Psalm 63:1 O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you. My soul thirsts for you. My body longs for you in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
Review
Step 1 in learning to love God is to resolve to prefer God over this world, after having counted the cost. Another step was hungering and thirsting for mystical fellowship with God through direct experiences of His attributes. The word David used to describe his quest to satisfy his hunger and thirst for God was “seek.” “Earnestly I seek you”
Seeking God means making an effort to fulfill your longing for God. Satisfying fellowship with God is always available, but not easy to attain. Seeking is hard, but even though it is hard, it is a wonderful process that is itself desirable.
Ps 27:4 One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.
“If I had just one wish it would be to gaze and seek, seek, seek (in His temple – a place where seeking results in a lot of finding).”
Why is not it joyful for me?
Lack of Faith
If you have not found the process of seeking God to be a joyful one, there are a few possibilities. One could be lack of faith. Another could be lack of eagerness in your seeking. And third could be that your seeking is not really a seeking after God, but for something else.
The first of those, lack of faith, was discussed in the last lesson. If you do not enjoy seeking because you do not anticipate a lot of success in the process, or it does not seem to you that God’s presence will be satisfying to you, one way to increase your faith is by tasting and seeing that He is good. Another way is by making your soul listen to the Word of God – especially God’s great and precious promises. Faith comes through hearing the Word. Find the promises in Scripture that describe how wonderful the presence of God is, how wonderful fellowship with Him is, and how wonderful relational knowledge of Him is. And then let your soul just rest on those and take delight in them. Memorize them so that you can meditate on them so that you can take delight in them and trust in them. That will increase your faith.
Seeking something other than God
If you’ve been seeking and seeking and seeking and not finding, another possibility is that you are seeking the wrong thing - something besides God; because if you earnestly seek God you will find Him.
2 Chrn.15:2 If you seek him, he will be found by you
Ps.9:10 you, LORD, have never forsaken those who seek you.
Isa.45:19 I have not said to Jacob's descendants 'Seek me in vain.' I, the LORD, speak the truth; I declare what is right.
Seeking God will never turn out to be a vain effort – you will find Him. But there is a lot of earnest seeking that people think is seeking for God but that really is not. We think that just because we are earnestly praying and earnestly reading our Bibles and earnestly doing ministry and earnestly involving ourselves in fellowship, we must be seeking God. But that is not necessarily true. Sometimes we pour ourselves into prayer with great earnestness, and we think we are seeking God, but really all we are seeking is relief from some suffering. Or we are seeking to have God give us some thing we really want. And God Himself is not actually the object of our seeking. He is just the means we are using to get what we think will satisfy.
Sometimes we pour ourselves into ministry thinking we are seeking God, but really we are just seeking successful ministry – not fellowship with God Himself. Remember, if you are doing something because God called you to do it; that fact in itself does not guarantee you are engaging in fellowship with God.
Sometimes we pour ourselves into studying God’s Word thinking we are seeking God, but in reality we are only seeking information or insight. There are some people who study the Bible simply because they want information. They want to know as many Bible facts as possible. And there are a lot of different motives for that. For some it is so they can impress people and come off as a really knowledgeable Christian. For others it is so they can have a sense of self-confidence. Others study simply out of curiosity.
They are “into” the Bible like other people are “into” biology or chemistry or literature. When a person has a strong interest in a subject, enjoyment comes from learning new things in that field. And some people (a lot of pastors I think) enjoy learning new things from the Bible because they find the Bible so interesting. But they are not really seeking God Himself.
Others may study the Bible to get questions answered and curiosity satisfied. For years they have wondered what the meaning of some passage is, and so they study it to find out the answer to their question.
In all these cases, if they do nothing but seek information from Scripture, they are seeking information, not God.
In my case, it was a little different. I was well aware of the danger of using the Bible only to seek information and gaining head knowledge and not heart knowledge - gaining a lot of facts but no insights. And so I was always striving to discover insights from Scripture, not just information. I sought information, but not as my ultimate goal. I sought information only as a tool to get me to insight. I wanted to understand principles for how to conquer anger or pride or lust, or laziness. I wanted to gain insight into principles that would teach me how to become more humble or loving or wise or faithful. But now I realize that even insight should not be the ultimate goal. Seeking insight is still not the same thing as seeking God.
