Hide -or- SeeK
Is God hiding or am I? Am I supposed to be seeking? We have confessed the Lord as the One in whom we believe. We have made a public declaration through water baptism, therefore, agreeing to follow Him as having died with Him and now living with Him in newness of life. Finally, after committing ourselves to His service through the local church, we still struggle to seek Him with our whole desire (2Chr. 15:15).
What more could He possibly require of us? To get to know someone better, we must find time to talk, perhaps arrange a time to meet, or if we want to know someone, we must serve and struggle together.
The same is true of our God. If we want to get to know God and believe Him to be our own, even boldly declare that He is our God, we are to seek Him. Our desire for God should not be to bring Him into a specific time of day but to bring all of our time, all of our days, and all of ourselves to Him at all times. Because He transcends time, we have this hope of the all and forever with Him. One who greatly desires these things seeks the Lord with all of their heart and soul.
Our failure to seek the Lord through continual prayer shows a lack of reliance on Him, and our lack of reliance leads to a lack of peace in troubled waters. (See 2Chr. 14:6-15; 15:2; 16:1-9). In the early days of our lives with Christ, we may have sought the Lord and removed things from our lives that we knew were displeasing to our God. Through the preached word and Holy Spirit conviction, we quickly learned what we were not to do. Weeks, months, or maybe even years later, we began journeying deeper into our Bibles and found out what we were to be doing as followers of Christ. Our lives to the best of our ability would become more and more a pursuit to meet biblical expectations. However, when we found that there were things we needed to be done rather than only be written, though the timing was perfect, we fell short in seeking the Lord in prayer. Due to the strength of our flesh and maybe ingrained habits, it turned into us trying to figure things out on our own.
Here is how we get to know our God when we invite Him into our circumstances with us and trust Him to make the call. As King Josiah, many of us bask in the glory of not doing what the Bible says we are not to do. We even keep the religious practices of our faith by way of church attendance, tithing, and taking communion. We implement reforms and can do a lot of good in honor of God our Father (2 Chr. 34-35). Preferably, however, like King David seemed to understand, to be after the heart of God requires more than simply seeking to fulfill the law. After the heart of God in every matter, asking Him, what is it that You want? We are to inquire of the Lord at every turn because if He is not the voice going before us, then we have no reason to pursue (1Sam. 23:1-5; 30:4-8; 2Sam. 5:17-25).
Do we frequently request a response from our God concerning our circumstances or the circumstances of others, however light or heavy they may be? How consistent and how instant are we in prayer? The longer the walk should mean the more we talk to Him and the more we hear from Him. Through forbearing to seek God, we miss out on seeing the faithfulness and kindness of God manifested through answered prayer. A solely theoretical and intellectual understanding of God and His word are many who have lacked encounter. A revelatory knowledge of God and His word, to read of power from His pages, and being a witness to such signs, calling these things practical, should say that with childlike faith we have been in pursuit, are still pursuing, and prayerfully it is for what He wants.
