Thursday, July 19, 2007

seeking God

The psalms redound with this ring to seek the LORD, to seek his face, along with other passages in Scripture. I believe we often do this because we know that we're lost, and that's half the battle.

To seek God's face is to seek his light found in his countenance, revealed to us Spirit-ually, by revelation in an experiential way, not only in the mind. And it is to seek his blessing in helping us through difficulties and impossibilities, to ourselves, that we may walk in the way of the Lord.

What do we do? A good way to go about it is to open up to the psalms. Start at Psalm 1 and begin praying your way through them, in the name of Jesus and even as one in Jesus, that is the psalms impacted and fulfilled by his person and work for us and the world.

This includes confession of our sins and petitions for God's forgiveness and restoration. Of course through Jesus' death we have the forgiveness of our sins, but to receive that we must really want it or choose it regardless of our wants and feelings. And as we seek God we open ourselves up to receive from him his grace to give us what we can never work up in ourselves.

Seeking God is often done in times of desperation, when we know that without God's help we're sunk. But we must be ready and willing to obey, seeking to do so eagerly, from the heart, not sugarcoating any sin, as sweet as it may seem to us, along with the bitterness it brings.

These are just some aspects of seeking God that I see in reading Scripture and in living and trying to do this very thing myself. What have you seen about seeking God?

8 comments:

Halfmom, AKA, Susan said...

that it is good that He allows Himself to be found - because I really stink at successfully seeking somedays - it seems that all I do is spin in a circle and wonder where I am

L.L. Barkat said...

Yes, the Psalms. I've been seeking God this year, outside under my pine tree, with a cup of tea in one hand and the Psalms on my knee. It has been a blessed time of refreshment and wonder.

Anonymous said...

I've been discussing "revelation in an experiential way" with a coworker a lot lately. She's nervous about Christian mysticism that relies too heavily on some perceived experience.

Your comments on Psalms here remind me a bit of Mark Roberts book about Psalms, No Holds Barred.

Anonymous said...

i is good to realize that seeking God is half the battle...sometimes we can see it, as the world does, as a person being lazy, reading, and waisting time. The truth is that it is wonderfully important to seek and spend time with God. thank you for the encouragement.

Ted M. Gossard said...

Susan, I can identify with you there. I'm thinking that maybe there are special times when we especially seek God for some reason. But on the other hand, I also think it is good to make it a daily practice and habit of life in our endeavor to follow Christ in the grace of God.

But I think it's just something we need to keep doing, regardless of how we may seem to be getting nowhere much of the time. I'm sure you'd agree with that. (yeah, we do have our dry days)

Ted M. Gossard said...

L.L., I've been doing that at work lately under a pine tree as well, minus the tea.

Good to keep at it, as you testify. Your thoughts in the past and now are a good encouragement to us all!

Ted M. Gossard said...

Mark, That is a fear with some Christians. I don't know how we can read the New Testament (or the Old, for that matter) and discount the mystical. The mind is involved in our faith as well but part of that involvement is to acknowledge the mystery of the revelation that Christ is in us, we are in him and God is at work in ways beyond us as we move ahead obediently by faith....

That would be a fine book, I'm sure!

Ted M. Gossard said...

Nancy, Yes. Those should be a part of our daily lives, especially certain habitual times. As well we should have seasons where we get away and seek God's face in a special way.

Sometimes the good, which has some place in our lives, can displace the very best, and then that good becomes very dry for us, or we become very dry and hardly recognize that. A danger.