If we want to know what seeking God means, it is not too hard. The Bible is very clear.
The meaning of” seeking God”
Seeking God means seeking His face.
1 Chrn.16:11 Look to the LORD and his strength; seek his face always.
Ps.27:8 My heart says of you, "Seek his face!" Your face, LORD, I will seek.
Ps.105:4 Look to the LORD and his strength; seek his face always.
Psalm 24:5-6 He will receive blessing from the LORD and vindication from God his Savior. 6 Such is the generation of those who seek him, who seek your face, O God of Jacob.
So what does it mean to seek God’s face? The Hebrew word for face is PANIM, and when used of God it most often refers to the favorable presence of God – God’s presence to bless. In almost every OT passage that speaks of the presence of God, the word translated “presence” is PANIM.
Gn.4:16 So Cain went out from the LORD’s presence and lived in the land of Nod (lit: Cain went out from the LORD’s face)
Psalm 51:11 Cast me not away from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. (Lit: Cast me not away from Your face)
Psalm 139:7 Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? (lit: Where can I flee from Your face?)
God is omnipresent in that there is no place where God is absent, but in every place God is there either turning His face away from someone or turning His face toward someone. God is present in a non-Christian’s house, but He is in there turning His face away from that person. So is an unbeliever in the presence of God? No - not in the sense of being before the face of God.
When God turns His face away from you that cuts off blessing from Him. When He turns His face toward you His blessing and favor shine all over you like the sunshine. That is why several times you see the word “shine” used to describe God’s presence (or his face). When God taught the priests how to bless the people He said:
Num.6:23-27 ‘This is how you are to bless the Israelites. Say to them: 24 “The LORD bless you and keep you; 25 the LORD make his presence (face) shine upon you and be gracious to you; 26 the LORD turn his face toward you and give you peace.” ‘ 27 “So they will put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them.”
Psalm 67:1 May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine upon us
Psalm 80:7 Restore us, O God Almighty; make your face shine upon us, that we may be saved. (v.19 also)
It is also interesting to note that the idea of a face shining is one way the Hebrews described a smile. So when God turns His face toward you or makes His presence shine on you it means He is smiling at you. And when He smiles at you wonderful things shower down all over you like sunlight from the sun. So seeking God means seeking His face – seeking the experience of being in His presence – seeking the experience of being smiled at by Him.
This is a very relational, personal thing. Seeing God’s face is something in which only love has an interest. There are people who do not love God, who still desire His riches. There are people who do not love God who will pray to Him every day, and do all kinds of things to seek protection or healing or some other form of blessing. There are people who do not love God who do desire information and insights from the Bible. They have a whole list of things they want from God, but nowhere on that list is seeing His face. Only love longs to see the face of the beloved.
That is why if you study all the references to seeking God’s face in Scripture you will find a major emphasis on seeking to be right with God relationally. It is a seeking to restore the intimacy that is broken by our sin. The calls to repentance in Scripture are calls to seek relational closeness with God once again after we have sinned.
Isa.55:6-7 Seek the LORD while he may be found… 7 Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.
2 Chrn.7:14 if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin
Ps.78:34 Whenever God slew them, they would seek him; they eagerly turned to him again.
Jer.50:4 "In those days, at that time," declares the LORD, "the people of Israel and the people of Judah together will go in tears to seek the LORD their God.
Hosea 5:6 When they go with their flocks and herds to seek the LORD, they will not find him; he has withdrawn himself from them.
15 Then I will go back to my place until they admit their guilt. And they will seek my face; in their misery they will earnestly seek me."
A major aspect of seeking God is seeking to restore the relational closeness that has been lost through some sin. A little child who does some terrible thing and is disciplined by his angry father longs for the time when the discipline will be over and his father’s anger will be passed and they will be back to their normal relationship, where they wrestle around on the floor or toss a football together. When a man does something that really hurts his wife, and there is now an emotional distance between them, he longs for the moment when it will be forgotten and their closeness will be restored. Where there is love, sin breaks fellowship. And when that happens true love will long for restored closeness more than anything. Sin creates an emotional distance between you and God. And reason God chastises us for our sin is to make us earnest about seeking Him again.
Ps.78:34 Whenever God slew them, they would seek him; they eagerly turned to him again.
