(6th in a series of seven blogs on Jeremiah 29:10-14)
Recently my son lost his new mp3 player while we were on vacation. He spent hours looking everywhere for it. He just wouldn’t give up until he found it about a week later. Now if he had lost a pencil, a candy bar or even a dollar bill I know he wouldn’t have looked that long and hard. You see, the time and effort you spend looking for something shows how much you value it. If the item you are seeking has lots of value to you then you will diligently search until you find it. If it isn’t that important you won’t look very hard. So having said that – how much effort do you spend seeking God? How important to you is a closer relationship with God?
“You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13 – see previous 5 blogs). To seek for God means to hunger and thirst for Him like a deer pants for streams of water. It means to love God will all your heart, soul, mind and strength. It means to seek with ALL YOUR HEART.
Why does God phrase it this way, “with all your heart?” Why does He demand ALL of us when we seek Him? Isn’t it good enough to just seek Him? No, because how much effort you spend seeking something shows how important it is to you. If we want everything from God we must give everything to God. If we want to be first to God, He must be first to us. God deserves our all and He needs our all to give us His all. We need to give Him our all for His sake as well as our own.
Seeking God with ALL our heart is costly. Jesus told the stories about the man who found a treasure in a field and sold everything to buy it (Mt 13:44). He also told about a merchant who sold everything he had to busy special pearl (Mt 13:45). To get what their hearts desired more than anything else cost them everything. We can’t just add some ‘God’ to everything else in our lives. We have to replace everything else with Him. We must seek Him with our whole heart. It may be our head that starts to seek God, but it is our heart that finds Him!
When we do that God promises He will be found. He’s not hiding or playing hard to get. He wants to be found. But He can only really be found by the heart that seeks Him totally and only. Remember, how much effort you spend looking for something shows how important it is to you. How much effort do you spend seeking a closer walk with God? (June 13, 2016 Doylestown, PA)
Deuteronomy 4:29 But if from there you seek the Lord your God, you will find him if you look for him with all your heart and with all your soul.
Matt 7:7-8 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8 for everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.
Matt 13:44 “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. 45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. 46 When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.
Take a few moments to memorize Jeremiah 29:13 “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” Write it on a piece of paper and put it where you will see it many times today. Meditate on it.
Thank God for His promise that we can and will find Him, that He wants to be found. Spend some time in His presence, ‘finding’ Him and the sweet fellowship that come.