Will You Ever Truly Meet God?

"You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all of your heart." - Jeremiah 29:13 (NASB)

Powerful verse. It has been a "life verse" for me for a long time because it reminds me that I must seek God in order to find him. In the past, I have always focused upon the way that this verse applies to me in the sense that I must seek God if I want to find him.

This morning, however, it occurred to me that the opposite is also true. I see now that this is both a promise and a warning. The promise is that when we seek Him we will find Him. The warning however is that "I will never find Him if I don't seek Him". What some of us need to hear is this: "You will not find God if you continue to do what you're doing right now."

Don't expect to find Him if all you do is read your Bible, if its all about head knowledge. Its good to know what it says but if by reading it you are not using it as a means to meet God and experience Him then you never will. Its also great that you go to church. Yet, if you go to see your friends or because you think that you ought to then don't expect to meet God in that moment. You must enter into each of these areas with an expectation of encountering the Living God face to face.

The point is this: Examine your life to see what your motivations are for the spiritual disciplines you practice. What is my goal in reading my Bible? What do I hope to accomplish by going to church, fasting, or prayingr? If your goal is not to meet God in those experiences, you won't. Until we change our focus on the spiritual things that we do, we may find at the end of life that we never really encountered God. We never experienced God in the way that He desired for us to.

What a shame that would be. Will you ever truly meet God? You will if your primary objective in life is not to know about God but to know Him. You will come to truly know God and meet Him when your expectations match His.