Prior to the summer of 2005, I do not know that I had ever had the sensation of feeling God’s anger at me. There were probably many times I should have, but I simply did not. God always showered me with so much blessing – even when I sinned against Him, that I never really had a sensation of feeling that He was angry with me. But that summer, after having fallen into a particularly terrible sin, God did chastise me. And the pain of that was the most unbearable thing I have ever undergone. I suffered many consequences, but none of them amounted to anything compared to the feeling of knowing God was angry with me. And during that time I longed for nothing but the restoration of His favor.
So sin creates an emotional distance from God. And when you are in sin you can not even begin the process of seeking God until you are willing to forsake that sin.
Ezra 6:21 So the Israelites who had returned from the exile ate it, together with all who had separated themselves from the unclean practices of their Gentile neighbors in order to seek the LORD, the God of Israel.
Notice that they had to forsake their sin in order to seek the LORD. You can not start seeking until after you repent.
Another thing that creates relational distance from God is neglect. If you just go for a time without communing with God or enjoying fellowship with Him, the intensity of your affections fades. It is not that you are engaged in some evil activity. It is just that you are distracted from paying attention to God and enjoying Him personally. Your attention is focused on all your responsibilities and tasks. When the baby is crying, you have to put your mental energy into figuring out why she is crying – what kind of cry is it? What do you need to do? Then you have to think about whether you have time to get a load of laundry done before it is time to go do this or that errand. You are at work, and you have to focus your attention on your job. You are on the phone, and you have to focus your attention on the person you are talking to. And the next time you sit down and really focus your attention on fellowship with God, you think, “Lord, it has been 5 hours since the last time I have paid any direct attention to You.” Or in some cases maybe 12 hours - or 5 days. When we go hours at a time without communing with God, the intensity of our emotions fades. And the process of seeking God is the process of trying to restore that.
Another thing that can cause emotional distance from God is ignorance. The only path to knowing God is the truth about Him revealed in Scripture. And so if I am confused or ignorant about something in Scripture, that will hinder my ability to be close to Him. The only way to experience God is to experience the outworking of His attributes – those things God has revealed about Himself. But if you do not know much about what God has revealed about Himself, you can not know God very well. All of us are distanced from God to some degree due to ignorance. That is why we need to study Scripture with all our might. We do it to seek God, so that we can enjoy the experience of fellowship with Him.
So the separation can come from sin, or neglect, or ignorance. Or, if nothing has happened to damage your intimacy with God, the process of seeking Him is simply the process of seeking greater intimacy. And that should be the goal of everything we do.
So the proper use of Scripture is not to use it merely to gain information. Nor is it to merely use that information to gain insights into spiritual principles. The goal is to gain information that leads to insights that result in intimacy. If the process stops at any point short of intimacy and personal communion with God it is a misuse of God’s Word and all the reading and studying and mediating amounts to nothing.
Similarly, the proper use of prayer is not to get all your prayers said. It is not to get all the things on your list prayed for. If a person prays through her whole list, so she has prayed for everyone she knows, everyone at church, all the missionaries; she has asked Him to bless her food she has prayed for safe travel, she has prayed for wisdom; she has prayed through the Scriptures; she has followed the pattern of the Lord’s prayer; but she has not paid attention to or experienced the presence of God, none of that praying amounts to any seeking.
If we are not seeking His face, we are not seeking Him at all. If we pray for guidance because we want smooth and pleasant outcomes in the difficult decisions we are having to make (rather than because we want to walk as close to God as we possibly can because we love being near Him), that is not seeking God. It is just seeking favorable outcomes. If we pray for a loved one to be healed just out of some natural desire for healing (like the world has), instead of because God’s love for that sick person moves our hearts to want to be like His heart, so that we desire their healing or blessing simply because we want to join God in the expression of what is in His heart toward that person, that is not seeking God. It is just seeking healing.
In the same way, the proper use of ministry is not merely to accomplish as much as possible or to “make a difference.” If a person does his ministry at church every week, but the doing of that ministry is not an act of conscious fellowship with God; if he fails to enjoy the feeling of being a tool in His hands; if he fails to be aware of and enjoy the feeling of the power of the Spirit coursing through him as he uses the gifts God has given him; if his ministry is not an expression of heartfelt love for God; then his ministry is not a seeking of God. Ministry that is not an expression of the love and desire in our hearts for God is as empty as a kiss between a husband and wife that has no emotion or desire behind it. Tokens and expressions of love that have no actual feeling of love behind them are empty.
