Season 2, Episode 1: Seeking
By nature, I am a naturally inquisitive person, so when I have read the word SEEKING in scripture there was something so interesting and intriguing to me about it. I have often found that I gravitate to verses with this word. Like:
Matthew 6:33 - But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well
Jeremiah 29:13 - You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart…which has to be one of my favourite verses.
Matthew 7:7 - Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you
These are rich verses. Verses that if you really think about it, speak of purpose and priority. What will we search for in this life? What will we pursue? What will we look for? The answers to these questions tell us what we believe our purpose is in life, and what we believe makes life meaningful.
But for the believer we are frequently given this simple directive: SEEK GOD
1 Chronicles 22:19 - Now devote your heart and soul to seeking the Lord your God
Psalm 34:10 - The lions may grow weak and hungry, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing
Isaiah 55:6 - Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near.
Zephaniah 2:3 - Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land, you who do what he commands
And there are many many more verses like this, reiterating this same basic message.
At first glance, it would seem that seeking is a simple enough concept right? We read the word. Look for his counsel. Pursue his opinion and his wisdom.
And in a practical sense, that would look like, spending time reading the Word and praying each day. But is it possible that we have minimised this unique word to a set of observable actions? Is there more to the process of seeking than we’ve thought?
Obviously, I think there is.
To begin with there are approximately 10 different Hebrew words and 6 Greek words that are frequently translated as ‘seek’ throughout scripture.
As you would expect, with the richness of both the Hebrew and Greek language, these 16 words have slightly different variations in meaning.
Now, there are obviously some similarities between these 16 words, but they can all look very different in practice.
Then there are specific verses containing this word, that can be so hard to understand in practice. For instance, how do you seek the face of God?
Psalm 27:8 says:
My heart says of you, “Seek his face!” Your face, Lord, I will seek.
Psalm 105:4 says:
Look to the Lord and his strength; seek his face always.
How do you seek the face of someone that is largely unseen? I know that some have apparently seen Jesus, but for most of us we relate and communicate with a God we will not physically meet until we pass from this world. Theologians try to help us out by clarifying that seeking his face is to essentially seek the presence of God. But for me, that doesn’t necessarily increase my capacity to understand the practical implications of such a request. When people say things about seeking Gods presence in a church service, I am not necessarily any wiser in understanding exactly what I am doing. And judging by what happens on stage, I’m not sure the leaders are that convinced of how exactly you enter the presence of a God whose Spirit inhabits us 24/7, either. The interpretation sits somewhere between ethereal spirituality and contemplative monk.
What it does tell me though is that seeking is multidimensional. It is not just an activity. It's not as simple as having a devotional time and going to church on a Sunday. It is an approach.
It’s about the perspective and attitude we bring when we do such things. A better way of saying it is: it’s not so much what you do, it’s how you do it.
So then, how do we seek as scriptures suggest we seek?
First and foremost, when the scriptures tell us to seek God, it means exactly that. We primarily seek God Himself. Not simply his wisdom or counsel or his likes and dislikes, although this is important too. But to seek God, or “to seek his face” is to discover ‘who He is’.
Have you ever noticed how a newly married couple will just gaze into each other's eyes without blinking or needing to look away? Or maybe you remember doing that with your spouse, where you could just lay for hours looking into each other's eyes and talking, and sharing? Well, this happens for a reason. This body language is a deep form of emotional connection. Some researchers suggest that it creates empathy between a couple. But what I think is wildly interesting, is a study done in Japan back in 2016, that noted the behaviours and activities of two people gazing into each other's eyes. The study found that over time, even a short amount of time of frequent eye gazing, neural synchronisation began to take place. This means that a specific area of both individual brains began to synchronise, and even their eye blinking would synchronise. Isn’t that amazing? This is why marriage counsellors will often recommend that a couple having troubles in their marriage, begin by looking into each other's face and eyes for a specified amount of time each week/day.
So what does this mean then when we read something like “seek his face”? We are being encouraged by God to emotionally connect in a deeply intimate way. We are being encouraged to seek that kind of connection, by seeing with the eyes of the Spirit.
We are essentially endeavouring to know God emotionally, psychologically, spiritually. To know God for who He is.
Paul says in Ephesians 1:17
“I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.”
Our knowledge of God is really critical, and according to Paul this ability to know God better relies on revelation from God. We are even reliant on Him, to know Him.
Our knowledge of God is really important because we are only capable of reflecting what we see. Not what we think. Now you wouldn’t think there would be a distinction between what we see and what we think. But there is. I logically and conceptually believe that God loves me. That’s what I think. But I don’t always know that I am loved. We don’t actually live out our opinions, otherwise, there would be no such thing as hypocrisy. There is not as much integrity between our opinions and behaviours, as we would like to think. It’s what we actually believe deep down in the depths of our souls that determine our behaviours and even what we desire. And those beliefs we have deep down in the depths of our souls? That’s what we really see. It’s what we really use as a guidepost for interpreting the world and all that happens within and around us. We can only reflect in behaviour, the truth we truly see.
