A game I enjoyed playing as a child was “Hide and Seek.” I guess I enjoyed it so much I taught it to my children. They enjoyed it so much that they still suggest we play the game. (This despite that they’re all in their late 20’s or early 30’s. What can I say? They’re my children, and I guess they take after me—why grow up if you don’t really have to?) The kids on our block played a variation of the game as we were growing up, but the bottom line is that there was always an “It” and that “It’s” job was to seek out those who were hidden.
I raise this issue because sometimes it seems that God is very adept at playing hide and seek, where He is the hider and we are the seekers. There are times I wonder if it is really possible to find God.
There are those who insist God cannot be found, either because He doesn’t exist or because He doesn’t care. They claim that if He really did care or existed, He’d intervene in our world in a way that would eliminate all evil and all that is bad with the world. Some argue that they did look for Him, but He was not to be found.
I don’t want to argue with another person’s experiences, but I do want to argue against the idea that God cannot be found. I know of too many people who not only have found Him but who now claim to have a personal relationship with Him. I am one of those. The ways that God has been found is as various as each person is. There are so many stories about how someone has come to find God, but there are some common ways that is consistent with the Bible and with the way God deals with us.
A Caveat
I know of people who have claimed to found God, only to be led astray by Him or were abandoned by Him. Again, I do not want to argue with a person’s personal experience. But I will question the validity of what they have seen or heard. Paul writes, “. . . for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve” (2 Corinthians 11:14b-15). In other words, it is possible to have a revelation from “God,” when, in reality, we have been deceived by Satan. Jesus tells us that Satan “. . . was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44b). It is possible that Satan can come to someone speaking as if the voice of God, and, using that disguise, so mislead someone as to render them so disillusioned as to be almost incapable of finding God.
Still, there is always hope. God can be found, but we must seek Him and, in our searching, be open to His words.
How Do We Seek God?
In Jeremiah, God gives a message of hope and deliverance to Jeremiah for the exiles of Judea who find themselves in Babylon. God uses Jeremiah to tell the exiles they will spend 70 years in exile, then God will come to them and return them to Israel. God tells them, “For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me with and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart. I will be found by you . . .” (Jeremiah 29:11-14a).
So, God says we find Him when we seek with all our heart. The heart of Old Testament thought was the center of one’s being, what we would today call the soul. The soul is that part of our being that makes us who we are. It is the house of our emotions and thoughts—it is the seat of our personality. We express our soul to the world through our bodies, and we express our soul to God through the spirit. So, we find God when we seek Him with our total being.
There must also be an openness to us about finding God. When Jesus came to a town called Sychar in Samaria, He sent the disciples to find food, while He stayed at the well outside town (cf. John 4). A woman came to the well, and Jesus began a conversation with her. The fact that Jesus spoke to her was quite unusual for the time and place. For one thing, it was very unconventional for a strange man to speak to a strange woman publicly. For another, Jews never spoke to Samaritans if they could help it. So, for a Jewish man to speak to a Samaritan woman was both surprising and intriguing. She could have responded by refusing to speak to Him, or she could have fled to get help from the town. Instead, she chose to carry on a conversation with Jesus. She was open to hearing what He had to say. The result was a conversation that eventually led her to discover for herself that Jesus is the Messiah promised by God to deliver us from sin (cf. vs. 19-29).
When we are seeking God, we should not be afraid to ask questions. Saul on the road to Damascus was confronted by a blinding vision of Christ. Jesus spoke to Saul, “Why do you persecute Me?” (Acts 9:4). Saul’s response was reasonable: “Who are you, Lord?” (Acts 9:5a). Jesus’ response was that He is Jesus, and He then instructed Saul what He wanted him to do.
The seeking of God with an open heart and mind, and a willingness to confirm who He is, is only the beginning of finding God. Generally, coming into God’s presence—finding Him—leads to a keen awareness of one’s own sinfulness and often leads to confession and repentance. That feeling of deep conviction, when accompanied by confession and repentance, is then accompanied with a sense of peace and acceptance.
To confirm that a person has found God, it is wise to not only rely on our feelings, but we also need to confirm the meeting as genuine. Again, Saul, or Paul as he came to be known, gives us a guide to what we should do. Paul, writing to the Galatians, wrote, “But when God . . . was pleased to reveal His Son in me so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not consult any man, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went immediately into Arabia and later returned to Damascus. Then, after three years I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Peter and I stayed with him fifteen days. I saw none of the other apostles—only James, the Lord’s brother” (Galatians 1:15-19).
What Paul did after his Damascus road experience was to spend a few days in Damascus, then head out to the Arabian desert. There, from other of Paul’s writings, we can surmise that he spent time in prayer and study, listening to the voice of God through Scripture and through visions. Throughout Paul’s writings, he refers to receiving instruction from the Lord. I believe this time of instruction was the Arabian and Damascus periods. The point being, if we believe we have found God as we have sought Him, we confirm it with a time of confession and repentance followed by a time of prayer and study. Once we find God, it is in our best interest to learn from Him and discern His will for us. The confirmation of the discovery is important when we remember that Satan can appear as an angel of light, and that he can lie to us about anything and everything. God confirms His instructions because He does not contradict Scripture. God will never tell us one thing personally and then tell us something completely opposite with the Bible.
What Happens When We Find God?
Seeking and finding God is a life-changing event. Not only does it lead to a time of confession and repentance and of revelation, but it also leads to a deepening of the relationship between God and us. Usually, when we are seeking God, we are doing so because we sense the need to do so. God, who knows what we need before we ask Him, oftentimes will work in our lives to bring us to the point that we come to the realization that we need to look for Him. Like Paul on the road to Damascus, like the woman at the well, like Nicodemus who came to Jesus at night (John 3), our lives are transformed by the encounter.
One of my favorite passages of Scripture is in Joshua 5:13-15. Joshua has been chosen as the successor to Moses, and he is to be the one to lead Israel in the conquest of the Promised Land. Knowing this, Joshua and the people of Israel find themselves with their first great test of claiming the land. They are camped near the city of Jericho. In the passage, it reads, “Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, ‘Are you for us or our enemies?’ ‘Neither,’ he replied, ‘but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.’ Then Joshua fell facedown to the ground in reverence, and asked him, ‘What message does my Lord have for his servant?’ The commander of the Lord’s army replied, ‘Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy.’ And Joshua did so.”
What I like about that passage is the stripping away of the idea that God chooses sides. God doesn’t choose sides, but He is always about His will being done. The decision is ours to make—will we be on His side, or will be oppose Him? (Jesus said, “He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters”—Matthew 12:30). When we find God, almost always, we will respond as Joshua did when confronted by the commander of the Lord’s army—we will seek to know His will and to obey Him. We will strip away any presuppositions we may have had and place ourselves at God’s disposal, if we are prudent.
Conclusion
Our relationship with God is not one of Spiritual hide-and-seek. It is not one where God actively seeks to distance Himself from us. God is the initiator of our relationship with Him—He is the One who sent Jesus as a redeemer and atonement for our sins. It is God that wants a relationship with us. But He will not impose Himself on us. As Jesus reminds the church at Laodicea, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with Me” (Revelation 3:20). Jesus promises us in the Sermon on the Mount, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7).
Don’t be afraid to look for God. He will be found, because He is always near.
© 2018 Glynn Beaty