Seek God

We closed on our house in NC on Friday (7/17) morning. Now we are back in NY. We move in sometime in mid to late August. Later that day (7/17) I attended an amazing event in Asheville, Awake NC. Speakers included Isik Abla (calling for America to repent), Richard Owen Roberts (calling for America to seek God), Anne Graham Lotz (calling for the Church to renew her relationship with the Spirit ), and Dennis Sempebwa (calling the Church to walk in the Power of Jesus). It was an amazing weekend of renewal, personal revival, and healing. Real physical and emotional healing.

Dennis spoke on Saturday night. Then, following his usual custom with large groups, he called people forward. I had the opportunity to pray separately for two women. I spoke with both on Sunday afternoon. One was healed of persistent bleeding and the other was set free from a huge weight of guilt and shame that she had carried for decades. Both were joyful. And that is only two out of over a hundred who attended. The Power of God!

But the biggest surprise of the weekend was Richard Owen Roberts. He has to be one of the most prophetic voices of our times. He is in his 80’s but looks older. When he walked onto the stage I thought he might topple over. Oh boy, was I wrong. He preached with power, passion, conviction, and purpose. He called the Church to return to God (check out Isaiah 55: 6, 7 in the NKJV. The NIV translates it as ‘turn to the Lord’, the NKJV as ‘return to the Lord’), to relentlessly seek God through reading of Scripture to learn the mind of God; and laboring in prayer to reach the heart of God. He said “the primary duty of our entire life is to seek God and His Kingdom. Seek and go on seeking – as long as we seek Him He will be found. If we stop seeking He will not be found.” Humility is the essential posture when seeking God. What does God desire? A broken and contrite heart (e.g. Psalm 51: 16, 17). God says “I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly is spirit” (Isaiah 57: 15).  God lives in two places: the high and holy place and in the heart of the contrite and lowly in spirit, the brokenhearted. But not in the heart of the arrogant, self-satisfied, and selfish. This is another reason Oswald Chambers commands us to “give up the right to ourselves” – so that God will live in our hearts. Otherwise, He will not.

He shared Scripture with us. Here are the passages he selected to emphasize the critical importance for Christians to relentlessly seek God:

Then Moses said to Him, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up  from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?” And the Lord said to Moses, “I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name” (Exodus 33: 15-17).

Part of seeking God is to ask God to go with us. “God, do not leave us or abandon us”. Without God going with us, we are exactly like everyone else in the world – nothing distinguishes us from them. We are beset by the same sins, suffer the same fears and anxieties, and are susceptible to the same attacks by Satan. But God’s people are different. We have God; therefore in the Kingdom of God we live with peace and joy in the midst of the battle.

The Spirit of God came upon Azariah son of Oded. He went out to meet Asa and said to him, “Listen to me, Asa and all Judah and Benjamin. The Lord is with you when you are with Him. If you seek Him, He will be found by you, but if you forsake Him, He will forsake you. For a long time Israel was without the true God, without a priest to teach and without the law. But in their distress they turned to the Lord, the God of Israel, and sought Him, and He was found by them…When Asa heard these words and the prophecy of Azariah son of Oded the prophet, he took courage. He removed the detestable idols from the whole land of Judah and Benjamin and from the towns he had captured in the hills of Ephraim. He repaired the altar of the Lord that was in front of the portico of the Lord’s temple. Then he assembled all Judah and Benjamin and the people from Ephraim, Manasseh, and Simeon who had settled among them…They assembled at Jersusalem…At that time they sacrificed to the Lord seven hundred head of cattle and seven thousand sheep and goats…They entered into a covenant to seek the Lord, the God of their fathers, with all their heart and soul…They sought God eagerly, and He was found by them. So the Lord gave them rest on every side (2 Chronicles 15: 1-12).

This is an important description of true revival. Israel and Judah had turned away from God. They had stopped seeking and obeying Him; they worshiped idols. In their distress, because that is the consequence of not seeking God, they turned back to God. This turning back, the essence of repentance, was accompanied by these three steps:

First, they believed the promise “if you seek Him, He will be found by you” and understood the admonition “if you forsake Him, He will forsake you”. These are chilling words, or they should be. If you forsake God, He will not go with you and there will be nothing to distinguish you from every other person on earth. You will not walk in God’s rest. Judging by the state of affairs in America and the impotence of the Church to influence our culture, much of the Church has forsaken God. But if you seek Him – He will be found by you; He will not hide. Hallelujah!!

Second, they removed the idols. God is calling us to identify and remove the idols in our lives and in our church. This requires first seeking God because we cannot do this in our power. Then, again in His power, systematically and relentlessly identifying those ultimate things that give us the value, acceptance, and connection that only God can/should give. Once identified, in our hearts and in our church, we must turn away from them. Crucify them, bury them; whatever it takes. They are offensive to God. We must not treat them lightly. Yes God is a God of grace, but He hates our idols.

