Seek The Lord

“You will seek me and find me. When you seek me with all your heart, I will be found by you, declares the LORD…” Jeremiah 29:13, 14

Foundational to the life of seeking, which is the calling of all who believe in Jesus Christ, is the responsibility and privilege of seeking the Lord. Before we seek anything else, we must learn to seek the Lord.

As God asserted through the prophet Jeremiah, He intends for us to find Him, on condition that we seek Him with all our hearts. The psalmist understood this most important objective, and he devoted himself to seeking the Lord early and earnestly (Ps. 63:1). In Psalm 105:4 the specifics of what we are to seek concerning the Lord are briefly stated: His presence and His strength. The teaching of the New Testament is along these same lines.

The true seeker is the one who seeks the presence and glory of God, to partake of Him in such a way that His strength comes to expression as glory and love in the seeker’s own life. Eternal life, which all have “found” who believe in Jesus Christ, is summed up by Jesus Christ as “knowing” the Lord (Jn. 17:3). What we seek in knowing the Lord is to encounter His glory, to enter into it, and, in the strength of the Lord, to show His glory to the world around us (Hab. 2:14).

But we must seek the Lord with all our heart, as He Himself instructs. This is the indispensable condition for seeking and knowing the Lord. We must be serious about seeking Him, daily and continuously devoted to the task, and careful to keep out of our lives anything that hinders our quest to know the Lord.

God is pleased to reveal Himself and His glory to us in the pages of Scripture (2 Cor. 3:12-18) and in the created world around us (Ps. 19:1-4; Ps. 66:18). It is the glory of God to conceal Himself and His glory in the Scriptures and the creation; our duty, as His appointed priests and rulers (1 Pt. 2:9, 10), is to seek out the glory of God in each of these places, so that we might enter into His presence and be transformed by His glory (Prov. 25:2).

Thus, we are seeking the Lord when through reading Scripture, meditating on it and studying God’s Word, and by prayer and other disciplines, together with the study of God’s works in creation, we are daily and faithfully engaged in ferreting out His glory.

To seek God with all our heart is to be enthusiastic about meeting the Lord wherever He may be pleased to reveal Himself, and to devote ourselves to the task of seeking the Lord in His Word and creation according to the ways He Himself has provided.

God commands us to seek Him, and He promises that, if we will, if we will seek Him with all our hearts, then we shall surely find Him and the promise of full and abundant life which is to be known in Him alone.

Seeking the Lord takes time, discipline, and good habits of study and prayer. It must be a daily, consistent, and even conscious endeavor on our parts, seeking God as our greatest longing, highest desire, and most determined activity, every day of our lives. If we will seek the Lord in the ways He has provided, through Scripture and creation, then we shall certainly be able to fulfill the most fundamental obligation of those who have found the gift of eternal life.

For more by T.M. Moore, please visit Breakpoint.org