But if from there you seek the Lord your God, you will find him if you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul.
Deuteronomy 4:29
I was 19 and recently divorced.
Not from a marriage, but from my faith. I was one year removed from high school. After one year in the labor force, I was entering my freshman year of college.
I remember the day of separation vividly as the movie reel ticks in my memory. I was packing for my first year of college. Brown boxes and duffel bags held my most precious possessions outside of my Ryne Sandberg rookie card which remained on my childhood dresser. As I held the hardback book that was handed to me by my pastor upon high school graduation, I slid it into the box as an appeasement to my mama. But in my mind I said to myself “I won’t be needing this.”
And in that moment the great game of hide-and-go-seek began.
I spent the majority of my first semester hiding. He spent most of those four months seeking. In the most precarious of positions and places God would interrupt my strategically designed new life without him.
On a cold December night home on break, a praying mama drug an unpraying son to church. Near the back row seated on a wooden church pew in a classic “pentecostal revival” service I was attempting to do my best hiding, while God was doing his best seeking. If the preacher who was preaching that night every reads this, I hate to say I don’t remember a word of your sermon. Not that it was not good, it may have been. It was just I was mid-discussion with Jesus and his voice was louder than yours no matter how much you shouted.
And my 19 year old stubborn insistence was broken down by his unfailing pursuit. In that moment God reconciled the covenant that I had broken. He redeemed the distance I had created.
In the irony and divinity of God, it was from that Bible I packed up with no intention on using, in that church I had no intention on attending that December night that I preached my first sermon. That bible now tattered from use and covered in pen and highlighters sits on my shelf with a duct taped spine as the reminder that we are never too far from God.
It amazes me how I spent most of my freshman year hiding and in a moment he found me. I had fought so hard to have life my own way and he reminded me that my life was never my own. I had freedom to choose, but my choices had left my life shackled with sin. In that moment, the hider was found the by the seeker. The marriage of my life to the master was reunited.
I recently heard Pastor Erwin McManus explain it this way: “I was searching for love and crashed into Jesus.”
If you know Jesus, you have had your one moment. If you are far from him, he is seeking you so that your heart and his can be united. It happens in just one moment.
Even in your hiding, he can find you. Crash into Jesus.
