Many Christians encourage people to "seek" God. Similarly, many Christians claim that God can be "found". I'm also well aware of the existence of many passages in the Bible that talk about the possibility of "seeking" and "finding" God (see for example
22 Bible Verses about Seeking - NIV & KJV).
In concrete and practical terms (for the lay reader):
- What does it mean to "seek" God?
- What does it mean to "find" God?
- How can a person know for sure that they have finally "found" God after a long process of "seeking" Him (whatever that means)?
The Scripture says that those who come to God must believe that He is really there and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.
We seek God through prayer and the study of the written Scriptures. The type of prayer that I am talking about is not the semi-formal prayers that people pray thinking that they need to pray the type of prayers that they think God wants to hear. But that is not praying from the heart. Praying from the heart is talking to God as if He is our closest friend and confidant. We tell God things that we would never tell anyone else. We talk about our aspirations and desires for the future, the things that trouble us, what we enjoy, the people who upset us, and the people we love fellowshipping with. All that is being open and honest with God and not holding anything back. We can't hide anything from God, and so we don't.
I spent one evening talking to God about everything that caused me distress and trauma, right from as far back as I could remember. I talked to him about all the sins I ever committed, why I did those things, and why I know not to do anything like that again. I told Him that I needed to know Him personally, otherwise I might as well give the whole Christianity thing away, because just being a religious church-goer wasn't enough for me, if I didn't know him in reality. It seems that I would be just speaking into the air when I prayed.
When I told God that, something happened to me. It was as if all the lights inside of me went on. One minute I didn't know that God was really there, and the next I did. I can't describe how that happened, but it did, and the reality was so strong that if Jesus had walked out from one of the trees in the park where I was praying, I would not have been surprised.
I started to sense the voice of God for the first time. It was something different to what I had ever experienced before. It was like a strong thought, but it impacted me. I asked the Lord how it worked and He explained that He spoke to my spirit, and my mind interpreted what I was sensing in my spirit. So it was not a direct voice in my head. It was more a type of realisation of what He was communicating to me.
I would ask Him questions, and He would answer me through the pages of the Bible. He explained that when I pray I am speaking to Him, and He speaks back to me through the Scriptures. This made the Bible become a living book to me and I started seeing things in the Scriptures that I never saw before. From that day (April 20 1969) until now, that sense of God's presence has never left me.
The great thing about being brutally honest and open with God is that when I come to the Judgment, there will be no surprises. If I am standing before God on that day and someone comes up and says, "What about what "Oscarr" did in 1973?" The Lord would say, I know all about that because he told me all about that and I forgave him and cleansed him from all unrighteousness.
The great thing about being honest to God about my sins and shortcomings is that I know that Jesus took all the guilt and punishment for my sins on the cross, and so there is no fear of retribution when I talk to him about things I would never dare to tell anyone else. People can be very judgmental when we talk about our faults, and that is why I avoid "confession" sessions like the plague. There are people in our churches who are obsessed with the faults and sins of others and they just love the group confession sessions where unwary people confess their deepest sins in the mistaken understanding that there will be love and understanding in the group. What actually happens is that their sins and shortcomings are gossiped around the church, especially in the ladies' weekly prayer meetings!
But everything talked about with the Lord is strictly confidential. He never discloses a person's sins to anyone else. This is why we should totally reject a "word of knowledge" from anyone involving "revelation" of sin in our lives. That is not the Holy Spirit.
What happens to me these days is that I will be talking to God about something, and the exact verse of Scripture pops into my mind that explains clearly what God thinks about it. I have never memorized Scripture, and some Scriptures have come to mind that I had not thought about for over 40 years!
But to come to that place where there is direct fellowship with God in the Spirit, one has to mean business with Him. One can't be casual about it, deciding to do our prayer "duty" for half an hour giving him our "grocery lists" of needs and wants. I spent three whole weeks, hour after hour telling God that there was something hindering real fellowship with Him, and then I went to an Easter conference and on the Saturday night I got unexpectedly called out by the pastor who was running the conference. He didn't know me at all. He said he just knew that he needed to pray for me. When he prayed for me, I got just a glimpse of a figure in white in a vision. The next thing I was on my face being totally cleaned out. It was after that when I went into my local park at 11pm a week later, and looked up to the starry sky and told God that He was in earshot of my voice and that I said, "You are God and I am "Oscarr" and I'm very glad to meet you!" That was when I got all lit up inside, and got the definite thought: "We have been waiting for you to come directly to us." He also said, "Walk before Me and be perfect". Also, He said, "Your fellowship is with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ." I found out what "perfect" is - it is the righteousness of Christ, exchanged for my sin which was nailed to the Cross with Christ.
One day I asked the Lord what were the qualifications for me to enter into His heaven. I said that when I came up to the Judgment, I would tell Him that all I have is that Jesus died for me on the Cross. He answered and said, "That's all you need". Then, "By the way, that's all you ever needed". I realised that I had been a deacon of my church and went through a period when I thought I was pretty well spiritually upward mobile and becoming respected as a leader. I think the Lord was making sure that I wasn't thinking of myself more than I ought to think, that no matter how experienced and mature I became in the things of the Lord, it all came down to just having Jesus dying on the Cross for us that made us anything in God's eyes. Pride is thinking that we are something when all the time we are just poor sinners and nothing at all, but Jesus has to be our all in all.
