Description

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

What does it mean to seek the Lord with our whole heart?

Jesus associates our hearts with our greatest interest, with what matters most to us. Notice: he said, "where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." (Matthew 6:21)

In other words, to spy out where your heart is, look for it in what you most treasure.

But then we have to ask, how do we know what it is that we most treasure? And the answer is rather simple: have a look at what you most think about when you are at liberty to think of whatever you please.

On any given day there are occasions when what you are doing does not require your undivided attention. In those moments or minutes you can think of whatever you’d like. And it’s during such moments that what you most treasure functions like a magnet for your thoughts and you find yourself thinking about it. That is where your heart is.

So let’s revisit the question: what is it to seek the Lord with all our hearts? Well, it’s going to mean that when we are at liberty to think of whatever we please, we start to deliberately direct our thoughts to Jesus — that is to say — to what matters to him.

And what matters most to the Jesus? I suggest it’s this: helping him help other people realize how precious they are to God.

So if we want to seek the Lord with our whole heart, let’s narrow that down to what we do with our free-thought time to three goals.

1. First of all, praise and thanksgiving. Besides being a way of declaring how worthy God is of our devotion, praise and thanksgiving condition our hearts to receive whatever God sees we need to work with him in caring for others.
2. Next comes prayer. Nothing helps other people realize how precious they are to God more than to pray for them. The reason being that in answer to prayer, God goes far beyond anything we might personally think would best benefit another person. He amps up everything in their lives in such a way as to make it increasingly likely that they find themselves feeling loved by God.
3. Third is ideas or, if you will, God’s guidance. This touches on thinking of things we can do for others that helps them realize how precious they are to God.

To sum up: when behind the scenes of our every day activities our free-time thinking is preoccupied with praise and worship, with praying for others, and with working on ideas as to how to bless them, we are treasuring God — we are seeking him with our whole heart and we will find him.

One more question: how do we grow these aspirations? In the same way we grow any desire — we think about them. The Holy Spirit will faithfully remind us to give thanks or praise, to pray, to act. If we will respond to his influence and do it, the habit will grow. Such use of our free-thought time will become second nature to us.