“You will seek and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found in you, and bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations” (Jeremiah 29:13-14).
When we think of Jeremiah chapter 29, the verse we typically think of is verse 11: “For I know the plans I have for you.” But I think that we’ve missed the point behind that verse. Sure, God knows the plans He has for us and they’re good, but how do we find them? Verse 12 says we must call on HIM, pray to HIM, and He will listen. In verses 13 and 14, an even deeper statement is spoken sort of like this: Seek Me My dear child and you will find Me, search for Me with all your heart and you will find Me.
This is where the message lies. Sure, we can take verse 11 and hold on to it, but the peace that 11 speaks of will never occur if we’re not applying the other verses to our lives on a daily basis. How many times in life have we found ourselves searching for answers and never finding them? Typically, well at least for me, we begin to over-analyze the questions on our hearts and it makes us over think everything and worry way too much.
Because of how much we overanalyze the situations we’re faced with, in the end we find ourselves with 20 more questions, no answers, and a brain that just won’t quit thinking. Where does that leave us? With a very bad headache that simply won’t go away and a restless night without sleep that we could have done without :-). So the question comes to mind, where did we go wrong? It’s another simple answer—without realizing it we often begin searching for the answers in the wrong places. We take what verse 11 states, repeat it over and over and over again, and seek our answers in every place but the one place we should be looking: in the arms of God.
The Bible states we must seek HIM, not something else. It states we must find HIM, not something else. It states we must search for HIM, not something else. And it states we must do these things WITH ALL OUR HEART (3 HIMS, 1 HEART, interesting isn’t it?). So the next question that I think of is how do we get past our analytical approach to solving our life’s issues? Simple, “Take it to the LORD in prayer,” as the song What a Friend in We have in Jesus states :-). Let’s take a chance and look to that one place we tend to overlook first with everything we face. Let’s go to God, give it all to HIM who is able, and then simply wait. Even if our answer doesn’t come as fast as we’d like, it will come. All we have to do is SEEK HIM, FIND HIM, and SEARCH for HIM with ALL OUR HEART. —submitted by Matthew J. Elliott, US
