Episode 1. Seek and Ye Shall Find
Prayer’s a funny thing – it’s talking to someone you can’t see or hear – at least not in the same way as we can see or hear the people around us. So – does it make sense? Join Berni, as …
Prayer’s a funny thing – it’s talking to someone you can’t see or hear – at least not in the same way as we can see or hear the people around us. So – does it make sense?
Prayer is such a funny thing. I mean, it’s based on this notion that we can talk to someone we really can’t see or hear. At least not the same way we can see and hear the people around us. Sometimes people pray out loud, other times they pray in their heads. So can he read our thoughts too? And after all, who are we praying to, this God, this Jesus. Who is that?
It’s kind of like we go looking for someone, God. But do we ever find Him? And who is He anyway? Do we want to find Him? Where do we go looking for Him in the first place? I mean, they are all good questions. If you are going to talk to someone you can’t see then surely, first, you have to seek Him to find Him. Don’t you?
I don’t know where you are on your spiritual journey or whether you have pondered those questions. Maybe you’ve just assumed. Maybe you’ve never worried about them. Prayer is a wonderful thing. And we are going to be talking about that over this week and next week on the program.
But it’s a step of faith. It’s talking to someone we can’t see with our eyes. Either he is there at the other end and it all makes sense. Or He isn’t, and we are kidding ourselves. It would be a loopy thing to do if He wasn’t there. So that’s why this week and next week on the program we are looking at the Power of Prayer. Because, I tell you, I believe that prayer is a powerful thing. And it’s a wonderful thing to do.
But before we go there, let’s go back to square one, My hunch is that we need to seek out this God we are praying to. Often, not always, but often people come to God in a time of need. That’s how I first came to God. Life’s going along OK then all of a sudden “Bang”! “Help! Who do I turn to? Maybe I’ll pray”. It happens over and over again. And sometimes it seems that is the only way God can get our attention.
Now it happened to the nation of Israel. Israel were God’s chosen people. They’d gone into the promised land, they’d lived there for a while and then they just didn’t obey God. So God brought judgement on them. He had the Babylonians come and take them out of there and take them into exile.
They were in Babylon exiled in slavery for 70 years wondering where the heck is God. What’s going on. And through Jeremiah the Prophet, (you can read about it in Jeremiah Chapter 29 in the Old Testament) they were doing it real tough and God speaks to them through Jeremiah. And says this:
“These are the plans I have for you, says the Lord, 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 pray to Me and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart. I will be found by you declares the Lord and I will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you declares the Lord and I will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile”.
Now, this is really interesting, because God links the two things I have just been talking about. Seeking God out and praying. Have a look. Verse 12 says:
“Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me and I will listen to you”.
And verse 13:
“You will seek Me and find Me when you seek me with all your heart”.
It kind of makes sense. Before you can really have any deep relationship and communication with someone you have to seek them out. Today my wife Jacqui and I have a really close relationship. We communicate with each other in ways we don’t communicate with anyone else. We have deep and intimate conversations. But when I first met Jacqui she was just a face in the crowd.
And then we went through courtship. And when you think about it a courtship is seeking someone out. That’s exactly what I did. In a sense I had to go after her and she had to come after me. We had to seek each other out from the crowd before we could have this deep and wonderful relationship that we have today.
My hunch is that it’s exactly the same with God. One of my favourite books of all time is “The Pursuit of God” by A.W. Tozer. This is what He writes on the subject of seeking God out. He says:
“Where the modern scientist has lost God amidst the wonders of His world, we are in danger of losing God amidst the wonders of His Word. We’ve almost forgotten” he says, “that God’s a person, and as such, we can have a personal relationship with Him.
“In this hour of all but universal darkness one cheering gleam appears”, writes Tozer, “within the fold of Christianity there are are to be found increasing numbers of people whose lives are marked by this. A growing hunger after God Himself.
“These people won’t be put off with words of show or logic. They won’t be content to busy themselves with nervous activity and yet to feel this inner emptiness. These people are athirst for God. And they won’t be satisfied untill they have drunk deeply from this fountain of living water.
