What Are You Looking For?
What you’re looking for, you won’t find out there. What you want is good, and I long to give it to you, but where does your heart lie? What treasure are you holding deep inside? Because everything you want, everything you seek, can only be found in Me.
Sometimes, we’re faced with tough situations, circumstances that hurt, things we can’t understand. And we run away from God and to the world, anything to overcome the setback, to soothe our aching souls, to understand what’s happening around us.
We reach and seek for anything but God, and we soon find it’s not enough. It’ll never be enough. We wind up feeling worse, more empty, more confused, and farther than we did to begin with. We try to fill the void and meet the needs in our hearts—most times without even realizing it.
What are you looking for? What do you desire most? And what are you doing to find it?
I can’t answer that for you, but I can for me. I was looking for distraction, anything to quiet the questions in my heart. I was broken. I had put up walls and pushed God away. I had been faithful with my time, even my money, but not my heart.
Inside I held on to all the things I wished were different. I continued to remember what '“went wrong.” I bought into the lies: God is withholding something good from you. He promised provision, but, look, He’s only taking away.
I couldn’t understand what God was doing, and I was hurt by the lies I had believed, so I turned to other things. I looked to my future and my plans, but the more I tried to figure them out the more they fell apart. I looked to the people around me to satisfy the longing, but people can’t do that.
I reached a place where I just couldn’t do it anymore. I needed God to transform my heart, my mind, my everything—all over again.
I found that He wasn’t in the holding on but in the letting go. See, I was holding on so tight to all the wrong things. I had to let go of all my disappointments, my fear, my confusion. I had to let go of my expectations and dreams, the way I thought things should be. It had become a massive weight that was just too much to carry. So I let it go.
But when did I start believing God wasn’t enough? What made me think He wasn’t good? Was it the disappointments? The setbacks? The mess-ups? The lack of provision? The unmet expectations?
God’s not surprised at all the things we think “went wrong.” Unlike us, He’s not worried or upset. He’s not stressed or confused. In fact, every single detail of our lives has purpose and is marked by His infinite love for us. He’s so incredibly good, and He has good plans for us.
Jesus says that in this world we will have trouble, there will be hurt, and we won’t always understand why. But take heart—He’s already overcome it, and that’s what makes it good. He died to give us access to life abundant in Him, not apart from Him.
Turning to the world to find this kind of life never works. We will alway come up short. And maybe, He allows things to “go wrong” so that we would seek Him.
“From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.” Acts 17: 26-27
Hey. God put you exactly where you are, in this appointed time, for a specific purpose. Know what it is and cling to it! Nothing about your life is an accident. Trust Him—He knows what He’s doing, even when you don’t.
And when you find that the world’s not enough, reach out for Him. For He’s not far from any one of us.