Read the transcript from today's video devotional.
Augustine once said, "Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee." I want you to think about this. Have you ever had those moments in your life where you just don't feel like God is there? He says He'll never leave us and will never forsake us, but you just don't feel that. Can I encourage you? I actually believe that though God is always with us, there are moments in our lives—sometimes minutes, sometimes hours, sometimes days—where God withdraws the sense of His presence.
Think about that all throughout the Bible. You've heard the psalmist in Psalm 13 say, "Where are you, Lord? How long, O Lord?" Other places the psalmist says, "God, I can't seem to find You." Why is that? It’s not because God's left you or me. It's because sometimes He allows us to experience the sense of His withdrawing presence.
Do you know why? So that you seek Him more. This verse gives us really two tremendous principles about seeking God and finding God.
First Principle: Search in God's Word
First of all, he says right there in the verse, "Search for the Lord. But from there you will search again for the Lord your God." You know where you search for the Lord? It's right here in God's Word. This is God's self-revelation. Even Isaiah says in Isaiah 66, "This is one whom I esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at My word."
Seek God's Word and see if you don't sense more of His presence.
Second Principle: Search with All Your Heart
Secondly, he says right there, "And if you search for Him with all your heart and soul, you will find Him." Here's the rub: What do you search for and how bad do you search for it?
I have to be honest. I try to read my Bible every day, I listen to the scriptures and I have verses that I've memorized. There's many different things that I do to feed my spiritual life. Do you know what? There's moments where I feel dry, I feel arid, I just don't feel like I sense the presence of God in my life. It's almost always related to the fact that there's some sin in my life or there's lack of belief in my life. Often, though, it's directly related to my time in the Word, or lack thereof, and my time in prayer.
Two years ago I took this prayer class—it was a tremendous class. We had to pray an hour a day and the professor only let us pray 30 minutes twice. You could pray all 60 if you could do it, but I was usually trying to do 30 because I couldn't do that much. I'll never forget the presence of God that I felt, because I was not only praying much more, but I was thinking about my need to pray 60 minutes per day.
The Heart's True Longing
If you search for the Lord Jesus Christ, especially in God's Word, and pray to Him, you will find Him and you will find not only Him, you'll find what your heart longs for.
You and I have a God-shaped vacuum in our soul, and it's only ultimately found in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why we chase all kinds of other things, because there's something inside that's not fully satisfied and content. If we seek the Lord with all of our heart, we will find Him.
Let's do that today.
