Seeking God With All Our Heart

For the last couple of weeks we've seen how easily people can miss God because they're looking for the wrong thing.

Many struggle with misconceptions about God because of their past hurts, failures, and disappointments.

• When God doesn't measure up to their expectations—when he doesn't fit in their box.
• When they feel he has let them down or abandoned them.
• When they think life has been unfair to them—and blame God for giving them a raw deal.
• When they are disappointed because he didn't answer them in the way or time they hoped.

Others develop distorted ideas about God because they've been bruised by life, damaged by traumatic events, or scarred by humiliation and abuse at the hands of others:

An absent father, an addicted mother, a neglectful teacher, a sexual predator, a dysfunctional home, a wrenching divorce—all these (and more) can undermine a correct view of our loving, caring heavenly Father.

Someone, speaking of what we learned about God, said: "What we were taught differs from what we caught." In other words, our experiences often override our theology.

Our past sins, along with a painful, negative history, lead us to accept a whole series of myths about God. To one degree or another, orthodox teaching about God can become slightly warped or twisted into ideas that have a kernel of truth—but enough error to lead us astray.

When you shoot at a target, if your line of sight is off by just ½ degree, you'll miss the mark. If you're shooting a rocket out into space and extend your distance out far enough, you'll be miles "from the truth."

There are a lot of myths about God. Maybe you've heard some of these. Maybe at times you've even viewed God in one of these ways yourself. These myths describe God as...

• An accountant—a God who keeps an accounting of everything we do—and we're always coming up short.
• A traffic cop—lurking behind billboards and trying to trap us exceeding the limit.
• The Great Oz—too important and busy to be disturbed with our concerns, distant, aloof, cold and withdrawn.
• A slave-driver—a demanding taskmaster whom we can never please. [First four adapted from Redeeming the Past, Seamands: 101f]
• A judge—eager to judge and convict us of our crimes, to lock us up and throw away the key.
• A genie-in-a-lantern—so eager to please us that our every wish is his command.
• A knight-in-shining-armor—who writes a fairy-tale ending so we can live happily ever after.
• A Santa—who knows if you've been bad or good, and who gives us toys if we're good enough (or coal if we've been bad enough).
• A grandfather—with candy in his pocket, congenial, easy-going, never demanding.
• A spare-tire—who's never in the way and stays out of sight, until you run into a problem and need his help.

All these myths, however, are distortions of who God really is and how he really works!

Ever have a conversation with someone who has a kooky idea about God? Some whacked out view of what it takes to make God happy? Some weird religious behavior or tradition?

It's sad, but true, that religion itself is often a negative force in society. Religious systems are often sick, twisted, or warped.

Some guess there are 3,000 to 5,000 different cults in the U.S. (2 to 5 million Americans) [Cults in Our Midst: The Continuing Fight Against Their Hidden Menace by Margaret Thaler Singer]—from small, relatively unknown groups like David Koresh's Branch Davidian or Heaven's Gate to larger movements such as Mormonism or Jehovah Witnesses.

Strange groups with strong leaders often promote some unique or quirky doctrine (or doctrines) that perverts the truth about God. But it's not just cults that do this!

In fact, many people have misconceptions about God based on things they learned in their religious upbringing, which can focus on a certain truth about God to the neglect of others.

It's like an unbalanced diet. Too much of a good thing is unbalanced and can exclude other necessary things. Eat only carrots and you could develop carotenosis, where your skin discolors slightly. In 2008, ABC interviewed Paul Karason, 40-year-old whose skin turned blue after he drank a home brew of colloidal silver to ease his arthritis and other ailments. Drink too much water and you could die from water intoxication—like the 28-year-old California woman in the water drinking contest a couple years ago.

In the same way, an unbalanced spiritual diet is also dangerous. If we consume only one truth about God, we risk developing distorted ideas about God.

We need them ALL, not just one or two truths. An unbalanced diet that pushes one to the exclusion of others of these can leave us with sick, emaciated souls. We need a balanced spiritual diet that includes ALL the truth about God.

Look at light through a prism, and you'll discover it is not just a single light. It is a collection of many light waves with many frequencies that can be split into gradated beams of many colors. When we see the "light," what we really see is a combination of all the colors of the rainbow. Together they form a white light. The white light is actually comprised of "manifold" colors.

It's the same way with God. We don't realize all the many colors of his goodness and gradations of his grace. If we could see God through a spiritual "prism," our vision could be expanded a bit to see the many faceted aspects of an infinite God. The Bible tells us to be...

...good stewards of the manifold grace of God (1 Peter 4:10, NASB): "poikilos" = "many colored."

Yet, all along, even when we're confused and struggling with our thinking, God is there, waiting—wanting—to be discovered. One of the classic promises of the Bible tells us that God is waiting for us to find him:

¹¹ "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. ¹² Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. ¹³ You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. ¹⁴ I will be found by you," declares the LORD... (Jer 29:11-14, NIV)

1. God knows (v 11). Aren't you glad God knows? We might be confused. We might be in the dark. We might have misconceptions. But God knows!

God knows the plans he has for us—even if we don't know, God knows.

• Even when we don't understand what's happening, God knows...he understands.
• Even when we can't make sense of life, God knows...he can make sense of it.
• Even when everything is unraveling and falling apart, God knows...he can put things together.

"I know the plans I have for you—plans to prosper you and not to harm you [plans for welfare and not for calamity (NASB); plans for good and not for disaster (NLT)], plans to give you hope and a future."

