7.5.2013 Seekers Fellowship

Introduction

Seeking is a constant part of human existence. Everybody is seeking something, a better job, a partner, a more satisfying lifestyle, improved health, happiness etc. The problem is that God Almighty is not someone/something we can search for like anything else. Paul remarks, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” (1 Corinthians 13:11 ESV). Principal amongst my most childish ways is the long held and stubborn conviction, first at an intellectual level and still at an emotional level, that I can take the initiative in seeking God. I should have learned a generation ago that god always takes the initiative in the matter of seek and find.

My personal journey towards Jesus didn’t start in a religious environment but with deep and constant depression, nothing in the everyday world seemed to give me a sense of satisfaction and fulfilment, so one day I thought I should get around to reading the Bible, then the next day, for the first time ever, and never again, a New Testament appeared in our house. This was surely something that the lord had planned long before the day I sat in the university library thinking I should start a serious spiritual search. Through reading the Bible by/for myself I came into a painful understanding that God had always loved me and I had never loved him. Or, to put it in terms of today’s talk, God had always been seeking me and I had never been seeking him. This led me to a fairly dramatic/traumatic conversion experience, including encounters with evil powers and the even greater power of Christ.

You would have thought that the message would have got through to my heart from the very beginning, but my pride in thinking I could initiate a relationship with God continued for a long time. I remember as a young pastor preaching a fiery sermon called “Total Commitment”, the very title gives the problem away. I somehow thought that the key to discipleship was our seriousness with God. The Bible however is totally clear that we can never take the initiative in spiritual things.

The early Christian preaching who brought the message of Jesus to Greeks for the first time were remarkably positive about God’s initiative in reaching out to us, ““Yet he did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.””(Acts 14:17 ESV), ““And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for “‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, “‘For we are indeed his offspring.’” (Acts 17:26-28 ESV). According to Paul the very structures of earth’s climate and human history are fashioned in advance so that we might realise that God is reaching out to us so that we might reach out after him and find that he is a Father[1]. Most of us however struggle to accept that God is seeking us, thinking that we are the ones who have to put in the effort to seek him.
A spend a lot of time counselling and mentoring people in spiritual direction. I am always trying to assist folk, usually Christians, in seeing where God is already at work in their lives. This is also true for unbelievers. I was trying to help a friend of my son’s who wanted proof for the existence of God by encouraging him to reflect more closely on his own experience as a person. Not long ago his partner gave birth to a baby boy; there was no way he could deny the wonder of this new life and the love he felt as a recent father for this frail child. Sadly, neither the Greeks to whom Paul preached in Acts, not the young father sought out God because they sensed him seeking them in the normal course of life. Their hearts, like the hearts of us all, were far too hardened for that (Eph 4:18; Heb 3:13). The scriptures explain to us the only way forward.

Beginning with the Father

Despite the teaching of some Christians that God’s plan for humanity only came after the Fall into sin the Bible is very clear his plan is eternal; “Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began” (2 Timothy 1:8-9 ESV)[2].

The consequences of this revelation are radical. This means that there is nothing I can do to get “into” grace. Selwyn Hughes represents a popular but unbiblical way of thinking when he says, “How do you get “in grace”? It is by a new birth, a conversion, a changing of the centre of your life from self –interest to self surrender.” If I was chosen “in him (Christ) before the foundation of the world” (Eph 1:4) there has never been a time when I was outside of the grace of God. My conversion, however tortuous that experience may have been – and mine certainly was, was the result of rather than the beginning of God’s gracious work in me. It was the time I began to first experience “the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things” (Eph 3:9).

All this is clear from scripture, but there is something sceptical about human life and conscience that will not allow us to accept it applies to us unless we are more deeply convinced. The only irrefutable evi dence that God’s gracious initiative in seeking us never had a starting point is the revelation that grace is identical with Jesus.

The True Seeker After God

God seeks us in a way that is so deeply human and down to our level that it is almost invisible. To say that “the Word became flesh” (John 1:14) means that God immersed himself in weak, temptable and mortal humanity[3]. The “grace of our Lord Jesus Christ” consists in the fact “that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.” (2 Cor 8:9). Paul can go so far to say that Jesus “made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.” (Phil 2:7).

All of Jesus’ life is a sign that God is looking for us. As a twelve year old he is found in the temple about his Father’s business (Luke 2:49). We read of Christ’s prayer life, “And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed.” (Mark 1:35 ESV). This does not mean that Jesus took it upon himself to pray for long hours, rather he does only what he “sees the Father doing” (John 5:19) and he was led by the Spirit to pray. At the very centre of Jesus’ consciousness is the reality that God is a seeker of lost people. “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:10). Christ knows himself to be the Good Shepherd that goes after the lost sheep (Luke 15:4).

No one can ever seriously doubt that Jesus was the most famous healer, miracle worker and meeter of human needs that has ever lived. Christ never turned away anyone who came to him for help or healing (Matt 8:16; 12:15). The mystery of Jesus’ power is not found in the strength or might of his own abilities but his submission to the will of the Father. ““Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works.”” (John 14:10 ESV). On one occasion Jesus was moving through a crowd and a woman with an incurable disease reached out and touched him, Christ remarked, ““Someone touched me, for I perceive that power has gone out from me.”” (Luke 8:46 ESV). This power was the presence of the Spirit of God given by the Father to reveal the presence of his kingdom (Acts 10:38). The climactic demonstration however that the Father seeks us before we seek him is the death and resurrection of Christ.

