I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For

It’s a challenge to put into words, really. But since words are my paint and this is my canvas, I’ll put it as best I know how.

A group of amazing people and I just had the privilege of locking arms and swimming through the Proverbs for 30 Days. If you weren’t subscribed to 30 Days Deeper, I’m sad that you missed it — but be encouraged! It was a wonderful experience and I definitely plan to jump into creating another study soon. (And I’m working on putting 30 Days Deeper into an ebook in case you want to experience it for yourself!)

But here’s what is amazing about the goodness of God, the thing that I’m struggling to put into words:

After 30 Days of digging deeper into the Word, and looking for God in the world around me, I’m more thirsty than I was when I started.

But not thirsty in a bad way, like imagining yourself in the desert and feeling so parched you’re on the brink of complete dehydration. Not at all. This is the thirst of someone who has tasted something wonderful — and wants to go back (or go forward) and taste some more.

And this is the glorious goodness of God I am unexpectedly discovering: the deeper you swim out into the waters with God, the more you find Him, and the more you want Him. And want to keep finding Him.

Maybe this is a contradiction to what I expected when I first started to follow Jesus. I guess I thought once I’d found Him, I could stop looking for Him.

Tozer puts it this way:

“How tragic that we in this dark day have had our seeking done for us by our teachers. Everything is made to center upon the initial act of ‘accepting’ Christ (a term, incidentally, which is not found in the Bible) and we are not expected thereafter to crave any further revelation of God to our souls. We have been snared in the coils of a spurious logic which insists that if we have found Him we need no more seek Him.” {The Pursuit of God, A.W. Tozer}

How often have I been surprised by how much God seems to love a good paradox?

Everything in your earthly mind tells you that you look for something until you’ve found it, and once you’ve found it, you stop looking.

But God, but God! Our finite brains could never find Him all at once, so little by little, we get to look and find pieces of His goodness. Like a giant puzzle whose pieces are scattered across Creation for us to discover and put together.

Here we find His goodness. There we see a better glimpse of His mercy. Here is a revelation of His Truth. There we see His love for beauty.

Like we discovered in looking for Wisdom for 30 Days — when you find Wisdom, you immediately want to look for more. You are simply more aware, when you find Wisdom, how much more Wisdom there is still to find!

I once thought it seemed such a shame that Bono hadn’t yet found what he was looking for. I even heard the lyrics of that beautiful song altered to create a worship song that exclaimed joyfully, “And now I’ve finally found what I’m looking for…”

But what a mystery remains untold until we realize that our hearts, like David’s, should find the goodness of God, but continue to be like the deer that pants for water, souls longing after God, and more of Him, and more still.

Could this perhaps be the greatest joy of a relationship with God? The continual discovery of His goodness, His beauty, His mercy, and His Truth?

This could be the song for God’s people for now until eternity: we still haven’t found what we’re looking for… and we’ll never stop looking.

A side note of inspiration nothing short of glorious: Did you catch this beautiful surprise concert by chance?

Let’s keep searching friends!

xCC