I met with a friend last night and as we were bouncing some scripture around between us I stumbled upon a verse that I love, but for whatever reason, don’t often remember. The scripture is Jeremiah 29:12-13… “Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”
I have to say that I’m feeling slightly convicted over this. Why is it so often that we don’t seek God before we need Him – and even when we do, we seek Him with a half-heart? Our infantile human brains continuously insist that we can do it on our own, up until the point of where we become anxious, troubled or in a state of despair, and then we decide to leave it at the foot of the cross. God isn’t the last option. He should always be the first. And when we seek Him, we are to do it with our whole hearts. The term half-hearted is one that typically involves hesitation, procrastination or disinterest. A half-hearted approach would be to approach Him with no enthusiasm at all and one that finds Him as appealing as a bowl of cold oatmeal. Do you really want to engage your Heavenly Father in that way?
As a wife, a mother of (almost) 4 children who still works outside the home I often get caught up in the bustle of daily living to the point where I don’t seek anything except a clean kitchen floor and a few extra hours of sleep. Seeking God can sometimes be shuffled to the back of the deck whether we intend to do so or not. And sometimes we might continuously remember to seek Him for others but fail to do so for ourselves. Perhaps if we realized that He was there to meet all of our needs, no matter what they might be, we wouldn’t demand those extra hours of sleep. His peace would then fill our cups full, giving us exactly what we need to get through each day.
If there is anything we should approach with a whole heart, it is the throne of God. And it should always be our first resort…
~Jennifer
