The God Who Seeks Us

I have three daughters. I love each one of them and look forward to any time I can have with them. None of them live near me. The oldest lives in Egypt. She went back Sunday morning. Today, she will make a trip to Kenya with some friends. My middle daughter is here for a few more days. She presently lives in Birmingham, AL. My youngest is somewhere in the Caribbean. She has a charter on the yacht she works on. (You can check it out at www.charteratlantica.com)

I want to see my daughters. I call them as much as they can stand. I skype the two outside the country. I even a have a webcam so we can talk face-to-face. I have been known to pay for their plane tickets so that I can see them. It is no burden to do so. It's an act of love.

Recently, books have been written that give the impression that God is hard to find. They take the scripture about seeking Him with your whole heart and make that the entire issue of having any contact with God. They fail to take into account that He has always initiated contact with us. He met Abraham, Moses, Gideon, Paul and many, many others when they were not seeking Him (at least not with their whole hearts like these writers say that we must). The god who hides from me is not the God I know.

I didn't follow God long after becoming a Christian. I did things that were in opposition to Him for about eighteen months. I was in college and Christmas holidays came. I worked in a bank so that I couldn't go home when the rest of the students took their vacation. The part time work required I come in Monday through Friday from 1 PM to 7Pm. I had no tv so I spent each night reading novels.

I had read about a half of Of Human Bondage when I felt incredible despair. I threw the book at the wall and said out loud, "There is no joy in my life!" After sitting on the bed for a few minutes I went to my closet. I went through the books I had stored there for later reading. Toward the bottom of this stack was my Bible. I opened it and began to read things that I had not thought of for eighteen months. I saw the notes I had made in the margins. I remembered when I had written them. I said to myself, "This is where my joy was. Why did I leave it?"

Kneeling by the window I began to confess my sins. (Not all of them or I would still be there.) I told God, "I wouldn't take me back if I were You. But I know you will because of Your Word. Please, God, don't ever let me forget this night because I never want to come back here again."

I suppose you could say that circumstances caused me to come back to God. I was lonely. I didn't have a lot to do. But what are the odds that a college student would make a commitment to live for God without any prompting from the outside. No one preached to me. No one told me I was far away from God. I had a very spiritual moment without someone from the outside.

God allowed all these things in my life so I would realize how lost I am without Him. He sought after me as the sheep that was lost and He left the ninety-nine to come find me.

There have been many times I have had experiences with God when I was not seeking Him with my whole heart. He seeks after us so that we will seek Him with our whole hearts. It is silly to thing we would seek Him before He sought us. I believe He wants to have this fellowship with everyone.

I will be preaching a series called, "The Purpose Given Life" starting January 25. God gives us His purpose for our lives. This purpose brings us into fellowship with Him. He seeks us like any loving parent seeks fellowship with his children.