Seeking God

There is something to be done on our part. God is a rewarder, but for whom? To them that diligently seek Him, and to none but them. What is it diligently to seek God?

Sometimes it is taken in a more particular and limited sense for prayer and invocation, for seeking His counsel, help, and blessing, as in Isaiah 55:6, "Seek ye the LORD while He may be found, call ye upon Him while He is near." Seeking the Lord and calling upon Him are made parallel expressions. So Exodus 33:7, "And it came to pass, that every one which sought the LORD " that is, that went to ask His counsel, "went out unto the tabernacle of the congregation."

More largely, it is taken for the whole worship of God and that duty and obedience we owe to Him, as in 2 Chronicles 14:4, "And commanded Judah to seek the LORD God o f their fathers, and to do the law and the commandment," that is, to worship and obey Him. So in 2 Chronicles 34:3 it is said o f Josiah, when yet young, that "he began to seek after the God o f David his father." Obedience is called a seeking of God because it is a means to further our communion with Him. But a little to open the formality of the expression.

1. Seeking implies some loss or some want, for that which we have, we seek not for. Now God may be considered either as to His essence and omnipresence, or as to His favor. As to His essence, so God can never be lost nor found, for He is everywhere present, in heaven, in earth, in hell. "Though He be not far from every one o f us" (Acts 17:27). He is within us, without us, round about us, in the effects of His power and goodness. But with respect to His favor and grace, so we are said to seek after God. "Seek the LORD , and His strength: seek His face evermore" (Psalm 105:4), that is, His powerful and favorable presence, comforting, quickening, and strengthening our hearts. This is that we want, and this is that we seek after.

2. Seeking implies that this must be our aim and scope, and the business o f our lives and actions, to enjoy more of God till we come fully to enjoy Him in heaven. The whole course of a Christian must be a seeking after God, a getting more o f God into his heart. "My soul followeth hard after Thee" (Psalm 63:8). It is not a slight motion or a cold wish, such as will easily be put off or blunted with discouragement or satisfied with other things; but such as engages us to an earnest pursuit of Him till we find Him, and till we enjoy Him in the completest way o f fruition. Wicked men in a pang would have the favor of God, but they are soon put out of the humor and taken up with other things. Therefore this must be the scope o f our whole lives, especially in the nobler actions of our lives.

The noblest actions of our lives are our engaging in duties of worship in the ordinances of God; now there we must not only serve God, but seek Him. What is it to seek God in ordinances? In a word, it is to make God not only the object, but the end of the worship; not only to come to God, but to come to God for God, so as to resolve that we will not go from Him without Him, as Jacob said," I will not let Thee go, except Thou bless me" (Genesis 32:26). And therefore seeking God notes our scope; when we make this the great aim of our lives, especially in the duties of religion, in acts of worship, we desire to meet with Him.

3. It implies a seeking of Him in Christ, for without a mediator, guilty creatures cannot enjoy God. We cannot immediately converse with God; there must be a mediator between God and us. "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me" (John 14:6). There is no getting to God but by Christ. God in our nature is more familiar with us, and more especially found of us. They shall "seek the LORD their God, and David their king" (Hosea 3:5), that is, Christ. There is no seeking or fïnding of God but in and by Christ. Saith Luther, "It is a terrible thing to think of God out of Christ." When Themistocles sought the favor of Admetus who had been formerly his enemy, he snatched up his child and so begged entertainment of him. We are enemies to God; if we go to Him, we must carry Christ with us. It is Christ's great work to bring us to God. He died for that end, "that He might bring us to God" (1 Peter 3:18); and it is the great duty o f a Christian; he ought to come to God by Him. "He is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him" (Hebrews 7:25). And therefore since we have lost the favor of God, we shall never find Him but in Christ.

4. This seeking is stirred up in us by the secret impressions of God's grace, and the help of His Spirit. All the Persons are concerned in it, "For through Him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father" (Ephesians 2:18). Natural men are well enough pleased without God, or they have but faint desires after Him. Take men as they are in themselves, and the psalmist tells us that no man understandeth and seeketh after God (Psalm 14:2); they have no affection, no desire o f communion with Him. So Psalm 10:4, "The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God: God is not in all his thoughts." Wicked men cast God out of their minds, never caring whether He be pleased or displeased, whether He be enjoyed or hide Himself from us.

Ay, but the Spirit of God works this work in me. How so? The spirit of bondage brings us to God as a Judge; God as a Judge sends us to Christ as Mediator; and Christ as Mediator, by the Spirit of adoption, brings us back to God again as a Father; and so we come to enjoy God. The divine Persons make way for the operations of one another. Saith Bernard, "None can be beforehand with God; we cannot seek Him till we find Him; He will be found that He may be sought, and He will be sought that He may be found; His preventing grace makes us restless in the means, and puts us upon those first motions and earnest addresses towards God."

This seeking must be our business as well as our scope; a thing that we would not mind by the by, but as the great work we are to do in our lives here in the world. "Thou shalt find Him, if thou seek Him with all thy heart and with all thy soul" (Deuteronomy 4:29); "And ye shall seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall search for Me with all your heart" (Jeremiah 29:13); and "They had sworn with all their heart, and sought Him with their whole desire; and He was found of them" (2 Chronicles 15:15).

— Rev. Thomas Manton

(1620-1677)

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