Seeking in Hard Places

"For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future full with hope. Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek with all your heart, I will let you find me, says the Lord." Jeremiah 29: 11-14

This covenant from the Lord promises us welfare, hope, and the companionship of God. The language of this passage suggests that God knows that at some point in our lives, we will call upon the Lord and search for Him, but the language changes from "when" to "if" before the promise that if we seek the Lord, we will find Him. This verb "seek" requires a conscious decision to act fervently, as we both internally and externally seek God and discern our holy call. This verse left me wondering, what does "seeking" look like?

Today, I really felt God revealing to me what seeking God really looks like. It was most clearly revealed through God's disciple named "Shorty", a former drug addict, gang memeber, orphan, and deportee. Shorty's testimony of God's amazing grace and transformative relationship with Christ embodies what it looks like to truly seek God with passion, urgency, and perseverence, as well as what it looks like when God "lets [us] find [Him]".

Living out his faith and representing the hands, feet and sacrificial love of Jesus in the slums of La Limonada, one of the largest, most dangerous slums in Central America, Shorty showed us what it looks like to seek God in hard places. When asked what gives him the strength to walk into prisons, groups of gang members, and sewage filled slums full of people who want to kill him, he replied that we need a theology to sustain us in the hard places. His desire to seek God in the hardest places imaginable and his testimony that God truly does fulfill the covenant promised in Jeremiah 29: 11-14 gave me a better glimpse of grace than just about anything I've witnessed.

My prayer is that we will choose to seek God with the same faith as Shorty in our own hard places, whether in the slums, our families, or in our hearts. I thank God for the theology of Jesus to sustain us as we seek God's call in these hard places and God's promise to meet us face to face as we do. Amen.

~ Sarah Gobble