hide and seek

Have you ever played hide and seek?

I had a kitten this summer that I bonded with.  It started out with me caring for that little fluffball, and eventually she got used to me and liked me and would come over to me without me having to go to her.  I would hunt her around the house, and when I found her I would jump out, scare her, and then run away.  She would hunt me around the house and then jump out at me and then run away.

Weird as it sounds, this is a lot like how God loves us.  He seeks us out first.  But then, after we've become aware of him, and started like and love him, he pulls away...and sometimes hides.

God does this so that we will seek him out.  God doesn't just pursue, he also wants to be pursued.

Isaiah 55:6 "Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near."

If we have been close to God and all of the sudden he pulls away, all the sudden we don’t feel him close, we don’t get that same spiritual high that we used to get…what do we do?

We should seek him.

Phil Wickham, a musician, wrote a song called “Mystery.”  If any of you are interested in hearing it, I would definitely encourage you to youtube him and check his music out.  A really solid Christian guy.  J  But he wrote the song based on life experience.

He said about writing this song… “This one’s really close to my heart, because it was written in a time in my life where I desperately wanted to hear from God because there was so many different ways to go, so many different opportunities.  And I was kind of in the dark and it was one of those times in my life when I was praying and I ask the Lord to speak to me ‘cause I wanted to hear from him and feel him and know him so badly but for a reason I didn’t know then and now in hindsight I see now, he wasn’t speaking to me and now I see that it was to produce in me more patience and to make more into the person he wants me to be…”

Go hid from Phil so that Phil would seek him out, so that Phil would have to trust not just in the presence of God, but in God’s promises.

There’s times in our lives when we pray for God to do something for us, and no, that’s not as bad as it sounds.  But we do it.  How many of you have ever prayed a prayer that God doesn’t answer the way you wanted?

I have.  And as I get older, I find that I care less and less about God answer my prayers the way that I want.  I trust God, and whenever I pray for something I try to remember to add, “but God, you know the biggest picture, you’ve got it all under control, you’ve got my back in ways I’ll never know.  So, above all else, your will be done.”

When we pray, it’s not just about talking to God, it’s about BEING WITH GOD.

So if you ever feel like God has left you alone, like he’s abandoned you, like life can’t get any worse…

Pray.  Seek him out.  He has given you a wonderful opportunity to be that child who’s father steps away so that his child will walk to him.

And that’s it.  That’s the picture that I want you to see.  We are God’s children.  He loves us so much.  But he’s not going to spoon feed us life.  He’s not going to cater to our every whim.

Just the opposite.  He’s going to challenge us.  He’s going to help us grow.  He’s going to bring us to new places that we’ve never been before.  In the world, and in our hearts.

God loves us, and if he didn’t seek you out first, and work in your heart, you would have never even known that loving him was what you were made to do.

We love God because he first loved us.  And we've been hiding in our sin and now that God has found us, he calls us to go and find him, in the small moments, in the quiet, in the morning, in the dark, in the bible, in prayer, in stillness...everywhere we go.

Our walk with God is a wonderful game of hide and seek.  :)