Search And Find

Search and Find

You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

Jeremiah 29:13

IN WORD Most Christians would say they have found God. And it’s true; those who have accepted Jesus as their Savior have in fact found the Father and His will for their lives. But often our knowledge of God goes no further than our minds. In many ways, we’re still looking.

In some respects, we’re not much different than the Jews of Jeremiah’s day. They too had found God. Actually, God had found them—first by choosing their father Abraham, then by prying them out of slavery in Egypt, then by descending on Sinai with a covenant. Jeremiah’s listeners and readers had the Torah and all the laws revealed through Moses. They had a miraculous history of God’s dealings with them. If you asked any of Jeremiah’s contemporaries if they had found God, they would have said yes. Just like us.

Was that enough? No, of course not. If it had been, Jeremiah would not have penned verse 13. God would not have inspired him to prophesy to these people how they would one day seek Him with all their heart. He would have said, “You’ve already found me. So live like you have.” As we know, that wasn’t God’s message to them—or to us.

IN DEED There’s a seeking after God that goes beyond the ink on the paper of your Bible, that goes further than His past dealings with you, and that goes deeper than you are right now. Even David—a man after God’s own heart, as we’re often reminded—hungered and thirsted for God with desperate desire (Psalm 63:1, for example). David wasn’t content to say he had found God. There was always more of God to be found.

Is your heart content? When we see Him face-to-face, we’ll marvel at how much of Him there is to discover. Like a tourist satisfied with a glimpse of the spray from Niagara Falls, we’ll be ashamed at our ignorance when we see what we missed by not pressing in for a fuller view. Seek God with all your heart—every bit of it—and you won’t be disappointed.

Thou hast made us for Thyself, and the heart of man is restless until it finds its rest in Thee.

—AUGUSTINE