What Does It Mean To Seek God?
The words of one of my favorite songs goes like this:
“A sleeping heart inside; A soul content just to flow and to glide in this life…”
It seems to me that when it comes to seeking God, unless someone grew up in a God-fearing home, or had something tragic happen in their life, they are just not all that interested in seeking Him out, let alone finding Him. Even among those who profess to love God, there can be a waning or half-hearted desire to pursue Him. The sleeping human heart seems to be altogether too content “just to flow and to glide in this life.” Each one pursuing their own dreams and desires while neglecting the very One who set it all in motion. Therein lies the great tragedy of life!
Developing A Seeker’s Heart
So what does it mean to seek God? The first step is to be aware of the need to pursue a relationship with Him and to learn to develop a seeker’s heart. What does it mean to develop a seeker’s heart? It means to work on building a desire to look for God and to find out what is true about Him. We can look at some scriptures to help us get perspective:
- Acts 17:16-28 Have you ever asked yourself: “What on earth am I even here for? Why am I alive? What is my purpose in being here?” Well, you wouldn’t be alone! You’re right there along with hundreds of others looking for answers. So why did God create you and me and bring us to this very point in space and time in life? Of all the times in history that you and I could exist, why this time and era? The answer is so that we would seek Him and find Him in order to have a personal relationship with Him!
- 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. Acts 17:26-27
- Because God loves us and desires a relationship with us He is the One who takes the initiative. He has been actively determining times and places long before we ever thought about seeking Him! (Psalm 14:2-3)
- Why does it seem like so few people seek God today?
- I’m sure if you ask around you will find many different answers to this question, but the reality is that people are simply too busy or too self-absorbed to seek God the way He wants. The cares of this life are many: family, work, leisure, the pursuit of wealth etc., all these distractions have ways of competing for our attention to seek God.
- God is also relatively unknown to most people and the image many have of Him is distorted. In order to seek God, we must be willing to change our ideas about who God is to match what has been revealed to us in the Bible.
- There is simply nothing more important or exciting in life than to Seek and Find our Creator God! In fact, the Bible says that God rewards those who diligently seek Him! (Hebrews 11:6).
- Jeremiah 29:11-14 You see, the Hebrew word for “seek” is “baqash” and it strongly means exactly what our scripture states: A seeking with ALL the heart. Do you remember the last time you did something with all your heart? What did that look like? I can get a visual in my mind of exactly what that looks like. When we are doing something with all our hearts, we are all in and totally engaged. Everything is engaged – heart, mind, action, time. Maybe even money if that is relevant. In any case, it will also be obvious to everyone around us because all our time and energy would be focused on whatever that something is. This is how God pursues us and it’s exactly what He wants from us! He promises us that we will absolutely find Him if we seek Him in this way. It’s actually quite amazing if you really think about it!
- Matthew 7:7-11 What does God promise those who diligently seek Him? Prayer is the means by which we make our requests known to God. As we seek to know God better, we take Him at His word that He truly listens and responds to our prayers as a loving Father. Do you pray? Get in the habit of fervent prayer to God. Just talk to Him as you would a friend and ask Him to help you in your search for Him. He will always answer that type of sincere prayer.
- Acts 8:26-40 This passage of scripture is the story about Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. What can we learn about this seeker?
- He was an important official in charge of all the treasury of the queen of the Ethiopians. So he was a busy man but still made time to travel from Ethiopia to Jerusalem to worship the one, true God. That was a distance of about 1,500 miles!
- He was reading the Scriptures himself and asking questions about what he was reading.
- He was humble and sincere enough in his search to ask for help.
- What he learned he acted on right away, as seen on his baptism.
- How did he feel after coming to know the Lord? He went on his way rejoicing! The burning questions he had about God were answered in one afternoon and God brought joy to his heart.
- We can learn from this man that seeking God was important enough for him to travel a great distance to worship God and learn more about Him. He was also humble and sincere enough in his seeking that he welcomed the input from Philip. Lastly, he acted immediately on what he learned. Let’s imitate these qualities in our own pursuit of God. No one ever fully arrives until the day we see the Lord’s face.
- Acts 17:10-12 In this passage of the book of Acts we read about how Paul’s travels brought him to a place called Berea where he met some Berean Jewish seekers. What was it about these seekers that made Luke, the author of Acts, refer to them as having “noble characters?” Would you like to be known as someone of noble character by God?
- The Scripture says that they were of noble character because they received the message with great eagerness. What does “great eagerness imply?” They were excited and happy to hear a message about God. When was the last time you brought God up in a conversation and got a highly enthusiastic response? People today don’t seem very eager to talk about God let alone hear messages about Him. Why is that? Yet God considers it a noble character when one is eager to hear God brought up and discussed in conversation!
- But it is not enough just to be eager to hear about God. Why was it important for them to “examine the scriptures every day” for themselves? In the passage, it says “to see if what Paul said was true.” They were very eager to hear words from God but they were also checking the Scriptures themselves and not just relying on what was being said to them. I can’t express enough the importance of this. The Lord Jesus Himself said that the kind of worshippers that God seeks are those who worship in Spirit and Truth. John 4:24 He also stated that God’s Word is Truth. John 17:17 As with prayer, reading the Bible is vitally important to seeking and knowing the truth about God.
- What was the result of this eager yet diligent attitude? The Scripture says in Acts 17:12 that “As a result, many of them believed…” They came to believe the message of the Good News that Paul preached to them. As the Scriptures say “…faith comes from hearing the message…” Romans 10:17 The Bible has great power to build faith in the heart that is why it is very important to be reading it every day.
- John 1:18 Where do we begin our search for God? We seek God by reading the Bible and coming to know Jesus as revealed in God’s Word. Jesus has made God known. To the degree we know Jesus, we will know God.