The Revelation of the Seeking Father

In the fourth chapter of John Jesus states baldly, ““But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and truth.”” (John 4:21-24)

The worship God has always sought is found in Jesus’ devotion to the Father. That God is revealed as a seeking Father is only fully and truly known, in the unsolicited sending forth of the Son as the Saviour of the world in the power of his Spirit (John 3:34; 10:36; 17:3). The revelation of the truth that the Father himself is “seeking” worshippers is not a concept; it is contained in the coming of Jesus as a human being. The energy of true worship is released by God’s passion in seeking us, rather than our passion in seeking him.

It is through an insight into the depths of the prayers of Jesus that the reality of God as our all loving seeker breaks through. There is a very basic reason for this. The Lord taught, “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matt 12:34). The prayers which come out of Jesus mouth reveal what is in his heart[4]. Whilst it is common for preachers, writers and film makers to focus on the physical sufferings of Jesus in his passion and death, the Bible never dwells on the details of Christ’s bodily torments. Such obsessions only reveal the authors personal and distorted views of God[5] and tell us little about the seeking Father.

We read of Jesus praying in Gethsemane, “ And he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Remain here and watch.” And going a little farther, he fell on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. And he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”” (Mark 14:34-36 ESV). Or in the words of Hebrews, “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.” (Hebrews 5:7). Finally, we must come to terms with Christ’s terrible cry from the cross, ““My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”” (Mark 15:34).

How can we explain Jesus’ limitless anguish, surely he understood which parts of God’s word applied to him, “I love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently find me.” (Proverbs 8:17 ESV); ““for the LORD searches all hearts and understands every plan and thought. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will cast you off forever.”” (1 Chronicles 28:9-10 ESV); ““The LORD is with you while you are with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will forsake you.”” (2 Chronicles 15:2 ESV). Jesus did understand the whole counsel of God, he understood that God’s wrath upon those who deny that he is a seeking God is to give them over to their beliefs that they must seek and find him; God becomes to such people “a God who hides himself” (Isa 45:15 cf. 57:17). On the cross Jesus must bear the fullness of the judgement of a God who seems not to seek and search out the heart of man[6], he must be left alone in darkness and blindness of hell. The very identity of Jesus as the sign and substance of the seeking God who never abandons lost humanity is denied in his experience at the cross. The scriptures promised, “if my people…seek my face…then will I hear from heaven…” (2 Chron 7:14). Christ certainly sought the face of God with all his heart like no one else ever truly did, but there was no hearing from heaven! This is the cost to the seeking God of bearing our refusal to believe he is always looking for us.

It is hard for us to imagine or sense the level of anguish that Jesus experienced in his soul. It does remind me however of a couple of personal experiences where the inner pain was so great it felt like I was going to split in two. All I could do was weep, wail and cry out in inner torment, God was there, but his presence was totally masked by suffering. Unlike us however, for we are all idolaters deep down, Jesus does not abandon God and calls out to God as “My God” in a way that fully honours the seeking Father.

Despite all external appearances that God had abandoned his seeking after humanity he was never more seeking to save us than when Jesus was on the cross; “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor 5:19). The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the final victory of the Father, the ultimate evidence that his age long search for humanity has been successful. Whatever may be our experience, the death-and-resurrection of Jesus, which is the content of the gospel, forces us to conclude against the total weight of doubting human experience that God was fully present in the death of Jesus for the purpose of our salvation yet in a hidden and concealed way.

Seeking God

The issue of worship in relation to the seeking God is a deep and difficult one. The command-promise structure[7] “worship me, (and) it (glory) will all be yours” (Luke 4:7) only ever appears on the lips of Satan; true worship in Spirit and truth is an instinctive response to the revelation of an all-seeking Father. I have sadly encountered many disappointed or burnt out Christians who have unknowingly treated the worship of God like it was the worship/service of Satan.

That God is the first and final seeker doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t seek God, Jesus clearly encouraged us to do so, just as he did. The biblical commands, “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” (Matthew 6:33 ESV) or “seek and you will find” (Luke 11:9) are given to us by the Lord as a sign of his reaching out to us in love. When we read a command like, ““You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.”” (Jeremiah 29:13 ESV) our poor and unstable hearts can be put at rest from striving and super spirituality by the fact that our mediator, Jesus Christ (1 Tim 2:5), has sought the LORD with all his heart, soul, mind and strength (Matt 22:37).

The fact of the matter is that you cannot seek God where he is not first seeking you, you cannot hear God where he is not first speaking to you, you cannot pray where the Son and the Spirit are not first interceding for you (Rom 8:26, 34; Heb 7:25). The result of this revelation of the constant initiative of God is not laziness but trust and gratitude. It is important that we take all the words of Paul together. “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:8-10 ESV). I have some problems with the famous Footprints poem, as though there were times when we didn’t need to be carried by the grace of God[8]. But if we think in terms of footprints in the sand the best way to look at it is to put our feet in the prints that Jesus has already trod out on our behalf.

I remember the comments of a Christian who felt he would never quite “make it” spiritually. He was devout and committed and very aware of the call of God on his life, but this was at the centre of his spiritual confusion. This brother’s problem is that he thinks you need to grow “into” grace rather than growing “in” grace. “But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” (2 Peter 3:18). We have been and will be in the grace of God “in Christ” forever and our strivings simply get in the way of experiencing grace.
Paul sums up many of these themes by saying he preaches, “the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.” (Colossians 1:26-29 ESV)

Conclusion

The Christian is united to the heart of God in Christ to become through Jesus a living revelation to lost and hardened men and women that God is a seeking God. By works of service, compassion, mercy and sacrifice, as lights in the world we are to share in the divine initiative that makes known the reality of an all seeking Father (Matt 5:14-16).
Seekers Fellowship, what an interesting and hopeful name for a group. My prayer for you all would be that you would have a revelation of what John says when he comments, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us—that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.” (1 John 1:1-3 ESV). May you share in the ceaseless seeking of the Father and Son in the power of the Spirit for worshipper sin Spirit and in truth.