SCRIPTURE: Isaiah 53:6
(TM)
Seek God while
he's here to be found, pray to him while he's close at hand.
STORY:
The caller telephoned a home. A small child answers with a
whisper, “Hello.” The caller asked, “Is your mom or dad home?” The child
whispers, “Yes.” “May I speak with one of them please?” “No.” “Why?” “Because
they’re busy.” “Is there someone else there?” the caller inquired. “Yes, my
grandpa and grandma, but they’re busy too.” the child whispered. “Well, is
there anyone else there that I might speak with?” “A policeman and fireman are
here, but they are busy too.” “Hmmm, what are all these people busy doing?”
“They’re looking for me.”
OBSERVATION:
And so it goes with our relationship with God. It would
appear that we really do want to be found, but we are too busy hiding from God.
We want a relationship, but God has to do all the heavy lifting. We want a
daily walk with God, but we aren’t really ready to do anything meaningful to
make it happen.
As Max Lucado states in, And The Angels Were Silent,
pages 15, 78: “Simplify your faith by
seeking God for yourself…. You got a Bible? You can study. You got a heart? You
can pray. You got a mind? You can think.” The tools for faith development
are in our possession … now we have to use them.
Scripture directs us to seek God. Go out of our way to find
him. Let nothing stand in our way. The resources are all available so use them.
And still we hide as if the spiritual walk is a game of hide-n-seek … we hide
and God has to find us.
A gentleman complained that he doesn’t get a lot out of
coming to church. He expressed that he got very little from the sermons. He
often shared of his desire to grow a deeper faith. And besides the people at
church hardly ever spoke to him. Out of curiosity I checked his attendance
record. He came about once every 8 weeks. Not a good start. Then I asked if he
had a Bible. “Yes, but I don’t read it because it is too hard to understand.”
Nor did he attend Sunday school. In essence he was hiding from God. He wanted
to be found, but he wasn’t doing anything to make it real.
If we want to learn how to swim we’ve got to get in the pool
and get wet. Not once or twice or even three times, but constantly. Every day.
All the time. In the pool, kicking those legs, working the arms. The same is
true with a relationship with God.
Another way to look at it is that it is like our
relationship with our spouse. When we decided that we wanted to have a deeper
and more meaningful relationship with her or him … maybe even marriage … we
went out of our way to be in their presence. We dated constantly. We went
wherever they wanted us to go. We expressed ourselves. We bought them flowers
or a box of candy or a piece of jewelry.
We worked at the relationship until we both fell in love.
And so it is with our relationship with God. God did find us
in Jesus Christ. Now it is up to us. He came. He continues to come. He seeks.
He desires. But we have to come out of hiding. We at least have to want to be
found. We cannot leave it to the preacher or our spouse or a teacher or some
other significant spiritual leader in our life to take us by the hand and pull
us out of hiding.
It doesn’t make sense? Like any subject we learned at
school. Initially it we didn’t understand math either or English sentence
structure or history or science … until the teachers kept exposing us to the
subject. Evidentially it began to make sense. It isn’t any different with God …
it really isn’t!
PRAYER:
God, help us to come out of hiding and stop playing games
with our relationship with you. Help us to grow as we seek you out. Open our
eyes, our ears, our heart to your reality. And, by the way, thank you for not
giving up on us.
No comments:
Post a Comment