Seekers

Seekers. We are all seekers of some form or another. Some seek possessions others titles. Today I stand before a group of peers who are all seeking to become something someday. We are seeking to become doctors, artists, ministers, musicians, husbands, wives, mother and father. We are at a point in our lives were we desire these things the most. How do I know this? How much time do we spend trying to get there? The number of hours spent in class, doing homework, and practicing all prove that we are willing to sacrifice 4 years of our life an 100,000 dollars just to find what we are seeking.

The problem with seeking out these positions is that we tend to miss the years of sacrifice required to become what we are seeking after. We look ahead at the prize and remove ourselves from the present reality we are living in and we create a fictitious fabrication of future reality. And in this future reality we have obtained all of these things. We have earned the degree, we have the spouse of our dreams, we are working at a place with in our major, the world seems almost perfect. I do no know how many people I have talked to that state, I cannot wait until I am done with school married and settled down, because then everything will be alright.

Then when we get all that we desire for now new desires come in and fill our time, we begin to seek to have children, further ourselves in our career, see our children graduate, we retire, we relax, and we watch our children do it all over again. What worries me is that within all of this seeking and dreaming we become disconnected with reality, and when we are finally on that beach and we look back on the life we have lived we will be dissatisfied because we will realize that we missed life, that we were so concerned with seeking tomorrow that we will have missed today.

What makes us think this? What makes us believe that tomorrow will be better than today? That makes us believe that once I am married and settled down my problems will despair? We deal with this though process even as a child. I can always remembering looking forward towards high school and then college. Honestly life has only gotten more complicated since starting school. I believe that what it comes down to is what we are seeking. Yes we are seeking degrees and families but more than that we truly seek a place free from the current pain we are facing today. Is it bad to seek family and education and careers, absolutely not, the danger comes in living entirely for tomorrow that we miss the beauty of today. And if we are always looking towards tomorrow we will never see the beauty of today.

We are seekers and although we maybe seeking out matters today that are essential for tomorrow, I feel that we are truly seekers to the questions of what does love really look like? What does the pain I feel today matter to the people around me? What do I matter? What is truly worth living for? What does Joy look like? And in our fantasies about tomorrow these questions are answered these desires are met. Yet in reality there will always be a certain amount of suffering in this life. So these questions remain. And of course the typical Sunday school answer applies to the answers of all of these questions Jesus.

Jesus, has become just as vague of an answer to these questions as any other. What does it mean to love, look to Jesus. Who cares about me, Jesus does. What do I matter, according to Jesus, everything. What is worth living for, the mission of Jesus. And What does real joy look like, none other than Jesus on the cross. And it is true that Jesus is the answer to all of these questions what does this really mean. What does Jesus caring about me look like? How do I feel Jesus’ love? How do I live for Jesus? And How do I have Joy when my life feels like a living hell?

The problem with answering these questions with just Jesus leaves us at a place where we try and grasp at the spiritual presence of Jesus that is somewhere out there. We cry out prayers in our rooms weeping at the disparity of our situation and pain, we hope that there is a Jesus out there listening and we hope we can feel his presence, but what do we do when that feeling never comes? What do we do when we have cried our last tear and we still feel just as empty and alone as when we started? Has the Jesus answer failed us? NO! Is our crying out in vain, NO!

Jesus fully knows us read psalm 139 to see the extent he knows us. Since Christ knows us full well, we can be confident that he will answer our cries. Astonishingly, though the answers to our cries will most likely not come from divine touch of immediate feel-goodness. I am not saying that God cannot answer our prayers in this way, for many experience peace while praying to God, yet this peace is normally fleeting, and healing normally does not transcend from temporary peace but peace transcends from healing.

Let me suggest that at this point we have not utilized the full of Christ. We often forget that, the Church is Christ’s current earthly indwelling. That his spirit resides in each and everyone of his believers, and it is through these believers the spirit speaks. Matthew states that when one or two gather I am with them. Christ is present in community. It is through the body of Christ that we get to experience Christ. Most Christians understand the concept of when they give the hungary food they are in essence feeding Christ. How is it then, I ask that we do not realize that when Christ asks us to confess our sins to him he literally meant each other since we are in essence Christ. We are considered little anointed ones or little Christ's. So many people I talk with say that they have given their problems over to christ and that they are trusting in his guidance, but how many of them have discussed their problems with Christ in community.

What does this then mean for the community of believers? It sounds like it means a lot more than just meeting to sing some songs and listen to someone speak. Its sounds like a movement to me. A movement of people to be Christ for others only through the grace of Christ living and speaking through them. And if it is to be Christ speaking through us and not us speaking what does this mean again for the believers? Its sounds more like a serious responsibility to be a believer knowing that he or she will be held accountable to what they say. It sounds like we better know what Christ is like if we are to live like Christ. It sounds like a call to faithfulness. A call to seek his face. We are all seekers here and when we are seeking a place free from pain, a place full of love and joy, we are truly seeking Christ kingdom today.

Seeking Christ’s kingdom will require work, it will require detection and it will require sacrifice, sacrifice included further suffering, but when I look at the church it was a place far from being free from suffering. Yet it was a place where people knew that they were loved, it was a place that was safe, it was place where everyone had each others back. It didn’t matter what you looked like what you dressed like or what you had to bring to the table. These people did more than have a religious service, they lived together worked together served each other, their kids played games with each other and there community grew.

They reached out to the culture around them, not by toeing the line with culture, but by living counter cultural. When everyone was having sex with everyone else they abstained, when people placed their babies in the woods to die (first century abortion) instead of protesting (which would have resulted in death), they would rescue them? Is this not the movement we are looking for in the today? Is this not what we yearn to see in our churches today? Where does this movement originate from? Faithfulness. Genuineness. Authenticity. Are not these the words we hear tossed around in the movement today?

When we pray to be loved, when we cry out to God in the private place, when we yearn for reconciliation, let us also ask the spirit how we can be the answer to these requests for someone else, because someone some where near is praying the same prayer. Remember we are the body of Christ, and when Christ answers prayers and meets needs he normally uses his body. Prayer is not passive where I ask God to meet all my needs, but it is active where we present our needs to God and respond by meeting the needs for others. Many ask for safe travel during the holidays, be that safe driver not for yourself but to be apart of the prayer. Many ask for reconciled relationships, seek out reconciliation in relationships in which debts have not yet been forgiven.

We can talk about changing the world we can sit on our knees and blabber on about how we desire a movement, but until we begin to become actively involved in the movement we are left with nothing less then good intentions. Join me today and make your prays active and alive, seeking the face of God, and begin a life in faithfulness. When intentions turn into desire action will begin to take place. A life of faithfulness is not a flashy one full of power and status, many things go unnoticed, but the real life difference will begin to shine through your live and the ones around you. When we seek God, we are accepting truth, we are accepting reality, and as long as today is called to today we are not to let our hearts be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness (Heb 3:15). We are all seekers, what are you seeking? Truth or deceitfulness?