Seeking the Presence of God

"Seek the Lord while He may be found; call on Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the Lord, and He will have mercy on him, and to our God, for He will freely pardon. 'For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,' declares the Lord. 'As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts higher than your thoughts."

Isaiah 55.6-9

How often do we stop to marvel at the word of God? Lest we fall into the trap of simply reading (or worse, reading becomes a chore), consider that the Sovereign God of the universe inspired this word through generations to His people in order to tell His story: through it, with the Holy Spirit as our interpreter and counselor, we get a glimpse, however small it may be, into the mind of God.

Yet that is itself the paradox. Notice how this passage begins: "Seek the Lord while He may be found." Remember the words of David in Psalm 139:

"Where can I go from Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence? If I go up to the heavens, You are there; if I make my bed in the depths, You are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there Your hand will guide me, Your right hand will hold me fast."

Or remember Paul's contemplation in Romans 8: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?"

So if God is onmipresent, what does it mean to seek Him while He can be found? If God's ways are higher than ours, we'll never be able to understand completely. The best we get is a glimpse.

Think of it like this: we're walking by the railroad tracks and a train speeds by. We decide to follow it, so we start running. Regardless of how fast we run, are we likely to catch the train as it fades away into the distance? No- but as we continue running we get closer and closer to the train's final destination.

In much the same way, as we seek to understand the word of God we do not gain full insight into the mind of God. Yet with the help of the Holy Spirit and with perseverance in seeking on our own parts, we will get closer and closer to the target. Thus to "seek the Lord while He is near" becomes a command of intention to us. Even though our understanding of the infinite is immeasurably limited because we are finite, in seeking we are able to draw nearer to God and are transformed by His presence through the process.

Bibliography

NIV Archaeological Study Bible. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005. Print.

Be Holy

"Therefore prepare your minds for action; discipline yourselves; set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when He is revealed. Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance. Instead, as He who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, 'You shall be holy, for I am holy.'"

1 Peter 1:13-16

I am incapable of holiness. Every instinct within me runs without hesitation from it towards immediate self-gratification and later towards my own destruction. This seems to be the way of humanity. Think about the apostle Paul, as he records in Romans 7:

"So I find it to be a law that when I want to do good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells within me."

Romans 7:21-23

Scripture is filled with stories about people whom God called to holiness, yet who inevitably found ways to fall short of that calling. Our own lives are testimonies to this. Yet there is hope!

As Peter exhorts the church in his letter, we can take the path of spiritual discipline. The disciplines themselves do nothing to save us: they simply place us bare before the power of the Holy Spirit, which brings the dead back to life in a new creation.

Brothers and sisters, my prayer for us this week is that we are willing to submit ourselves to the work of the Holy Spirit, allowing ourselves to be shaped and transformed by Him as we are intentional in pursuing Christ through discipleship.

Lord God, make us holy as You are holy.

Bibliography

The Holy Bible containing the Old and New Testaments with the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books: New Revised Standard Version. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006.