When we are unsure of the future, beaten down by our past, struggling with the present, barely able to hold on—God knows.

2. God plans (v 11). He has a purpose for you. And his plan doesn't depend on your present circumstances.

You've often heard these verses quoted as encouragement. I've written them myself on graduation cards to take to graduation parties to encourage young graduates about their God-ordained future.

When Jeremiah wrote these words, however, there was no party—no celebrating going on. The prophet's encouraging words didn't make much sense to those who heard him because the nation was going through terrible times. They were dominated and oppressed by foreign interests. They were saddled with exorbitant taxes. Their economy wasn't just in recession; it was teetering on the brink of a total meltdown. Many of their leading citizens—their best hope for the future—had been carried away as captives to Babylon.
Looking at their circumstances, the people would have had difficulty imagining any hope at all for the future. Looking at their troubles, they couldn't see how God was at work in their nation. As far as they could see, God had abandoned them. From their perspective, it seemed as though God was engineering their downfall as a nation, their complete destruction. The evidence they saw suggested they had nothing to look forward to. Nothing at all!
Their future as a people seemed doomed—but they didn't understand that God was doing something through their troubles to work something better in them.

• In spite of their misconceptions, God was at work!
• They saw only trouble; God saw a purifying process.
• They were defeated, depressed, and discouraged—but God saw hope for the future.

"You might think I'm harming you," he said, "but that's not true! Despite everything that's gone wrong for you...despite the troubles you're experiencing...despite your losses and failures, the truth is I want to bring you through these to restore you. I want to give you hope. I have a good future in mind for you."

The most important part of their future—and the ultimate measure of real success and prosperity—was God's plan that they would return to him. The captives in Babylon wanted to return to their homeland, to their houses, to their fields, their crops and their herds. God, however, wanted them to return to him!

3. God listens (v 12). God's plan was that their troubles would trigger a positive change in them so that they would...

• Call upon the Lord (v 12);
• Come to the Lord and pray to him (v 12);
• Seek God with all their hearts (v 13);
• And, in the end, finally find God (v 14).

How often do we look at the difficulties and disappointments in our lives and become discouraged? How often are we—like the people of Judah—taken hostage or held captive by our problems? How often do we get bogged down with frustration, anger, or bitterness because of the way things have gone for us? How often do we complain about the unfairness of life?

If you were born with disabilities...if you were rejected by a spouse who wanted out...if your children grew up to disappoint you...if your company eliminated your job...if cancer took someone you loved...if some event left you broken and bruised...if your dreams were destroyed...if your ship never came in...

Whenever we become angry or bitter or frustrated over the circumstances of our lives...whenever we complain or lash out or give up...whenever we are crippled by discouragement or disappointment, we are a bit like the people Jeremiah was writing to.

But God is ready and waiting to listen! When we come to him with our troubles and our pains, he hears us. He cares. He listens so he can heal.

When they felt defeated and discouraged, God offered his people hope for the future. He listens to our pain so he can show us his healing! God wants us—like them—to leave our sins and failures behind so we can step into his future!

In fact, God wants to use the troubles from our past to springboard us into his future. He wants our troubles to motivate us to know him better. He wants us to call to him...to come...pray...seek...find.

4. God appears (v 14: "I will be found by you"). The amazing thing—if we are willing—is that we can find God more readily through hurts and pain than through comfort and ease.

Troubles and sorrow can be tools God uses to help us discover him and his plans. David wrote in the Psalms:

The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. (Psalms 34:18, NIV)

God never wastes a broken heart.

We might waste a broken heart, but God never does. In our broken condition, we might miss what God wants to do, but God always knows what's best for us. In our broken condition, we might not understand how God is working. We don't see that brokenness can be God's open door into our lives.

More than a hundred years before Jeremiah, another prophet, Hosea, saw how hard times could soften hard-hearted people. He compared what needed to happen to them to what a hard-baked field needed so it could grow a harvest: soil needed to be broken so seeds could be planted.

...break up your unplowed ground [he said]; for it is time to seek the LORD, until he comes and showers righteousness on you. (Hosea 10:12, NIV)

But we don't like the idea of being broken, do we? We don't like the idea of pain and suffering.

So instead of breaking up our unplowed ground, instead of dealing with our past, instead of facing our pain and trouble, instead of allowing God to heal our past—we try to bury the pain. We try to cover up our hurt and mask our suffering.
We put on a front and act as normal as possible. We pretend that we're okay. And as long as we bury and cover and pretend, we waste our brokenness. We resist what God wants to do. We don't allow his work of brokenness to be complete in us.

God, however, wants to draw close to those who will bring their broken hearts to him. If you're broken, God wants to heal you. He wants to pour his healing ointment into your wounds. He wants to bind up your injuries with bandages of love. If you're crushed in spirit, God wants to restore you. He'll be your crutch, your support while you recover. If you've lost hope, God wants to give you new hope.

We all want God's promises, but human nature wants to find a good future without going through painful lessons. We don't like the idea of a broken heart.

To avoid pain and escape their troubles, people often seek God in the wrong way. They look for a God that fits their expectations. They want a God who will fix problems their way—without brokenness or pain.

They avoid facing the pain, hurts, and wrongs of the past. In the process, they seek a god who they can understand—and they miss the real God.

Will you miss God? Or will you come to him with your failure, your disappointment, your confusion? Will you allow him to plow deep into your past do he can deal with your pain? Will you surrender to his plan?

God knows. God plans. God listens. God reveals...and he never wastes a broken heart.