What does it mean to seek God?
“I don’t think God is real,” I whispered to my friend sitting next to me at church. She grimaced. She had heard me say this a few times before and she was tired of replying.
It was almost midnight at the International Ethiopian Evangelical Church, as we were there celebrating the new year along with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people. We were both about 15 years old, baptized a few months ago, and attending discipleship classes on Sunday’s. I was serving as a worship leader at our young adult ministry. Yet, there I was sitting, lost in the house of my own Father, serving while I was confused and professing faith while I really had questions.
These questions were, how do I know that God truly cared for me? Why did He let me experience childhood trauma? When is He going to fix my broken family?
At this time, deacons were passing the annual scripture verses to each member. I grabbed my verse out of the many. With beautiful green and red flower margins and dark Amharic letters, the Scripture read,
“You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” Jeremiah 29:13 NIV
My friend at this time was looking over my shoulders and almost falling into my lap trying to read my verse. Her eyes were bugged wide open when she read it and she couldn’t stop poking me and praising God as if it had answered everything for her. Personally, I couldn’t figure out what got her so hype. I read that verse over and over again, trying to understand why I should seek the God who seemed to be insistent on ignoring me.
When I got home that morning, I made a vow to myself that I would never come back to church ever again (because church is God’s house and He lives there).
My story starts becoming very dark after this critical moment in my life, and I want to spare you from the pain and loss that followed after having gone down that road of not seeking God. I found out that road gets dimmer as you walk on it and that the streetlights of hope and life flicker and eventually turn off until everything turns completely black.
So, what does it really mean to seek God? Let us unpack the passage I received that night.
“You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” Jeremiah 29:13 NIV
Seek me - God wants us to look for Him in prayer, in the Scriptures and in fasting. Too often, we're not looking for God, but for something else instead, and that’s where we will miss Him. For example, if we’re looking for justice, it’s with God (Psalm 140:12). If we are looking for love, God islove (1 John 4:7). If we are looking for gifts, they’re from God (James 1:17). Friends, despite the common saying, all roads do not lead to Rome, but to Christ. He is all in all (Col 1:17) and so, we need to look for Him.
Find me - God wants us to find Him. Most of us have played ding-dong ditch or some cultural variation of it when we were small. We’ve tip-toed and snuck up on somebody else’s door, knocked it or rang the doorbell, and bolted off running and giggling as they tried to furiously catch us. It was fun, I will admit, but fun was the goal. Friends, are we playing ding-dong ditch with God? Are we praying and taking off before He responds? We don’t expect people to materialize and open their door for us as soon as we rang their doorbell, do we? We wait and sometimes we even sharpen our ears to hear their smallest steps coming down the stairs to see how close they are to us. Are we waiting and being consistent by staying at His porch until He comes down? We need to ask ourselves.
All your heart - God wants us to seek Him with all of our hearts. God wants to be the number one love of our lives, on whom we will never go elsewhere for our fulfillment. He doesn’t want to compete with our idols, our imaginations and our sins. He doesn’t want us to be half-hearted and lukewarm, unstable in all of our ways. Our idols need to fall. Our true love needs to be God Himself, now and forevermore.
As for me, back when I made that vow to never look for God, I didn’t know that I would return to that same exact church for a conference about seven years later — not as those who were lost and forgotten, but as one of those people whom God has heard, answered, redeemed and loved.
Maybe today, you are feeling like I was back then — like your prayers aren’t heard. Maybe you are tired of waiting on God who never seems to show up for you. Maybe you are feeling jealous or angry that God seems to answer everyone, but you. I want to comfort you by telling you that you absolutely matter to God. So, don’t give up your knocking today. Keep looking for this God — this God who hears, this God who loves and this God who wants to be found.
Tsion Kebede was born in Ethiopia and has three siblings. She has an associate degree in Life Science from Montgomery College and had completed 11 months of basic Theology at Addis Lidet International Church Bible School. She is a follower of Jesus Christ, a worship leader and an aspiring author.
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