Listen to 2 Corinthians 3:18
And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
This idea that what we see has possibly the most significant influence over us and who we become, is fluttered throughout scripture. In Matthew 6:22 it says:
“The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness.
Even 2 Corinthians 5:7 has this same underlying implication:
For we live by faith, not by sight.
Implied within that statement is the idea that a believer is one that chooses not to interpret life through what is seen and what looks true, but instead with the eyes of faith.
Why do we need to talk about this topic?
Because something is missing. We have not gone deep enough in this Biblical principle, to understand how it could genuinely revolutionise our faith.
There is this interesting verse in Romans 3:11 where Paul is referencing a passage in Psalm 14. The verse in Romans says:
“No one understands
No one seeks God”
Psalm 14:2-3 version of this says:
“The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one.
We are being told frequently to seek God, and then we are told that nobody seeks God?
Yes, this verse was written before Christ. Before we had the Holy Spirit, who plays a vital role in helping us to seek.
But the truth is, that even with the Holy Spirit it is still reasonably rare for believers these days to truly seek God to the extent that this multidimensional word implies. I feel I need to explain myself a bit here, because that statement could come across as fairly negative.
Yes, there are many believers who read the Bible and pray every day. They go to church, go to conferences, and listen to podcasts. They are regularly inputting into their Spiritual life. They are seeking God, his guidance and a relationship. But as I mentioned earlier, seeking is not necessarily an activity. It’s not what you do, its how you do it. It's how you approach those activities. Your intentions and agenda when you do anything in faith matters just as much, or maybe even more so than the actual action.
It is possible to believe, but not to seek.
So here are a few signs of a person who believes but doesn’t seek:
Let's start with the most basic form of believing but not seeking. This is the person who might turn up to church but does not read the word or pray. Prayer and reading the word is the most basic level of communication with God. In this scenario, the person is doing the bare minimum, so as to not arouse questions. Because it looks like you are committed. We had a season recently as a couple, where I wasn’t going to church and my husband was. A lot of that was because of this podcast actually, some people weren’t exactly happy about me having a podcast whilst I believe it is Gods will for me to do this. So I felt like the best thing to do was keep away for a bit. We knew we were in a season of transition geographically, and I already had a good idea of where we would be going once we moved interstate. Anyhow, my husband was turning up to church every week and playing the guitar on a Sunday. Everybody assumed that he was going great with the Lord. That His relationship with God was so strong. But during that whole season, he wasn’t exactly picking up his Bible. But every now and then someone would ask him questions about me… “So how is Mel, is she okay? We are worried about her?”...meanwhile I was spending up to 2 hours a day in prayer, reading Gods word, reading books about God, pursuing Him in every way imaginable, having fellowship with other believers, pastorally caring and serving other believers, praying for them. Giving. I just wasn’t going to church. This is why for me, church attendance is the worst way to judge how someone is going in their faith. It’s a surface level measure of someone's engagement with God. So that’s the most basic form of believing but not seeking.
This next one is a little harder to ascertain. The people who read scripture but only do so to affirm what they already believe. This is probably the most common category. And I think this can happen so easily for those who have been Christians for a long time. If we all were genuinely seeking God, it would be commonplace to be constantly grappling with concepts in scripture. Because by nature scripture is a countercultural text. How are we in the Christian middle and upper class, not absolutely struggling with the passages about giving away our possessions, giving to the poor, and storing up treasures in heaven? If we were to truly think hard about the application of these passages, it would require us to grapple and hopefully eventually lead to some change. The reason we aren’t is that when we read scripture we overlook what could challenge us, and rather look for what affirms what we already comfortably believe. I think this is the case even when it comes to the preachers we listen to. It’s not common for people to listen to preachers that challenge them. It’s more common for us to listen to the preachers that can repackage what we already believe in a way that tantalises us.
Being a believer doesn’t necessarily make you a seeker of God. And according to scripture, God is much more interested in us seeking Him than merely attesting to His existence.
Alternatively, let's consider some signs of a person who genuinely seeks God:
They read scripture expecting to see things that they have never seen or comprehended before. Things that may even mean they need to change how they are living or change what they once believed!
They pray desperate prayers. God show me! Lord reveal yourself to me! Lord I’m hungry for you! Lord fill up my soul! These are desperate relationally oriented prayers. It’s the prayer of someone who seeks.
They are frequently working on things that God has revealed to them. Because they are always searching, God keeps revealing. I have a friend like this and the most common thing she asks me is “Mel what is God speaking to you about at the moment? What's He showing you?” She fully anticipates that God is always teaching, sharing and growing me because it is the nature of her relationship with God
Again, just because we are believers does not make us seekers. But I would argue that one's belief in Jesus, is not so concrete if the desire to seek is absent. In other words, I would wonder how deeply a person believes in Jesus if they don’t want to deeply seek Him.
Just imagine I am a lawyer defending an innocent man of a crime he didn’t commit. Now even if I don’t believe him to be innocent, I would still search out as much evidence as I can possibly locate to shed some doubt over his guilt. But if I completely believed him to be innocent, the extent to which I would go to identify any little bit of evidence that proves his innocence would be virtually limitless. I would do everything I possibly could. I would travel across the country, interview experts upon experts, I would dedicate my every waking moment to ensuring that justice would be served and prevent him from a prison sentence.
