Doing Business with God: The Seek Response
by Ken Wilson
God likes to do business with people willing to do business with him--a fundamental aspect his nature revealed in Bible. Series: transactions we make with God: FOLLOW SEEK RECEIVE SURRENDER OFFER
At any given time one or another of these may be on the table. We can transition from a passive-stagnant spirituality to a passionate- growing one by learning to recognize when God is inviting us to do business with him in one of these ways.
Ready to consider the SEEK response in the life of Abraham?
Remember Abraham is a paradigm figure who's God-connection sets a pattern for ours. Abraham not advanced in ways of God. The man raised in UR, under influence of celestial gods. His father, Terah, set out for Canaan but settled half way in Haran. After Terah's death, God called Abram to leave his country, community, kin to go to a land he would be shown--a land we know now to have been Canaan.
At time of Abram, knowledge of One God was scattered. Had been 10 generations since Noah walked with God and kids didn't keep faith. Little known of this God, still shrouded in mystery & ignorance.
Just as for us, God is oftn shrouded in his mystery & our ignorance--one of many different voices in our heads, and not always a voice we've learned to distinguish from other voices.
SEEK implies desire. We want things and so we seek them.
Abram raised by a man who sought more than he had in UR. Loaded oldest son with ambitious name, exalted Father. Abram -Sarai suffered infertility; desire for offspring excruciating…
Leon Kass wonders: was Abram ambitious for greatness at time of his call? Did he want to be the father of multitudes? Did he yearn for a new kind of community, something more that what he experienced?
God plants his words in the soil of our hearts where desire resides. Deep desires, powerful desires. Not afraid to mix the seed of his word with the soil of our desires. Even when our desires are not aligned with his--they may be the starting point of business with God.
Don't be afraid of your desires. God isn't. Be honest about them, especially before God where you will be most tempted not to be. What do you want? Not what should you want, what do you want?
In surprising ways, God may be willing to start with you there.
When I was a young man, I didn't understand this about myself but I was seeking two things. In an age of anti-heroes I wanted a hero, a mentor, someone I could look up to. And I wanted significance: to make an impact on the world on my way through it. Through gospels,
God presented me with my hero-mentor and a path to impact.
Seeking is about desire. And speaking directly to God can express desire God-ward. An important act of seeking God: speaking. Not just thinking to God, speaking to God.
I have not taught enough about importance of speaking to God. I've taken it for granted. We live in a very chatty religious culture, where talking to God, praying aloud is assumed to be easy. It may become second nature, but it is threshold-breaking.
I wrote a letter about believing before I spoke my faith. Nancy: I believe--talking to God! I thought my belief before I spoke it aloud. It was MONTHS before I heard the sound of my own voice in prayer--after baptism. I've forgotten how threshold breaking it was!
In Gen 15, three chapters and several YEARS after God first spoke to him, Abram speaks to God for first time. Not months, weeks: YEARS. If you think you're a little slow on uptake, don't be hard on yourself. This takes a while for some of us. Like Father Abraham
Gen. 15: 1-2 First words from God in Gen. 12 concern promise of children. Children experienced as security & reward in ancient world. By this time, the desire for the security and reward of children is like an open wound it hurts so bad, is felt so deeply by Abram-Sarai.
God sows this word into the fertile soil of their desire: "I am your shield and your very great reward."
Life with this God will be ultimately secure & rewarding because knowing God himself will be their shield and reward.
After years of silence, Abram is ready to speak to God: not a well-crafted prayer or a pious thought. He speaks what's in his heart & on his mind: frustrated desire. God hasn't come through yet on the original promise of offspring and time is a-wasting.
Gen. 15: 3 Text implies God remained silent after these words from Abram, leaving space for Abram to speak a second time. (A good listener know when someone has more to unpack before speaking back. Sometimes the silence of God is good listening.)
Abram's first words to God were straight out of his pain [28:54=30:32] Rapture DVD
The first pain-soaked words of Abram elicit from God an even more powerful, expansive, personally delivered resassurance:
Gen. 15: 4-6: Abraham's speaking affects God. Did you catch that? Our words AFFECT God. Jesus affected by Mary Jn. 11
Because he understood that he has been heard Abram trusts more deeply and this is pleasing to God. Our hearts are never more aligned to his than when we trust.
Dealing with difficult relational things a while ago. Feeling vulnerable to someone else. When we feel vulnerable, we often get protective or defensive or fearful. But that doesn't help much.
In bed that night fell into a dreamy wakefulness: faces of loved ones came before me one at a time--smiling. Like looking at a baby's face. Including of faces the people I had strain rel. with.
Morning prayer, just sat there, said, "I feel so vulnerable." As soon as I said it, I knew I wasn't meant to fight it. God heard me. I was vul-nerable. It was OK. Miraculously, I trusted: I can be vulnerable and it can be OK. Everything's gonna be all right. I knew I was heard.
