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Seeking God
By Chap Bettis

For the past year, I have been involved with a monthly prayer meeting with the HC leaders. I’d like to share with you something that the Lord has put on my heart based on these prayer meetings. It is a theme I am shared with the HC two weeks ago. I have talked with the elders, perhaps it could be a theme for our year.

But before I share it with you, I need some marriage advice. Would you ladies help me out?

· Why do I need to keep dating my wife?

· Once I was single. The way to get a wife is to date her. So Sharon and I dated. But then I proposed, she said yes, and we got married. I got her. I have her.

· So help me out women, why do I need to keep dating her?

· So she’ll be happy if I just take her out to eat once in a while? Is it just the actions? My attitude as well?

I believe many Christians need similar advice in their marriage covenant with God.

· On the one hand, if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, you have found God, you know God, you are brought into covenant with God.

· On the other hand, we are to be a people who are still seeking God.

· What I am anxious to see in Christian believers is a beautiful paradox. I want to see in them the joy of finding God while at the same time they are blessedly pursuing Him. I want to see in them the great joy of having God yet always wanting Him. -- A.W. Tozer in Men Who Met God. Christianity Today, Vol. 31, no. 1.

· What does it mean to seek God? How are we to seek God.

· I am starting to realize in my own life, that a lot of what fills my mind is how to have a Christian marriage, Christian child rearing, NT church.

· But where is God in all this? Where is the first commandment. Those are all great fulfillments of the second commandment but where is the first, loving God?

· Can we be like the husband who never dates his wife again. Or the mother to be who loves the baby items more than the baby.

· In the 1980s there was a marketing campaign called “I found it.” The idea was for Christians to start discussion about what finding it. But I even though that campaign is over, is it possible for Christians to have a similar attitude today?

· To think in our heart, I have found God or rather God has found me and I’m all set. I believe that is a danger I face and you face in your attitude toward God.

Read 2 Chronicles 15:1-19. 2 Chronicles is a book of those who seek God, Asa – 14, Jehosophat-17, Uzziah-26, Hezekiah-31, Josiah-34.

Lets focus on three lessons in this passage concerning seeking God.

God rewards those who seek him.

· 15:15 They sought God eagerly, and he was found by them. So the Lord gave them rest on every side.

· Heb 11:6 And without faith, it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who diligently seek him.

· Matthew 5:6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they will be filled.

· Over and over in Scripture, God commands that we seek him. God desires that we should continue to seek him. And it seems from this verse that God rewards those who seek him.

o Psalms really are a record of one who seeks God.

Rewards us Spiritually

· 15:2 If you seek him, he will be found by you.

· 1 Chron 28:9 – David to Solomon, If you seek Him he will let you find him.

· God rewards the man who seeks after him. God does not play hide and seek with us.

· Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. (Ps 37:4)

· Taste and see that the Lord is good. (Ps 34:8)

Physically

· 15:15 The Lord gave them rest on every side.

· 26:5 Uzziah – He sought God during the days of Zechariah, who instructed him in the fear of God. As long as he sought the Lord, God gave him success.

· 31:21 Hezekiah In everything that he undertook in the service of God’s temple and in obedience to the law and the commands, he sought his God and worked wholeheartedly. And so he prospered.

· Ps 34:10 Those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.

· Ezra 8:22 – The good hand of the Lord is on everyone who seeks him.

Not just for adults,

· 34:3 Josiah In the eighth year of his reign, while he was still young (16) he (Josiah) began to seek the God of his father David.

· David was a teen after God’s own heart.

The theme of 2 Chronicles is those who seek the Lord will find him and be rewarded.

· The institutional church in America is filled with religious people who desperately need an experience of the living, holy, forgiving, gracious God. -- Lloyd John Ogilvie in Leadership, Vol. 10, no. 3.

· This is the danger – Truly born again people who stop seeking God quickly become religious. It is not religion we are seeking. It is God.

· Have you lost that first desire?

o I have found in my own life that often I have a greater desire for a godly family or a NT church than to have a great desire for God.

o We cannot pursue the second greatest commandment at the expense of the first!

o God desires that we seek him. God will reward those who seek him.

o Will you pursue that paradox - What I am anxious to see in Christian believers is a beautiful paradox. I want to see in them the joy of finding God while at the same time they are blessedly pursuing Him. I want to see in them the great joy of having God yet always wanting Him.

Second lesson about seeking God.

God brings distress so that we will seek him

· 15:4-6 But in their distress they turned to the Lord, the God of Israel and sought him, and he was found by them. In those days it was not safe to travel about, for all the inhabitants of the lands were in great turmoil. One nation was being crushed by another and once city by another, because God was troubling them with every kind of distress.

It is often distress that causes us to seek God more, isn’t it.

· Ps 77:2 In the day of trouble, I sought the Lord.

· 2 Chron 7:14 If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and heal their land.

· Philip Yancey, Leadership, Vol. 14, no. 4. We grow and mature spiritually through adversity- ... [I]n a time of adversity or trouble, the Christian has the opportunity to know God in a special and personal way.

