No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known (John 1:18 NIV).

I was impressed as I read these that spending time in God’s Word, accompanied by a prayer that the Holy Spirit would teach us, is an essential part of seeking God. Christians do not meditate with empty minds, but with thoughts shaped by God’s Word. The still-small inner voice of the Holy Spirit most often uses the written revelation, the record of Jesus’ words and presence, to guide us and speak to us.

What an incentive to our discipline to seek God. The situation turns out to be so simple—too simple. Unless we spend time with God in God’s Word and in prayer, we will never really know God. We would prefer a fast-food shortcut, a spoon-fed alternative, an easier way but there are none. But the truly good news is that God desires that we discover him! And he has provided a means for us to begin.

Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near (Isa 55:6 NIV).

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