Whether You Still Want to Be Found

"You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord." (Jeremiah 29:13-14)

Notice what God does not say. He does not say, I will find you and drag you out. He says, I will be found by you. There is a world between those two sentences, and much of your life with God turns on which one you believe is happening. He is not hunting you down like a man after lost keys. He is making himself findable, and then he waits to see whether you still want to be found.

A young child loves to be found. Hidden behind the curtain, he cannot keep from giving himself away, because the hiding was never the point. The whole ache of it is the moment the door opens and someone says, there you are. It is only as we grow older that we learn to hide well. We learn to hold still and let the footsteps pass. We learn that being found might cost us something, and we get very good at not being found, and we call it privacy, and we call it strength, and we call it managing our lives. And then we wonder why God feels far away.

He has not moved. He has promised to be found by those who seek him with the whole heart, and the whole heart is the difficulty, because a divided heart reaches for him with one hand and keeps the other on the curtain. God is not the problem. Your willingness is.

So do not ask today whether God is near enough to be found. He has settled that. Come out from behind the thing you have been managing, and let him find you where you actually are. The question was never whether he is seeking. The question is whether you still want to be found.