"Found By Him"

"Found By Him"

    In a lost generation unmoored from the Judeo-Christian truths and traditions that once bore significant cultural influence, we often hear the mournful refrain about people needing to "find myself."  By this, they usually mean they have no idea who they are, why they exist, and what, if any, purpose should guide their lives.  The search for self involves many methods, including the quest for adventure, journeys to special places, religious practices, escape from the norm of life, and any number of hopeful, but often desperate ventures to discover meaning, significance, and again, to find one's self.

    The Bible, conversely, never counsels us to search for ourselves.  Instead, it declares to us that truth and reality is found in the blessed wonder that God searches for us.  Not, of course, because He doesn't know who we are or where we are, but rather to reveal Himself to us in such a manner that we seek Him in holy response.

    "The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost" (Matthew 18:11).

    "But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship Him" (John 4:23).

    A fool's game beckons us to find ourselves in hope that the answers to life's meaningful questions will be answered.  We were not made for such a quest.  We rather exist to seek God, again, in response to His seeking of us.  "When Thou saidst, Seek ye My face, my heart said unto Thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek" (Psalm 27:8).  To know Him ultimately unveils the portrait of ourselves as spiritually birthed and animated by the indwelling Spirit of Christ.  Indeed, when believers truly find our rightful quest, we discover ourselves in Christ as a "new man, created in righteousness and true holiness" (Ephesians 4:24).  Note carefully the two traits.  "In righteousness" - that is, in the Christ who "of God is made unto us righteousness" (I Corinthians 1:30).  "True holiness" - that is, devotion to the God who made and redeemed us.  For those who realize such blessed grace and truth, the search for self becomes completely unnecessary.  Certainly we will better know ourselves as we grow in our Lord, but not because we set out on the fool's game.  We rather seek to "grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" (II Peter 3:18).  In the bright light of such illumination, we find out who we are by finding out who He is.  Or, as the Psalmist declared, "In Thy light shall we see light" (Psalm 36:9).

   An interesting aspect of our physical frame illustrates this truth.  No human being has ever seen his or her own face.  We've seen reflections, of course, or photographs and films of our visage.  However, our Heavenly Father set our eyes in their sockets to look outward and away from ourselves unto Him and unto people.  This speaks powerfully to the false notion that fulfillment results from finding ourselves.  It does not, and it cannot.  Again, our hearts were made to "look unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith," and then to "look not every man on his own things, but also on the things of others" (Hebrews 12:2; Philippians 2:4).  The quest begins and continues as we increasingly realize our Lord's search for us that empowers our search for Him.  Find ourselves?  No.  To be found by Him, and to find Him in holy response, this is the hope of our hearts and the end of the fool's game.

"I will look for Him."

(Isaiah 8:17)

Weekly Memory Verse

   Being confident of this very thing, that He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.

(Philippians 1:6)