Speaking our pain is a powerful way to seek God. God is AFFECTED by this speaking!
Gen.15: 7-8. Abram speaks a second time "How can I know?" The one who trusted-believed and it was credited as righteousness….the very next moment, expressed his doubt: "How can I know?" His was not a doubtless trust. God responded again, decided to make a deal.
He did it way deals were made back then. In Genesis God does it our way before showing us his way, sometimes. Sacrificial animal-split carcass in two and both parties walk between the halves as if to say, "I will die if I have to in order to fulfill my end of the deal."
This is when God took promise to Abram in Gen. 12 and turned it into a covenant, a deal--till death do us part. I will die to fulfill this.
Covenant reaffirmed years later when Abram is 99. In interim Sarah offered her servant Hagar as a surrogate; Abraham obliged, fathering Ishmael. But still no son by Sarah. This is dragging out.
Gen. 17: 1-8 Final affirmation of promise before Sarah conceives
"Walk before me and be blameless" KJV sperfect. Heb, tamin, a different connotation than "perfect" or "blameless"; integrity word meaning complete, whole, entire. Whole-hearted. ALL-IN!
God is finally ready to ask Abraham to be whole-hearted, ALL IN. Abraham responds again bodily: spoken words first bodily response, then cutting covenant, now flings himself prostrate, spread eagle--all of him ALL IN. Embodied expression of SEEK response: Abraham is not just all in for the promise; he's all in for the Promiser.
By the time God asks for this, it is not too much to ask.
The Spirit of God came on Azariah son of Oded. He went out to meet Asa and said to him, "Listen to me, Asa and all Judah and Benjamin. The LORD is with you when you are with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you, (2 Chron.15: 1-2)
Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near. Isaiah 55:6
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. 'For in him we live and move and have our being.' Acts 17: 26-28
"So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. (Luke 11: 9)
And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. (Heb. 11:6)
Why do we seek anything at all? Because if we didn't we would die.
Life for beings like us cannot happen without desire.
Why do our desires, though, seem to always exceed their fulfillment?
We long for this, that or the other, and when it arrives, our desire isn't satisfied for long? Michael Jackson in the art shop: I'll take one of those and one of those and one of those…..
Greed is a spiritual sign: our desire exceeds most lavish fulfillments we can imagine….because desire is a spark from the flame of God, ….and we are in his image.
"The bruised reed he will not crush and the smoldering wick he will not put out"…flickering desire is sign of our kinship with him
When desires run amok--and it doesn't take long for us to see how they do--we are tempted to smother them. Often we do so in name of God. When that doesn't work we seek to hide them from God and ourselves, like a lung cancer patient trying to stuff his lit cigarette under the mattress in the hospital room when the nurse comes in.
But God and Father Abraham show a different way. God takes our desires, as raw, as confused, as unrefined as they may be and plants his word there, works with them and redirects them….
Making it Real---Practical Tips: Things you can try to see if it makes a difference. [Shawna Howards story]
1. If you are stuck at the threshold of spoken prayer: Perhaps never moved from thought prayer to spoken aloud prayer. Perhaps you have never spoken aloud your prayer in presence of others.
First: stop judging yourself. Like something wrong. The Father of all who believe took his time. When he spoke it counted. Martin's child
There may be something deep in your heart--quite possibly in the realm of desire--that you feel as though you dare not speak to God.
It could be that God is waiting for you to start there. Ask Spirit to show you desires of your heart then ask yourself if you are willing to speak them aloud to God.
Read through Psalms--take your time--ask Spirit to show you lines in the Psalms that speak what is in your heart including things that you might be afraid to speak. When you find these lines, pray over them, then speak them aloud to God as your own.
Start where you can, not where you can't. If it helps, write it down first, then read it aloud.
Some of us need healing-reassurance to hear the sound of our own voice in intimacy of prayer. Phil T. comment re my voice. [If voice ignored, or met with displeasure, may have internalized that.]
God help me not to judge the sound of my own voice….
If can't yet pray aloud in presence of others speak aloud prayers to God in car. Read Psalms aloud. Give yourself space in a small group.
2. If your spoken prayers have become glib: you find yourself speaking aloud easily, but you're not even listening to yourself---all your speaking is running in the same grooves, which feel as though they are becoming ruts, perhaps on the way to being a grave J
Ask yourself: is there something I'm not saying to God that all these other words are papering over? Is there something in your life that you are not facing, and so are not facing together with God?
Sometimes we circumscribe areas, topics, issues and say to ourselves,
"I'm not going there." With or without God….
Extended periods of silence before speaking prayers aloud can access
new regions of the heart that have not yet spoken.