March 4, 2018

Diligently Seeking God

But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him

(Hebrews 11:6).

Our seeking of God must be diligent. What does this mean? It means that we must give ourselves to the quest for God with a priority and a passion that we don’t invest in any other pursuit. God must be first in our hearts. We must be ready to sacrifice anything else — indeed all else — to see God’s face. Our hearts must be purged of any conflicting interest or competing desire. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). In our longing for God we must be utterly sincere, and in our seeking of God we must be passionately committed. God deserves no less than our all.

God’s making of the world is such that we find it necessary to seek and to search for God, but in truth “He is not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:27). God’s hiddenness in this present broken world is not meant to hinder us from finding God, but to entice us. As God whets our appetite for God’s self, God is weaning us away from our sinful, self‑sufficient rebellion. God is teaching us to love God. With convicting evidences of God’s power and loving tokens of God’s goodness, God is drawing us toward God’s eternal presence. “I drew them with gentle cords, with bands of love” (Hosea 11:4). It is God’s good pleasure to be found by all who long for God in honest, obedient love.

God is not neutral with regard to the inclination of our hearts. God desires that we find God. God yearns for those who delight in God. “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you” (James 4:8). Yet there is a danger: we must not deceive ourselves that we are seeking God if in fact it is only certain blessings from God that we seek. Resisting the tendency to focus on ourselves, we must learn to seek God, simply and contentedly. When we diligently do so, our reward will be God, God’s self and God will fill our deepest longings according to the design of God’s own love. Having sought God earnestly, we will be enriched by the joy of a heart that overflows with God’s glory.

“Where there is faith, where there is need, there is the True God ready to clasp the hands that stretch out seeking for him into the darkness behind the ivory and the gold.”

. . . H. G. Wells