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Seeking God

             But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6:33)

     

            A psalm of David. When he was in the Desert of Judah.

            You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water. (Psalm  63:1)

 

            While walking this morning, I prayed for three friends facing big physical challenges and their wives. I prayed about my work, my writing, and my garden. There are times when I pray through Jesus’ example prayer (mistakenly called “The Lord’s Prayer,”) but today, my prayer is about needs, desires, and God’s blessings; it was not about God.

            And we are supposed to pray about our needs and desires and those of others. We’re to cast our cares on Him and pray for one another that we may be healed. But I remember when I was jogging, the first half of my route was spent fussing and trying to get past all the garbage in my mind. I spent the second half talking to God about things. It seemed as if, no matter how hard I tried, it took about 30 minutes to quiet the noise. And if I had tried to divide my jogging time into two half-hour sessions, I am sure I would have spent the best part of each dealing with garbage.

            With discipline, I’m sure that the garbage part could be reduced. The tougher part is increasing the seeking part. The problem here is that there is seeking God and there is seeking God. Where is our focus? Are we effectively saying, “I’m seeking! I’m seeking! See me seeking! Aren’t I doing a great job of seeking?” or are we saying, “God, where are You? Please, I want You”?

            It's easy to decide, “I’m a horrible Christian!” because we can’t seem to get past the “I’m seeking!” part, but that just increases the focus on ourselves. And it just doesn’t seem like I can take an hour or an hour and a half out of my day, even though I can’t do some of what I think I should be doing. I’m too busy with unimportant things. Other people are too busy with important things. We might like the idea of living the way they did in the medieval monasteries, with the day broken up so that we spend at least a little time with God every hour or two, but I suspect we’d find our minds wandering even then.

            Some people talk about quiet times as if they are training drills at a military base. And there is some benefit to building strict routines because we gain strength and learn good habits, but these too quickly become “See me seeking” times.

            As I think about this, something Dallas Willard and C. S. Lewis have discussed comes to mind. Both wrote about seeking the spectacular as being immature or taking us off course. So, as I seek God, am I disappointed or even resentful because I don’t have some “experience”? If I feel cheated if I don’t end my time with God saying, “Wow,” isn’t that putting the focus on myself again?

            Father, guide me to You. Teach me how to seek You and to make seeking You about You and not me.

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