But from there you will seek the LORD your God and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul.
Deuteronomy 4:29 (ESV)
This is a wonderful promise that I needed to hear this day. The promise that a heart that is seeking the Lord will surely find Him. There is often a notion that God is hidden from us and that we can never truly see and know him. That our own sinfulness keeps God at a distance and prevents us from finding him and knowing him. That may be true in the sense that our sin will keep us from seeking him with all our hearts and all our soul, but it is not true that we must do something about our sin first before we seek the Lord. Jesus calls us to come to him with our heavy ladens of burden and worry. He calls us to come to him. He wants to be found. He wants us to search after him with all our heart and soul when we are at our very best and when we are at our very worst. I don’t have to clean myself up first and then seek the Lord. No… I can and should seek the Lord with all my heart and all my soul in every moment of my life. When sin has me beaten down, this is when I should seek Jesus all the more. The only condition is that I seek him with everything I have, both heart and soul.
It’s an easy concept to consider and understand but is the most difficult to put into practice and truly embrace. Jesus doesn’t want just part of my heart and part of my soul, he wants all of me. He wants my mornings when I wake up, my evenings when I lay in bed, and he wants every moment in between. He wants me for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. He wants my every moment and every breath. He wants my heart and soul.
Why is this so difficult in practice? Because I know my heart and soul. I understand the reasons that I guard my heart and soul from everyone, including myself. It is a scary thing to reveal your heart to another person. I mean truly reveal your heart. It takes a very humble heart to share the deep inner turmoil and despair that lurks in my heart. What I want to share is a Facebook or Instagram post. I want to cultivate my heart at its best. I want to curate and share those things that lift me up and bring praise and applause. I want to hide and cover up those things that bring shame. I am a practiced deceiver who is really talented at hiding my faults and sins. I am so good at this in fact that I naturally deceive and convince myself that everything is alright. I believe my sin is only natural and there is nothing to be ashamed of since everyone does these things.
To seek Jesus with all my heart and soul, I must bring my sin, shame, and guilt before him. I must be an open book. This inherently means that I must be uncomfortable. It means that I must be vigilant. The great danger in life is being complacent with who I have become and stop seeking Jesus, truly seeking him with my whole heart. This is the point of the verse. The Lord wants me to know myself in light of the goodness, mercy, and grace of Christ. The Great Physician will heal me, but I must seek him to be healed. And in seeking him, I must bring who I truly am before him. I must bring my whole heart and soul.
This is the challenge from the Lord. The challenge is to pray to the Lord for the capacity and strength to seek him with my whole heart and soul. For I cannot do this on my own. Actually, I will not do this on my own. I need the grace and power of the Spirit within me to enable me to seek Jesus. In humility, my first step must always be an acknowledgement that my heart is not 100% on board with seeking the Lord but I want it to be. A simple prayer of humble dependence is what I need every morning. A prayer to ask the Lord to meet me where I am and change my heart. To give me a heart that seeks Jesus fully and completely. Then I will be satisfied with him alone. Then I will find that in seeking him I have found him. I will truly understand that Jesus has always been there with me. He is constantly with me. He never leaves me. He never forsakes me. He simply stands and the door of my heart and knocks as he waits to be invited in for a meal of fellowship. An extravagant meal of his body and blood that fully satisfies my every longing and desire because it is then that I understand that Jesus is all there is that ever satisfies my deepest desire.