The reality of seeking God
What does seeking God really look like? That’s a Christian concept I’ve struggled with a lot in the past. Especially when God doesn’t seem to want to be sought - when He’s silent.
If you would have asked me years back what seeking God looked like, I would have been bewildered. I felt I was seeking Him and that He just wasn’t there for me. I thought that He knew the pain I was in and just chose to leave me in it all alone. That was a very dark time for me.
This blog could easily be a book on its own, but I’ll attempt to summarize. I’ll start with two things that usually keeps us away from seeking Him, because that’s really what we get hung up on.
We seek a version of God we’re comfortable with. In this, we aren’t really seeking Him. We’re seeking an idea of Him. We don’t let God be Himself. We believe at our core that we must know better than Him. We may even believe He is God, but it doesn’t stop us from believing that He must not know everything.
Of course, it doesn’t feel that way. And even the insinuation may sound insulting to you. You believe that God is a God of justice and love. Doesn’t He say that in the Bible? The problem is that we set our own definition for what it means to be a good God. And the moment God doesn’t comply with our version, we distrust Him. But who are we to define what it means to be ‘just’ or ‘loving?
When we decide what it means to be good, disastrous things happen. Which is why many in the past have done heinous things in the name of God. Their ideas of God were distorted by their own worldview.
We tend to conclude then that if God doesn’t fit within our worldview or our definition of good, then He must not be those things. This really leaves no room for Him to be God and leaves us with an inflated view of our own self. Have we ever stopped to consider that we may not know more than God, who created us, what good is? This is so much easier said than done.
Giving up our own knowledge to trust in His is something only grace can do within us. We say we want Him, but I think we really want Him on our own terms.
This brings me to my second point, we seek out God while still trying to stay in control. We say we want to seek God, but we want to seek a part of Him. The idea of giving Him complete control of our lives is too difficult to part with.
This happens when we don’t trust God with our whole lives and we fear something else more. I’ll get to that in later blogs. We don’t view Him as very powerful. We believe that He’s not ‘God’ enough to manage our whole lives.
But He asks us to give Him our whole lives for a reason. And as long as we hold onto our own control over our life, we’ll continue the same argument with God and stay stagnant in our faith. And we’ll grow apart from God.
To be completely transformed by Him, we have to let Him do it. Which is only possible when we let go of our control over our life. And really, it’s the idea of control. Because whether we admit it or not, God does have control over our life.
Instead we “seek Him” only to demand that He reveal Himself in the way we choose in the time we want it in. But, God isn’t to be beckoned whenever we want Him. He’s God. He created the entire universe. And now a piece of His clay is screaming at Him to dance for us so we can “see that He’s really real”? It sounds silly, and yet we do this in practice more than we may wish to admit.
We’ve covered what primarily keeps us from seeking God, while appearing like we are. But now, how do we actually do it? Seeking God means acknowledging His Holiness and in that knowledge, we’re compelled to get to know who He says that He is. To seek God we must seek who He says He is, not who we want Him to be.
I grew up in an environment where “experiencing God” was heavily emphasized. It took precedence over getting to know who God was. Experiencing Him was associated with butterflies in the stomach and dancing in worship. It wasn’t until much later I realized that experiencing God is knowing and loving His character. It’s not about an experience but a relationship. And in any relationship, it’s not about the highs you get from the butterfly stage. It’s in the millions of moments that build up over time, deepening and maturing the relationship.
Back in some dark days, I would have felt that all was lost because I didn’t experience God in that way anymore. I thought I was seeking Him, but I was seeking a version of Him that I had convinced myself of.
Now, you can certainly have a butterfly moment with God. But I’ve come to realize the sweetest moments are in the quiet, mundane. Where I see His character as I study the Bible or learn from others in a godly community. I can trust who He says He is, not my unstable version that changes over time.
Instead of seeking the small, weak god that we’ve created in our heads, we have the opportunity to seek God in His fullest, truest self. When we seek Him for who He says He is, then we are able to be transformed by Him. And slowly, He will lift the veil and allow us to begin to see and experience the beauty of knowing Him.