Third, Asa called an assembly where the people made a covenant to seek God with all their heart and soul and repented. This is called a solemn assembly. They all assembled. Not just Judah and Benjamin, but all under the authority of Asa. Their covenant was to seek God.

America is rapidly becoming (some would say “has become”) like the nation of post-Solomon Israel – forsaking the God of their fathers and worshiping every idol that men are capable of dreaming up (sorry to sound so Old Testamentish). If we are seriously concerned about life in America, then these three steps laid out by God are at the heart of revival. Revival? It first begins in my heart, then the heart of the Church. There can be no revival in America without these first steps.

Jesus commands us to do the same things in Matthew 6: 33. But first seek His Kingdom and His righteous, and all these things will be given to you as well. Seek ‘God’s Kingdom’ is the same thing as saying “Seek God” because God cannot be separated from His Kingdom. So, Jesus says “First, seek God”. Then, “Second, seek His righteousness” which is rooted in the Greek word meaning holiness. We seek His holiness as we turn away from the sins in our lives, most of which are rooted in our idols. In other words, we seek His righteous when we, with contrite hearts and lowly spirits, seek God, confessing our sins and relinquishing our idols; that is, repent. If we will do this, He promises that He will be found by us. To be found, in part, is to be known by Him. And as God knows us, He heals us. As we do this, “all these things will be given to you as well”. When we have what we need, we are walking in ‘His rest’.

As I read the passage in 2 Chronicles and thought about the Matthew verses, I was struck by the fact that we must seek. Aren’t we saved by grace and not by works? True, we cannot do good deeds to earn salvation. But we must choose what is offered to us. This is what Jesus means, I think, when he says further along in Matthew “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, he who seeks finds, and to him who knocked the door will be opened” (Matthew 7: 7). I take this to mean that the door to the Kingdom of God will be opened to him who asks, seeks, and knocks. But when the door is opened, we must enter; that is our choice. And not all of us are willing to do that.

What about Luke 15 where Jesus tells the parables of the lost sheep, lost coin, and lost son? In the first two of the parables, Jesus seeks the lost in contrast to us seeking Him. Or, as 2 Chronicles says “if you seek Him He will be found by you”. In Luke, Jesus is saying that we will be found by Him. But notice that in these passages Jesus is still pointing to our work of repentance, which to me means deciding to enter His Kingdom and making a solemn decision to leave the idols of the kingdom of the world behind. He says “I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents that over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent” (Luke 15: 7).

This apparent paradox: I seek God, God seeks me – has been the story of my life. When I was lost, God sought me. He brought me to a place where I was offered a choice to stay where I was or walk through a door into another, more glorious life. I chose the latter. But then, it has been a constant journey of seeking Christ and His life everyday. I often fail, but He constantly ventures out in the night to bring me back. Embedded in all of this, is my need to daily repent as I relentlessly seek Him.

We are commanded to seek God and His Kingdom. The truth is we are either seeking our life (value, acceptance, connection, worth) in God and His Kingdom or we are seeking our ‘life’ (value, acceptance, connection, worth) in the kingdom of the world, also known as the kingdom of self, where the real king is not us but Satan. There is no other reality – one or the other. Either we are seeking God or we are forsaking God in all that we do, think, or say every day. If the former, we will find Him. If the latter, God will forsake us. Looking at my life, I see both happening. Fortunately, there is grace. But grace does not cover a multitude of sins. I need to be seeking God with all of our heart, even though I frequently fail. Here is the other major paradox in our walk with Jesus: the love of God vs. the wrath of God; the acceptance by God vs the rejection by God manifested in the removal of His covering over our lives. I believe that God is in the process of removing His covering from America. What about you and me? Is the same thing happening in our lives? Is God forsaking us because in our hearts we have forsaken Him and are no longer worshiping Him, even though we go to church each Sunday.

There is good news. No matter how far from God we have moved, if we turn and seek God He will be found by us. Isn’t that great? He will not hide, if first, we look for Him. But ‘seek God’ is the primary and most important duty of every Christian. Only in this way will we find Him and only in this way can we glorify Him. And ‘seek God’ means ‘seek Him and His Kingdom’, at the same time rejecting ‘life’ in that other kingdom – this is repentance. If we are not Kingdom people we are not His people.

As I read these words, I think perhaps too much emphasis has been put on the Old Testament. Isn’t Jesus ‘nicer’ that Jehovah? No. God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. He hasn’t changed. We need to live in the tension between law and grace, between mystery and knowledge.