The God who Seeks

I am reading a really great book right now.  It is called "The Power of a Whisper: Hearing God, Having the Guts to Respond".  I am told it is on the NYT Bestseller's List.  That isn't how I came across it.  I was at a 2 day Global Leadership Summit in early August and Bill Hybels, the author, is the lead pastor of the church who launched this world wide satellite feed conference to empower leaders in the church.  It was an amazing 2 days.  After hearing him speak, I bought his book.  It is my first ever Kindle download!  Am lovin' this whole i-Pad thing!

So I am 7 chapters in and it is really good.  I think the title is pretty self explanatory as far as the content. But different things keep leaping out at me.  This simple little line for example:  "Our God is not only near; he actively seeks us out....his presence is not passive.  He seeks us out so that he can encourage us to keep going, to move ahead, to live".  This spoke to me in a powerful way.  I had to read it several times in order to let those words sink in.  A God who actively seeks us out.  Amazing.

So much of the time we run around "seeking".  The most common example that comes to mind is people who are seeking to "find themselves" And others who say they are "seeking God"  or "seeking God's will for my life".  I have had that last thought myself many times.   But the paradigm shifts when we think about God seeking us!    I mean it is one thing for the insignificant to seek the Omnipotent. That makes sense.  But why would the Omnipotent seek the insignificant?  Why does the creator of the universe, the Alpha and the Omega, the Bright Morning Star, the God Most High, seek us?  That is the beautiful mystery.

And the answer is love.  Overwhelming, relentless love, to quote my favorite author of the moment, Francis Chan.  My eldest son does not believe in a "personal God".  He calls himself a deist.  The dictionary definition of deist is this: " a belief in a God who created the world but has since remained indifferent to it"  To say that our views are diametrically opposed would be an understatement.  The notion of a God who just created everything and then walked off and left it all makes zero sense to me.  And experientially I find this to be untrue as well.  Instead what I have found is a God who seeks, a God who saves, and a God who loves us beyond all reason.  We don't need to do a thing.  We don't need to go in search of Him.  He is always drawing near to us.  Be still and know......Shalom