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You are here: Home / Spiritual Disciplines / Stop Looking for God… Instead, Surrender to His Search for You.

August 7, 2017 ·

Stop Looking for God… Instead, Surrender to His Search for You.

Spiritual Disciplines

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Have you been playing hide-and-seek with God? Looking for God high and low? To truly find him, stop looking and instead surrender to his search for you!I’d just seen him through the windows playing basketball in the backyard. So, where was he now? Did he leave when I wasn’t looking? Did he run off to a friend’s house? It was time for dinner and I couldn’t find my son. Anywhere. I went outside and called his name. I looked around the yard, in the garage, behind the fence, in the front yard. Nothing. I didn’t hear him come inside, but I called for him in the house. I looked in each of the rooms. Nothing. I was starting to get concerned now. He isn’t usually the type to just run off, but maybe he saw a friend? I began to walk around the neighborhood, even knocked on a couple of neighbor’s doors to ask if he was over playing with their boys. Still nothing. No matter where I looked, I couldn’t find him.

I was starting to panic. How could I have lost my son while he played in the backyard? Where would he have gone? I went back to the backyard to look one more time (maybe he’d come home?). Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the movement. Barely perceptible, but something had moved behind the big planter in the back. I walked toward it and there he was. Hiding. Champion of a hide and seek game I didn’t know we were playing. He’d been right there in the yard the whole time, I just didn’t think to look so closely. I was convinced he must be out somewhere, not inside our own fence.

Are you playing hide and seek with God?

As I read this poem below in a devotional this week, I thought of how often we play this game of hide and seek with God. How often we go looking for God but keep our hearts hidden. How often we go outside ourselves for God, searching high and low for any sign of him, yet he’s waiting inside our hearts the whole time. Waiting for us to simply slow down and allow ourselves to be found by him.

I said, “I will find God,” and forth I went
To seek Him in the clearness of the sky,
But over me stood unendurably
Only a pitiless, sapphire firmament
Ringing the world, blank splendour; yet intent
Still to find God, “I will go seek,” said I,
“His way upon the waters,” and drew night
An ocean marge, weed-strewn and foam-besprent;
And the waves dashed on idle sand and stone,
And very vacant was the long, blue sea;
But in the evening as I sat alone,
My window open to the vanishing day,
Dear God! I could not choose but kneel and pray,
And it sufficed that I was found of Thee.
~“Seeking God” by Edward Dowden

Have you been playing hide-and-seek with God? Looking for God high and low? To truly find him, stop looking and instead surrender to his search for you!Stop looking for God. Instead, surrender to his search for you.

Madame Guyon was a French mystic in the 17th century who taught and wrote about prayer and finding God within. Early in her life, she met with a Franciscan friar to discuss her struggles looking for God. Here’s her story of how she finally found God:

“He hardly came forward and was a long time without speaking to me. I, however, did not fail to speak to him and to tell him in a few words my difficulties on the subject of prayer. He at once replied, ‘Madame, you are seeking without that which you have within. Accustom yourself to seek God in your own heart, and you will find Him.’ Having said this, he left me. The next morning he was greatly astonished when I visited him again and told him the effect which these words had upon my soul: for, indeed, they were as an arrow, which pierced my heart through and through. I felt in this moment a profound wound which was full of delight and love – a wound so sweet that I desired it would never heal. O, my Lord, you were within my heart, and you asked of me only that I should return within, in order that I might feel your presence. O, Infinite Goodness, you were so near, and I, running here and there to seek you, found you not!”

How are you finding God?

How often do we go out looking for God? We seek him high and low. We look for him in nature, in church, in other people. Yet, we don’t need to go anywhere or look beyond ourselves to find him. He’s waiting for us inside the whole time. We don’t need to find him because he’s already seeking us. We need only to surrender our search and allow ourselves to be found.

Are you looking for God? Desperately seeking to find him in your life?

Stop. Be still. Look inside your own heart. Open yourself to be found. You’ll find God when you stop looking and realize instead he’s seeking you.

“Finding God is really letting God find us; for our search for him is simply surrender to his search for us.” ~Harry Emerson Fosdick, in The Meaning of Prayer

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Fuzzy says

    August 8, 2017 at 7:53 am

    It is one thing to simply say the following :………………………..Stop. Be still. Look inside your own heart. Open yourself to be found. You’ll find God when you stop looking and realize instead he’s seeking you.
    Stop I understand.. Be Still I understand…… but the rest I don’t know how????? how does one look at their own heart?? How does one Open yourself to be found ????How do you surrender to his search for you????, Or Accustom yourself to seek God in your own heart,
    I have bee a christian far to long I have never felt God presence I am more confused then before i read all this
    I have desperately been trying to find God since i walked away 15 years ago

    • Work in progress says

      August 9, 2017 at 4:34 am

      The Lord has forgiven you Fuzzy and I wonder if you’ve forgiven yourself? I’ve been in the same position and it took me a long time to forgive myself but when the penny dropped that God had totally wiped this from His radar, that you are His precious child and just wants us as we are it helped me tremendously with my relationship with Him. Andrew Murray’s book called Abide in me, has helped me, along with asking the Holy Spirit to reveal Himself. Keep persevering, am praying that you will know His presence. With much love from a sister in Christ.

    • Kathryn says

      August 9, 2017 at 5:25 am

      Fuzzy – I’m praying for you to feel God’s presence and find him in your life. I walked away from him once too, and it took a lot of journeying to get back. I went back to church, joined a Bible study, got involved in serving others, and still struggled to feel like I’d found him. It was only when I began to pray to hand over all my ‘stuff’ to him – and prayed it over and over until I began to believe it deep inside – that I began to feel his presence for real. I gave up my searching and invited him in. Let me encourage you to keep praying. Keep praying for him to enter your life and make himself known to you. Over and over. Until you believe it’s possible, until you know he’s listening and will respond, until your heart begins to feel his presence.

  2. Julie Sunne says

    August 18, 2017 at 6:53 am

    A different context, but the verse, “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10) comes to mind. How often do we try to do what God has already done for us? He’s already found us. We simple need to accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. When we do that, whether we”feel” His presence or not, by faith, we know it to be true and can rest in that truth.

    Thought-provoking post. Thanks, Kathryn!

    God bless you.

    • Kathryn says

      August 21, 2017 at 5:24 am

      Oh, yes, Julie! I love that verse and how it relates here! Learning to rest in God and accept that he’s by our side through it all (even when we aren’t looking for him). He’s simply waiting for us to release our control to him and acknowledge him in faith.

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Hi, I'm Kathryn! I'm glad you're here to journey with me! I'm just an ordinary girl following an extraordinary God, learning to seek God's possible in this world of impossible. Fueled by loads of coffee, I'm passionate about helping and encouraging you along this journey, too! Let's step forward together and learn practical ways to live into God's possible! Read More…

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