The more I seek you, the more I find you

"You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart." Jeremiah 29: 13

Do you ever wonder if God laughs with us or shakes his head in sadness when we do something funny or wrong? God has been trying to get me to pray more and although I am sure I have no absolute idea if the following is true, I think He shakes his head with sympathy when I am too deaf to hear Him whispering, "Time to pray."

Remember the story of, Daniel in the Lion's Den found in Daniel 6? Well, I always used to get confused with the following verse:

"Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before." Daniel 6:20

I could not believe I prayed more times than Daniel and yet the fact that he prayed just three times a day was written down in the bible as some big accomplishment! I prayed when I got up, for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner, and when it was time to sleep! So what was the big deal that Daniel prayed three times a day? And why did his prayer have so much power over his situation?

When I said God has been wanting me to pray more, He did not mean he wanted me to top the charts with how many times I would bend my knees and park them on my living room or bedroom floor in a day. God has been trying to teach me, what prayer really means, and that I could pray five times a day, and never really meet with Him the entire day.

You may pray for an hour and still not pray. You may meet God for a moment and then be in touch with Him all day. --Fredrik Wisloff

I believe Daniel's, three, prayers a day had way more power than my five prayers a day, because they each met God, searched God, and found Him

Think of the times when you are watching TV or on Facebook, and you start thinking, "I should go pray." Instead of leaving the TV on and closing your eyes, turn off the TV, go to your room, turn on some worship music on your phone, or computer in place of Facebook and speak to your Father. Prayer should be as important, thoughtful and detail's as a "date night," with your spouse. Think about it, we go through all these steps to make our "date night," a romantic and lovely night, so that our relationship with our spouse could stay strong and alive, but with God, we use no details or any thoughts when meet with Him. We either feel we have too or need to scratch that off our to-do-list.

There is a mighty lot of difference between saying prayers and praying. --John G. Lake

I have so much to do that I spend several hours in prayer before I am able to do it.—John Wesley

God is urging you to meet with Him, to seek Him and He promises, you will find Him.

Lyrics from Kari Jobe's, "The more I seek you."

The more i seek you,
the more i find you.
The more i find you,
the more I love you

I wanna sit at your feet
drink from the cup in your hand.
Lay back against you and breath,
hear your heart beat

This love is so deep,
it's more than I can stand.
I melt in your peace, it's overwhelming 

Returning to the Heart of Worship

'If you return to the Lord, then your brothers and your children will be shown compassion by their captors and will come back to this land, for the Lord your God is gracious and compassionate. He will not turn his face from you if you return to Him.' - 2 Chronicles 30:9

There's a first time for everything, and we always remember the first experience of something.
Not so much because of the actual happenings, but because of the feelings that stirred inside of us.

Whether it was knots in your stomach beginning your first job.
Butterflies on a first kiss.
The painful heartache with a first breakup or the immense joy on becoming a parent.

We never forget those feelings because they actually made the moment slightly surreal, elevating us from our comfort zone.

There are many 'firsts' in life that we have encountered, including coming to the Lord.

Take a moment to remember that time. What feelings did you have then?

God always being the same in nature, assures me that the day you came to the Lord, your heart felt joy, peace, and comfort on a level beyond what you'd ever experienced before.

On that day, as we came forward and surrendered our all, we were brought forth into the heart of worship.
There in the center of what worship truly is, stands the Lord Almighty.

He stands with a beaming smile and compassionate eyes, that welcome you despite what your life says about you. In that heart of worship, it is such an intimate place that your heart bursts with tears of joy knowing someone loves you that much.
Realizing such a place exists, there is no possibility of us leaving it. There is no other road that we would be willing to take that would steer us away.

But there is and we do.

Many of us stand far from what our earthly minds would think to be reachable by Him. Many of us stand there because we feel the road to go back to that initial interaction with Him requires strenght that we no longer have to make it there. But if we take a moment to recall the expression on His face when we made the decision to come to Him, we would also remember that His lips also moved as He said: 'I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving - kindness.' (Jer 31:3)

Today the Lord invites you again to come into His presence where He can carry you, wipe your tears away, heal your wounds, and give you once again that joy, peace and comfort you once overwhelmed your heart with.

PRAYER

Dear Abba Father, we recognize that without you our life would have to hope. Our wayward heart steers us away from you, but when we are far away from home, we also see that the choice made was not correct. Bring us back to you, guide us on our way back home.

Amen.