Jesus Today. . .

ARE WE SEEKERS OR FINDERS?

And ye shall seek me and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart. - Jer. 29:13

You may recall the billboard sign that read I Found It. Does this reflect the proper attitude of a Christian or a church? Should we tell the public that we have found the spiritual values they are looking for, or should we be seekers who invite others to join us in the search? Many will no doubt view the church as a company of seekers, while others will insist that if the church has not found God then who has, and that church membership must mean more than joining in a search for him.

After all, Jesus does say, Seek and ye shall find and the apostles wrote of how the believer can know that he has passed out of death into life. And yet the same Jesus spoke of seeking first the kingdom of God, as if the search might be long if not endless, and Paul did not hesitate to admit that he had not yet laid hold but that “I press on to make it my own” (Philip, 1:12).

Recently when Ouida was driving me to the airport I suggested to her that death will be something like what we were doing. She would accompany me to the point of departure and bid me goodbye, and I would leave, as usual, on a long journey. The difference would be that that time around I would not return. I suggested to her, not altogether in jest, that some angel would inform me of my assignment in some remote corner of the universe, but that transportation would be no problem, and that in some way I would keep on serving and praising God.

Anyone hearing our conversation would conclude that we supposed ourselves to be finders rather than seekers. We were saying, We have found it! Our talk was not unlike that of the apostle who confidently wrote, “Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day” (2 Tim. 4:8).

Still Ouida and I would be the first to admit that the search for truth is endless, and that we know the Lord only in part. We are indeed seekers and we invite others to join us in the long search.

So the dilemma is a false one. The church is not divided into seekers and finders, but it is composed of believers who are both, or it ought to be. Those in the church who have not really found anything have a bankrupt faith; those who have learned it all and are no longer searching also have a bankrupt faith. We often err both ways before the world: on one hand we have found so little that the world sees no real difference while on the other hand we presume to have found so much that we come across as phonies. In the message that we have found it, which sometimes takes the form of a bumper sticker, the it appears to the world as ambiguous if not superficial.

It could be said, as Pascal insisted, that it is the seeker who has found God, that one would not be seeking God if he had not already found him. This may be what Jeremiah is saying: to seek God with the whole heart is to find him. It is a truth that brings the church as well as the world to judgment. How many are there among us who profess to be seekers after God who seek him with the whole heart? Such wholehearted seeking is not necessarily measured by denominational loyalties, interest in religion, or even acceleration of activity. It is far more than intellectual and spiritual satisfaction. The whole-hearted search for God must reach the very center of our being. It implies deep commitment, as with Isaiah, who not only had a tremendous “religious experience,” but responded with Here I am, Lord, send me.

It is not those who attain righteousness that Jesus blesses but those who long to be righteous, those who hunger and thirst. This is not a desire for moral excellence, which can easily be confused with a search for God, for one may be morally good and yet far from God. It is rather something like David’s exultation, expressed by a man who was not all that morally excellent: “As the hart pants for the waterbrook so does my soul pant for thee, O Lord” (Ps. 42:1). It is in wanting to be good that we meaningfully search for God.

Yet it is appropriate to raise the question, as does Job, as to whether one can really find God by searching after him. The great mystery of it all is that despite how much we search after God we find him only because he first searches after us. It is not so much that we find God but that he finds us. This is the point of God’s most precious gift. “The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Lk. 19:10).

This is unique to the Christian faith. While there may be virtue in the other great religions of the world, they all emphasize man’s effort to find God, not God’s quest for man. Jesus came, not so much to direct man’s search for God, but to search man out for God. The Bible is the story of God’s long search for men and women. The Old Testament is not the account of a peculiar people’s search for God, but the record of God seeking out his peculiar people.

God’s long search, always motivated by his grace and love, found its ultimate expression in the gift of his own son, born in the midst of our sinful, rebellious world. He came from the heart of a seeking and loving God. I am come, he assured a confused world, not to judge or to condemn, but to seek and to save the lost. This is the personification of God’s grace.

That beloved fisherman who became a great apostle was introduced to Jesus by his brother Andrew, who told him, “We have found the Messiah.” That declaration must have really blown Simon’s mind, and he lost no time in checking it out. Once Simon was within the circle of the Messiah’s disciples, Jesus changed his name to Peter. What a career old Peter had! The end of the beginning came on Pentecost when he pro-claimed Jesus as the risen Christ, and the beginning of the end came in Rome when in the face of his sentence he requested to be crucified upside down. It all began when someone whom he trusted told him We have found the Christ.

All of us who believe have something of old Peter in us. While he was one who found the Lord and loved him recklessly, his faith sometimes faltered. He was a finder (and a loser!) who was always seeking. That is what made Peter like a rock. While he sometimes fell, he never retreated. If he followed the Lord “afar off” when the going was rough, he was never too far. He was the seeker-finder that should be in us all.

We would expect Peter to write action-packed letters as he did to the scattered, aliens: “Therefore, gird your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 1:13).

Is this not the essence of being a seeker-finder?—the Editor