“You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”
Verse 13 of Jeremiah 29 is one of the greatest evangelistic texts in the Old Testament. It defines an appropriate approach to God and also presents an astounding truth: God is findable. When you seek to find God, you’ll find who you’re looking for. What a beautiful promise: We must take God at His Word and not add to His equation. Seek 🡪 God = Find 🡪 God!
This is the promise we can count on. If you seek God, you’ll find Him. When we trust God in the present, we can gain peace. We might gain understanding. We may be gifted with hope, love, courage, joy, and all the other amazing byproducts of active trust. Those things—peace, understanding, hope, love, courage, and joy—are great as byproducts but terrible as goals. If we seek what we can get from God, we may be left dissatisfied. If we seek God and develop trust, the byproducts are wonderful. He is who He says He is and does what He promises to do.
God is both the path and the goal. He makes appearances everywhere: His Word, our church, our schedules, our relationships, and even our family dinner conversations. Seek Him. Go into all of those places, but go with a different posture—the posture of a halting, inexperienced, needy seeker. If you do, you’ll find that this approach changes everything.
I seek God in the everyday by creating rhythms and committing to them—like the rhythm of family dinner and the conversations we have around our table.
Most nights at dinner, we take turns answering these three questions: “What was the high of your day? What was the low of your day? How did you see God today?” I love to hear the answers to these three questions.
If you decide to implement our rhythm, pay attention to everyone’s answers to all three. Listening helps you learn how to love your family. Each answer my four-year-old gives to “high of the day” reveals how he feels loved and seen. My husband’s “low of the day” reveals his opportunities to grow in dependence upon the Lord and inspires me to come alongside him prayerfully. My favorite question, though, is the one we ask last: “How did you see God today?”
We added this question after years of asking and answering our highs and lows of the day because we wanted to seek and find God. This question kept me accountable—I knew that someone would ask me how I saw God at the end of the day, so I was on the lookout for Him. I knew the promise given in Scripture, but I had my doubts. Who was the promise for? Everyone? Christians? Adults? What about children? Before I had kids, I tested it out with my nieces and nephews. The first time we asked these questions to my eight-year-old niece, Georgia, my doubts were settled.
Her high was a compliment from her brother; her low was a negative comment from her friend.
