You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. Jeremiah 29:13
As I gradually gave up more and more of who I was to my addiction, I became more and more willing to do anything to get the pill. I lied. I stole. I cheated. There became little I wouldn’t do, to get what I needed most. The pill became my god and I turned my back on family, career and faith in pursuit of it. When chasing the pill, I was committed.
When God promises then, in today’s passage, that I will find him when I seek him with all my heart, I have some idea of what that means. Seeking God with all of me is not just going to church on Sunday. It is not just avoiding the really big sins that I don’t struggle with anyway. Seeking God with all of me should look something like my addiction.
God does not ask me to lie, cheat, and steal for him, but he does desire that I pursue him like I once pursued my destructive appetite. Jesus insists that I put him above all else in life (Luke 14:33). Paul considered everything as garbage in comparison to the worth of knowing Christ (Philippians 3:8).
God made us, and he desperately loves us. It is the nature of that love to desire to be loved back. God gave us the ability to love or not love him in return and it brings him profound pleasure when choose to love. This is our greatest purpose on earth: to love God with all our heart, soul and mind (Matthew 22:37).
How do I seek God with all that I am? I certainly do not do it perfectly. I still daily struggle with following myself, but that is the Christian life, daily turning from myself to follow him (Luke 9:23). I get out of my seeking, according to how much I put into it. Daily, I must spend time and energy reading, praying, and meditating. I must continually abandon my will for his. If I truly want to know God, I must pursue him as desperately as I once pursued the pill.