· In Enterprise Alabama, a small town in southern Alabama, there is the strangest statue you will ever see. It is a statue in honor of an insect. The monument consists of a sculpture of a lady wearing a flowing white gown, holding high above her head a black boll weevil. The pair stand 13-and-a-half feet above street level and are surrounded by a concrete basin from which flows a lighted fountain. The Boll Weevil. Why?

o farmers in southern Alabama who were accustomed to planting one crop every year--cotton. They would plow as much ground as they could and plant their crop. Year after year they lived by cotton. Then one year the dreaded boll weevil devastated the whole area.

o In 1915 the Mexican boll weevil invaded southern Alabama and began destroying the crop that everyone planted – cotton. However, one Enterprise businessman realized the boll weevil was on a course to severely damage local prosperity, so he took matters into his own hands. His name was H.M. Sessions, and he determined that peanuts would make a good crop for the area. In 1916 he convinced a deeply-indebted farmer named C.W. Baston to take a chance on peanuts for one year. Baston was a cotton farmer who had been hit hard by the boll weevil, and Sessions' offer to supply the peanuts for planting, a picker to harvest them with, and $1 a bushel was too good to refuse.

o Baston's crop was a success, leaving him able to pay off debts and have money in the bank. The 8,000 bushels of peanuts he produced were used as seed by other farmers who now were clamoring to get into the peanut-growing business.

o So they decided to build a monument to the bug that caused them the distress because good came out of it.What had caused them distress was actually a blessing.

· The Bible says one reason God sends distress is so that we will seek him.

o We can handle prosperity by walking independently of God or praising him.

o We handle distress by becoming hardened, bitter, dull

- or by seeking God.

o In my own life, hard times have caused me to go back to God, to ask for more of him. To see that nothing is impossible with God, nothing is too difficult for God.

o Has God given you hard times? How have you responded?

- Complaining or seeing as a God given means of causing you to seek him?

God gives us means to seek him

What means can you think of?

· Prayer, Are we just praying? Or are we crying out to God. We seek God in prayer. If we don’t seek God in prayer – it becomes a rote duty. Jacob wrestled with God in prayer, Elijah, Jesus in the garden.

· Putting away sin. We seek God in putting away sin. If we don’t seek God in putting away sin, we will live in sin.

· Worship – Are we just showing up on Sunday AM or are we seeking God in worship. – The temple was a place where the Jew was to come and seek God. Why worship? On reason is to personally seek more of God.

· Memorizing and meditating on the word – Are we memorizing for pride or memorizing to seek God better? Ps 119:10 How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word… I have hidden your word in my heart that I may not sin against you. v.10 I seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands. Memorizing and meditating are a means to seek to know God better.

· Hearing the taught word – 15:3 Are we hearing the wor because we have to or because we are seeking God.

· Devotional time – Are you seeking to connect with God? or are you reading? Maybe you’re not even in the word now.

· Fasting

· Leadership needs to command everyone to seek God. (14:x)

A good word to balance this..

· God seeks us more than we seek him.

· We may wander like the prodigal, squandering our wealth. Our heavenly father is watching, waiting for us to come to our senses and come back to him. He seeks us more than we seek him. But it takes two to have a relationship.

· Your Father is the initiator. He seeks after you. He rewards those who seek him.

All people desire what they believe will make them happy. If a person is not full of desire for God, we can only conclude that he is engaged with another happiness. It's hard to love God wholeheartedly; we all know that. So why do we not remove as many hindrances as possible? -- William Law in Christian Perfection (a contemporary version by Marvin D. Hinton).

They sought God eagerly and he was found by them. And he gave them rest on every side.

Verses on Seeking God

Ps 34:4,10

Ps 77:2ff

Ps 78:34

Ps 105:4

Ps 119:10

Daniel 9:13

Hosea 10:12

Deut 4:29

1 Chron 16:7-13

1 Chron 22:19

1 Chron 28:9 David to Solomon

2 Chron 7:14

2 Chron 14,15 – Asa

2 Chron 17 – Jehosophat

2 Chron 20:4-5

2 Chron 26 – Uzziah

2 Chron 31:21 – Hezekaih

2 Chron 34 – Josiah

Ezra 7;10

Jeremiah 29:13

2 Sam 21 – David

Daniel 9:3-4

Matt 5:6

Matt 6:33

Acts 17:27

Heb 7:25

Heb 11:6

James 4:8

Ps 9:10

Ps 10:4

Ps 14:2

Ps 22:26

Ps 24:5,6

Ps 27:4

Ps 40:16

Ps 53:2-3

Ps 63:1ff

Ps 69:6

Ps 69:32

Ps 70:4

Ps 105:3-4

Ps 119:2 –

Ps 119:9-11

Ps 119:58

Is 45:19

Is 55:6

Is 58:2

Is 65:1

Hosea 5:6

Hosea 5:15

Amos 5:4,6

Zechariah 8:20-22