Seeking God can not be reduced down to a mere discipline any more than seeking intimacy with your wife can. If you think you will have a great marriage just because you discipline yourself to have a date night every week and to buy all the requisite flowers and cards and gifts on the special days, you will be disappointed. Disciplines, in themselves, do not guarantee desire and joy. And where there is no desire and joy intimacy is at best greatly crippled, if it can exist at all.
It is the same way with seeking intimacy with God. It will not come from the spiritual disciplines alone. I used to love the term, “spiritual disciplines.” I used to tell people that all they needed to do what focus on the spiritual disciplines – Scripture, prayer, fellowship and worship - and they would be fine. But you can focus on Scripture, prayer, fellowship and worship and not be fine at all. You can study your Bible, pray 4 hours a day, spend 6 nights a week at the church, and sing worship songs until you are hoarse and not even be saved.
I still think we should focus on Scripture, prayer, fellowship and worship, but I do not like the idea of calling them spiritual disciplines. I would rather call them “relationship building efforts” or “intimacy seeking” or something like that – some term that reminds us that unless they are efforts to seek God’s face, they are mostly worthless. I want to find a term that reminds me that those actions have no value unless they are used to bring me to a personal, mystical encounter with God.
Think of all you do in your life right now to seek God. Think of all your earnest, whole-hearted, whole-souled seeking of God. Whatever it is that you have in your mind right now, think very carefully – when you do that earnest seeking, what is it exactly that you are seeking?
If we are honest we will have to admit that a lot of our seeking does not really have God as the object. So again, think of all your seeking, and subtract from that whatever seeking that is not a direct seeking for an experience of God’s presence. Subtract all your Bible study that is not seeking God’s presence (Bible study that is just seeking information or just seeking insight). Subtract all your prayer that is not seeking God’s presence. Subtract all your prayers that are requests for something you think will bring you joy. Subtract all your churchgoing and all your worship that is not an intentional seeking to experience God’s presence. Now what is left? How much time do you spend actually seeking Him?
If you are like me, you look at that tiny little bit that is left (if anything at all), and it is alarming. For some Christians it may not be much more than 10 minutes per week. That is one tenth of one percent of your time! Suppose you have a 15 minute devotion time every day, 7 days a week, of real, heartfelt, earnest seeking of God’s presence. That works out to one percent of your day. If I spend of one percent of my day (or even double that – 2 percent) seeking God’s face, can I actually claim in any sense that I am seeking God earnestly with all my heart?
So back to our question – If the process of seeking God is so wonderful and is guaranteed to be so fruitful, why is it not enjoyable to you? Why do not you enjoy your devotions as much as you enjoy watching TV? And why isn’t your seeking more fruitful? In many cases the simple reason is that it is mostly not even God that you are seeking. God promised that if we seek Him we will find Him, and we will find Him to be utterly satisfying. But He did not say that if we seek something else we will find Him. If we seek something else – anything else – we will find that, and we will find it to be a dry cistern that cannot satisfy. And that even applies to seeking information or insight about God as an end in itself.
Please don’t be discouraged by this, because it is wonderful news! If you have not really been seeking God, that may be painful to admit, but it is fantastic news! Just think what horrible news it would be if you have been seeking God all these years and have not found Him in soul-satisfying, joy-producing ways? That would mean it is hopeless. But if you find yourself lacking exuberant joy in the Lord (the kind that makes you want to dance and shout and that fills your soul with satisfaction), and you find out that it is because you have not really been seeking God, that is great news because it means that kind of experience with God is possible for you! If you lack that kind of intimacy with the Lord and joy in your life I hope you do not respond mainly by just feeling guilty. You should have great hope knowing that things can be different.
Thus far we have examined two possible explanations for why seeking may not be a successful process. If you have not found the process of seeking God to be joyful and desirable enough for you to desire to do it more than you desire to do other things, one possibility is that you are seeking without faith, and you need to taste and see that the Lord is good, and focus your attention on the great and precious promises He has made. Another possibility is that you have been seeking the wrong things. In all your efforts to seek God – your prayer times and Bible reading and devotions - has been mostly seeking something other than God. Now let’s consider a third possibility.