“They desire God above all other things. They’re athirst to taste for themselves the piercing sweetness of the love of Christ about whom the holy prophets wrote and the psalmists sang. They want to taste, to touch with their hearts, to see with their inner eyes the wonder that is God. I want to deliberately encourage this mighty longing after God
“Jesus waits to be wanted. It’s too bad that with so many of us he waits so long, so very long in vain”.
Isn’t that beautiful. It’s exactly what God said through Jeremiah. He said, “When you seek Me with all your heart, then and only then will you find me”. See, when we go and talk with someone that we’re not close to, that we really don’t want to be close to, that communication is kind of shallow. I call it “Cocktail Party Communication”. You know, when you drift over and talk to someone for a few minutes then you drift on to someone else because you have run out of things to say with that first person.
“Oh, but Berni, I have tried praying on and off and its empty and hollow and it doesn’t work”. Ok, let me ask you a question. Have you sought after God Himself with all your heart. Are you hungry, are you thirsty to be with Him. Have you gone after Him. Do you want this relationship with Him more than anything else on earth – with all your heart? This is the starting point of a rich and powerful and rewarding prayer life with God.
Prayer isn’t a casual thing. Prayer isn’t the odd panic button we hit when something’s going wrong. Prayer is an every day thing and it comes out of a desire to seek this Person out. Prayer is a choice we make in our hearts. You know when I first saw Jacqui I looked at her and thought “That’s her! That’s the person.” I didn’t know her but I had to go and seek her out.
You know, just a few Sundays after I first saw her, (I saw her when I was preaching at a church), a few Sundays later we had planned a picnic and I rang some other people and said “Make sure you invite that new woman, Jacqui I think her name is”. I went to a lot of lengths to seek her out and to get her involved and to get to know her. And its that process, that desire to get to know her that now has born fruit.
We have a wonderful relationship. It was something that was a decision of my heart to seek her out. People wonder why they don’t have a great prayer life. Prayer is a decision of the heart. Prayer is when we seek God out with all of our heart. “You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart.”
You know what the implication is? If we don’t seek Him with all our hearts, we won’t find Him. That’s what He’s saying. “But if you seek Me with all of your heart I will be found by you,” declares the Lord.
Comments
Berni Dymet
Hi Fee, here is a response from Pastor Jim on our team.
We should always remember to treat God as a Person. That is, not as a created human person but as a person in whose image we are made (Gen 1:27). The key to a person is their will or the choices they make. God is known for the goodness of His choices. God (as a person) can be known and related to by another person such as we are. We can talk to God as person to person just as Jesus did in His prayer to the Father in John 17. Moses did the same (Exodus 33:11).
I have four examples in scripture of God listening and changing His mind:
1. Abraham argues with God over Sodom and the destruction of the wicked. Should the righteous be slain with the wicked? Abraham gets the number of righteous to save the group from 50 to 10 (Gen 18:22-33).
2. Moses intercedes before God’s anger and God relented (changed His mind) about destroying Israel (Exodus 32:7-14).
3. God looked for an intercessor – someone to plead the case before Him – but none was found (Isaiah 59:16).
4. God decides not to destroy Nineveh (Jonah 3:10).
The idea that God is a remote, unresponsive, impassive, self-serving monolith (piece of rock) is false theology. God, as revealed in Jesus Christ loves us, craves our fellowship, sends His own Son as a sacrifice for our sin and embraces us when we are least embraceable.
A more scriptural theology would be as follows:
– I can relate to God as person to person through Jesus Christ (John 17; Ephesians 3:12; Hebrews 4:16)
– God will listen and respond (Psalm 4, 39:12, 54:2, 61:1). The Psalms are all about interacting with God.
– What do I have the faith to plead with God about (Phil 4:6)?
– Will I enter intercessor mode and carry the intercession to its completion (Is 59:16)?
– Will I fight the good fight of faith (1 Tim 6:12)?
– I bless the Lord for His answer in changing both me and the circumstances for which I pray.
Yet God’s eternal purpose of original creation, final judgement and re-creation will prevail and I worship Him for that.
Whatever our human responses to the idea of God may be, I always need to come under the correction that scripture provides. Otherwise I invent my own god and get bushed in my own religion.
Bring your concern to God and learn to wrestle with Him in prevailing, faith-stretching, life-wrenching glory.
Fee Williamson
Thanks Berni, just wondering why we pray for something or someone if God doesn’t change His mind?