Seek the Peace (3)

“And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you, says the LORD…” Jeremiah 29.13, 14

A God at hand
In exile from their beloved promised land, the people of Jerusalem had a choice: they could either moan and lament for their condition of chastisement and exile, and give in to the temptations of Babylonian life, or they could look to the promises of God, and let those be the horizon which defined their journey during this season of captivity in Babylon.

However bad it may have been under Nebuchadnezzar’s boot, the promises of God would neither change nor fail; He would be steadfast in His love and faithful to His Word. Israel’s hope, and the resolve and strength such hope engenders, depended on their ability to keep their eyes on the promises of God, especially in the midst of their difficult trial.

With their eyes firmly fixed on the promises, Israel now had a second duty it must fulfill. God commanded His people to seek Him, promising that, if they would do so with all their hearts, He would be found by them, and would restore His blessings. They would know Him, partake of His presence, and know His power for revival, renewal, and awakening.

This must have puzzled the people of Israel, as they read these words from Jeremiah in their captivity in Babylon. Wasn’t God dwelling in Jerusalem? In the temple He had commanded them to build? How could they expect to find God so far away from home (cf. Ps. 137)?

So today, many believers find their fullest experience of God when they are together with other believers in worship. The rest of the week they are so enmeshed in the world – or working so hard to remain free of its taint and threat – that the Lord can seem far away and hard to reach.

An earnest seeker
But the exiles who truly knew the Lord – like Daniel and his friends – understood that the temple was not the only, or even the primary place where God could be found. Daniel needed the presence of the Lord, for strength to seek the peace of the Babylonian Empire, and he turned to God in earnest prayer and faithful reading and meditation in the Word of God.

With Daniel, we get a glimpse of how one faithful believer sought God with his whole heart in prayer. In chapters two and four, faced by crises and threats, Daniel went to the Lord in prayer. We see him praying earnestly on his own, enlisting his friends to help him in prayer, and praying every day three times a day, seeking the Lord as often as he could for strength to serve Him well.

In chapter nine we again find Daniel in prayer, but this time in response to his reading of the same book of Jeremiah that we are considering in this study. As Daniel read in the scroll of Jeremiah, seeking the Lord and His will, he discovered in Jeremiah 25 that Israel was to be returned to the land after seventy years of captivity. He must have tallied up the years he’d been in Babylon and realized that the time had come. Now in earnest prayers of confession and pleading, Daniel sought the Lord to fulfill all that He had promised.

Seek the Lord in prayer, and seek Him daily in His Word. We will lose sight of the promises of God, and fail to know His reviving strength and power apart from diligence in each of these.

Faithful and diligent
This is the way to gain the Lord’s presence and His promises, when we turn to Him in faithful reading and study of His Word and diligent, earnest prayer.

God promised Israel that He would be found by them when they sought Him consistently like this, with all their hearts. Daniel believed that promise from God, and found it to be true; it remains so for us today.

Do we hope to know the promised blessings of the Lord in the midst of an increasingly hostile age? Are we determined to be a people who bring the Kingdom power of righteousness, peace, and joy to our sad and weary generation? Then we must commit to seeking the Lord in His Word and prayer, more fervently and consistently than ever before. There is no shortcut to partaking of the divine essence. We must go through His promises, especially as these are all fulfilled in Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 1.20). These promises are sprinkled throughout the pages of Scripture, and we begin to lay hold on them as we come to the Lord, promises in hand, pleading for their fulfillment through Jesus.

God promises that, if we will seek Him like this, with all our heart, we will find Him, and in finding Him, find the strength we need for revival, renewal, and awakening, beginning right where we are.

For reflection
1.  What does it mean to seek the Lord? To seek Him with all your heart?

2.  Does it seem to you that your Christian friends have a hard time realizing the presence, promise, and power of God apart from church? Explain.

3.  In what sense are all the promises of God fulfilled in Jesus? How should this guide our time in God’s Word and prayer?

Next steps – Conversation: How can believers help one another seek the Lord with all their heart? Talk with a Christian friend about this question.

T. M. Moore

This is part 1 of a 5-part series, Living toward the Promises. You can download this week’s study as a free PDF, suitable for personal or group use, by clicking here. You can learn more about living toward the promises of God by ordering a copy of the book, I Will Be Your God, from our online store (click here).

We invite you to register for the free online course, One in Twelve: Introduction to Christian Worldview. In this course T. M. Moore provides a sweeping panorama of how life in the Kingdom of God unfolds in an age in flight from God such as ours. Set your own schedule and study at your own pace. Learn more, and register for One in Twelve, by clicking here.

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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.