Seeking God

So, I have been thinking about the whole idea of the word "seek" for a few weeks and yesterday God gave me the understanding I needed. So below is what I learned yesterday on seeking and this morning on calling. The parentheses come from the Strong's reference number if you want to look it up. For those who know Hebrew and Greek, I apologize but I have no idea how to make accents on this thing.

Seek (1875)
Hebrew- darash: to tread; frequent; follow; pursue; search out; to diligently inquire
Seek (1245)
Hebrew-baqash: to search out (in worship and prayer); to strive after; to ask/beseech/ beg/enquire; to make inquisition; to require

These two words are intentional. They both mean "seek" bit tjere are other words with the same meaning that sound reactional not proactive like these two. God wants us to diligently inquire after Him and search Him out. This means we must go to Him in praise, worship and prayer, striving after a relationship with Him. Baqash means to ask and to beg. We must need God and His love, mercy and grace. It can't just be a fleeting want. I have to be desperate for one on one time with my Lord. In Isaiah 55:6 it is darash meaning to follow and search out. I think this is interesting because yes, there are times where we must wait on the Lord but there are other times we have to move and get up and Seek His face. Darash is also a very vocalized thing, it isn't seeking primarily in prayer and worship like baqash, it is real life calling out for God. It's like a real intense game of man hunt.

Isaiah 55:6
"Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near:"

Does this verse mean that God is hiding from us? Or does He just want to see if His children love Him enough to seek His face when He's not standing right beside them catering to their every need? Isaiah tells us to seek Him and call upon Him, both very intentional. This entire year the theme I keep going back to is intentionality. God is intentional and as we are made in His likeness we should also be intentional. This weans we can't be reactive, Don't just wait for issues and situations to come up in your life and react by reaching out to God. Seek God first (proactively) so that when those issues come up you're not even stressed because you've spent enough time with God to know He's going to take care of everything.

Seek and Call!

There's a song and some of the lyrics are "call out His name, (Jesus), and He will run to you". That's what I'm reminded of here. If you are truly purposeful in your pursuit of God, He won't walk to answer you, He'll run. That's just who He is and how much He loves to hear us calling on Him and wanting to know Him.

Now that I meditate on it I think that the reason David was a man after God's own heart was because He truly yearned to know the Lord and have a personal relationship with Him. He was always intentional about His faith and because of that His heart was in a good place even though he messed up and sinned big time.

One of the definitions of barash is to tread. I think that, in context, this means treading in the Lord's footsteps. Following Him wherever He goes. In real life having someone always behind you would be annoying and creepy but that is something God wants us to do with Him. If we're to be His sheep we must follow Him. This is something I'm going to pray on and look at more thoroughly in the next few weeks.

Call (7121)
Hebrew- qara: to call out to; address by name; to cry unto
Call (2753)
Greek- keievo: to hail, to bid

Isaiah 58:9
Call upon the Lord and He'll answer, cry unto Him and He'll be there.

Cry (7768)
Hebrew- shava': to shout; halloo for help or freedom

Isaiah 58
We must be wary of our spiritual lethargy.
Lethargy- the state of being drowsy/dull/ listless/ unenergetic or indifferent and lazy; apathetic/sluggish inactivity.

Isaiah 58:1-3
The people don't even realize they are spiritually lethargic. God has to ask Isaiah to show it to them. The thing to note here is that the people were still performing religious acts, doing the rituals set out in the Torah (the first five books) but they really were only going through the motions. I think this is important because going through the motions i.e. attending services, giving to the poor, does not mean anything if your heart is not where it should be. Lethargy is the state of being unenergetic. Spiritual lethargy is the same thing in regards to faith. A spiritually lethargic person is not, necessarily, someone who has no presence in the church. A spiritually lethargic person is one who does not truly seek God's will. (It's amazing how everything in the Bible relates to something else.) The people Isaiah is asked to minister to perform tons of religious acts but they do it for themselves, not God's glory. They are even so proud as to get upset with God for not noting their acts, their performance.

Lethargy is the complete opposite of intentionality. A lethargic person doesn't call out to God, they are reactive if they are active at all. They are completely indifferent about the state of their relationship with God. One thing I want to note is that this is a state of being, it isn't permanent. Lethargy is like complacency in whatever spiritual position you're in, not yearning to grow or mature. Because it is only a state of being anyone can fall into it and many don't realize they do, like the Israelites. That's why it's important to have Christ-like people around you, not just in your circle but your circle as a whole. They'll be there to notice your lethargy and pull you out of it. It shouldn't take a revival or some famous preacher or a conference for us to to want to build our relationship with God. There are times we don't realize we're stagnant and that's why we must try our hardest to seek God and be intentional about our faith!