Hey, Amanda here.
So I'm doing this thing with my church where I read three chapters from the Old Testament and half a chapter from the New Testament every day, so that by the end of the year I'll have read the entire Bible. Not gonna lie- the NT is a whole lot more interesting, and sometimes I skip the OT reading. Consequently, I'm like ten chapters behind. Last night, after I'd made this blog with Rebecca and then gone home, I decided to sit down and catch up on some of my OT reading.
I'm currently in Deuteronomy, reading about how God brought the Israelites into the promised land of Canaan, driving out their enemies before them. I found something in Deuteronomy 4:25-31 that had a ring of familiarity to it- even though that story happened thousands of years ago, it sounded exactly like our lives today. Allow me to paraphrase:
In Deuteronomy 4:25-28, Moses says, "After you have lived in the promised land a long time, if you then become corrupt and begin to make idols for yourselves, doing what is evil in God's eyes by turning away from him to worship those idols instead, you will perish from the promised land. You will be destroyed. The Lord will drive you out of the land he gave to you, scattering you among the nonbelievers, and many of you will die. You will become corrupted and worship the nonbelievers' idols, which can't see, hear, eat, or smell."
Then Deuteronomy 4:29 says,"But if from there you seek the LORD your God, you will find Him if you look for Him with all your heart and all your soul." Deuteronomy 4:30+31 goes on to say that we can return to the Lord from the ungodly place we banish ourselves to. He waits eagerly for the day when we return to him, never giving up hope that we will, never banishing us forever from his presence: "For the LORD your God is a merciful God; he will not abondon or destroy you".
When I read this, my mind kept going back to verse 29. In this day and age, the people of the world are like the Israelites after human nature caused them to sin and fall away from God. Now we are all scattered, deceived by the enemy so that our confused hearts don't know what is truth and what is falsehood. The result is a world culture hostile to God and desperate to find lasting fulfillment anywhere but in him. There's so much junk in our world, so much that can lead us astray and cloud our judgement; and even the most steadfast believer isn't immune to its affects. It gets to us; it seeps into our hearts, bringing doubt and confusion. It blinds our eyes to the things of God, until all we see is the mundane, and we wonder, "How can there be a God in such a devestatingly average world, where everything is defined by what we see and what we know? Where is God in all the pain and tragedy?"
But verse 29 gives me hope. "...You will find Him if you look for Him with all your heart and all your soul." God is there. He's there to be found, and to be found by you; he calls out your name with a patient and a loving heart, ready to accept you back into his arms, and to count you as one of his children. And here's the most important thing: You can find Him from wherever you are- China or Canada, the US or Africa, even Antartica. You can also find Him from wherever you are in life- whether you've got it made and are riding the wave of success or trapped in the most hopeless of circumstances; whether you've been living sinfully or following Christ since childhood.
I'm not just saying that. I can't promise much in this blog, but I will promise this: I'll never say something I don't mean with all my heart. And if there's one thing I've learned in the year and a half since I accepted Christ, it's that my God isn't just some "force" hovering somewhere in space, somebody who maybe looks down at us on Earth from time to time; somebody who maybe cares about us, but probably not; and definitely not a pet that I can order around, a toy I can put away when I'm done playing with, an equation I can put limits on, or something that I'll ever be able to understand. I can testify to the Lord's great power and greater love, and I've seen the work of his hands in my life and the lives of others. I've heard his voice, and will again. I could say it's only because I am seeking him with all my heart and all my soul that I've seen him move in this world, but that would be a proud and thoroughly mistaken assumption. The point is, he's there, close enough to touch- or rather, close enough to touch us. And the more you seek him, the more you will find him, and diving into this relationsip with our Lord brings clarity and joy to a thoroughly messed-up world.
(For more on finding God, please read Jeremiah 29:12-14.)
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