Now, if I were to really grasp in my inner being the things that I profess to know and understand about Christ, I might not be able to stand. I would be compelled to bow down and worship this glorious Lord. Now I’m just talking about what I do know. How about all that could be known about God that is not in plain sight in scripture? If our spiritual ancestors were as accustomed to ‘seeking’ God as we are today, they would never have even identified the Trinitarian nature of God, because it is not at all in plain sight. This happened because people sought God and His word deeply, for things they didn’t already know. Now I don’t know how many major theological discoveries like that might still exist…but I wouldn’t want to miss it just because I got complacent.
So let's go a little deeper. I have alluded to this, but underlying the act of seeking, is a critical presupposition that we often fail to acknowledge. In order to seek, we admit in thought and action that we don’t know all there is to know about God. I know it doesn’t sound so impressive. But whilst we might logically agree with such a notion, we don’t necessarily consider what this presupposition implies when we aren’t seeking God. So often when we talk about God we speak of him as though we have arrived at a complete knowledge of Him. This in fact is the very reason we may not consider the task of seeking so vital because what need is there for seeking if we have arrived at a place of all-knowing? Why weren’t the Pharisees able to recognise the Messiah? Because they had resolved in their heart that they knew all there was to know about the nature of the Messiah. They weren’t looking for Jesus. The truth is, with the exception of a few like Nicodemus, I would wonder if they were genuinely looking for the Messiah as they claimed they were. If they really were looking, and searching for the Messiah wouldn’t they have noticed Jesus? Wouldn’t it have made them more open to the possibility that Jesus was the Messiah? But even though Jesus fulfilled all prophecies about the Messiah, they did not acknowledge Him. This is still a temptation for us today! Maybe it's pride, maybe its complacency…or maybe it's both. But we get comfortable with the God that we know. And we stop believing that there is more.
After Job laments and His friends join the conversation, God interrupts them. And for several chapters from chapter 38 He asks some tough humbling questions like:
“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?”
“Have you commanded the morning since your days began?”
“Do you know the ordinances of heaven?”
And he keeps going and going. Finally, Job responds and says:
“Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me, which I did not know” (Job 42:3)
How could we possibly believe that we could capture a full knowledge God in this lifetime? We can’t! But He also promises that He will reveal himself to us if we seek Him.
So to summarise one more time: the reason we don’t often seek God is because deep down we think we know Him already.
But what a terrible tragedy this is? Don’t we realise that our relationship with Him relies on seeing Him as He is? I mentioned all of this earlier. We only reflect what we see. We have no hope if we don’t see. We have no hope of growth if our vision of Him doesn’t grow.
See I think part of the problem is, we’ve been asking the wrong questions.
If you ask any given Pastor what the most common question is that they hear from congregation members, ultimately directed toward God, they’ll inevitably say:
“What should I DO with my life?” What’s my calling? What’s God’s plan?” So much of our enquiries revolve around action and choices. As though these were the most important questions we could ask. But I want to challenge you today, this is not the most imperative question for your life. The most important question we could ask God is “God, who are you? God reveal yourself? God show me who you are?”
There will never be a time in your faith journey, where God will not be able to either answer this question with something new that you haven’t considered before OR shed new light on something you have known. How is it that there is still so much I don’t know about what it means for God to be our Father? Every couple of years a new layer is peeled back, with regard to what that means. And every time He reveals a new layer, it changes me too.
We are not done. We are not done with discovering God.
Here’s my final thoughts:
As Christians we make this costly mistake when it comes to faith. We assume that the primary purpose of our faith is salvation. Okay not completely. But a little. Don’t get me wrong, it is such an incredible thing that we can even be saved. But thinking that faith is about salvation is like going to the Galapagos Islands and only stopping at the Airport. The Galapagos Island is this remarkable place and it is believed that there are still species of animals and plants yet to be discovered. In 2020 alone, there were 30 NEW species of invertebrates discovered in the waters surrounding the Galapagos islands.
See the fact is, that nobody goes to the Galapagos just to simply say that they’ve been to the Galapagos Islands. Well, I hope. The main reason anyone goes to the Galapagos Islands is because of the wildlife. Botanists and zoologists frequent the Galapagos hoping that they may simply appreciate the rarest animals and plants in the world. And maybe, just maybe, they might discover something new. Something that no one else has ever seen before. To touch something that has never been experienced. To hear the sounds it would make. To observe how it breathes.
If you knew that your relationship with God could be like this, that it could be one big adventure like being on an exotic island, in a state of constant remarkable discovery.
Would you ever stop searching? Would you ever stop seeking? Would you ever stop looking for more truths about God and who He is? Because God is so much greater than a bunch of Islands that He created. There is so much more to God. And I think we may need to repent for thinking that we could ever grasp Him and confine him to a neat little package. Repent for devaluing Him by reducing His infinite eternal nature to a comprehensible idea that we can get comfortable with. We would repent for participating in all the supposedly righteous activities, whilst failing to get down on our knees and seek His face, by far the greatest pursuit in life.