What if God Can be Found?

I remember a very poignant season in my life where I began to change my mind about God. I had spent twenty years of my life convinced that there was no God and yet I found myself unexpectedly looking for Him. My pain, my longing, my story, needed a God to make sense of it all. Though I wanted very little to do with Jesus, I began opening my heart up to the idea of a Creator, a Maker, One bigger than me. The more I looked for Him, the more I found Him.

I think this is true of God. The more we open ourselves up to finding Him, we begin to realize He is near, close, right here, everywhere.

I love what the book of Acts in the Bible says “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And He is not served by human hands, as if He needed anything. Rather, He Himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 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.’”

What if God is not far from you? What if God can be found by you the moment you reach out for him? What if your doubt can find Him? What if your fear can touch Him? What if your bitterness can reach Him? What if the deep yearnings of your heart can talk with Him? Scripture tells us that in God we live AND move AND have our being. God might not be as far away as you think or as far away as He feels.

In all my mess and pain in college I began looking for God in the sunsets, in the people I worked with, in the “coincidences,” in the provision, in the learning lessons, in the heartbreaks and the deep seated dreams within my own heart. And the more I looked for Him, the more I found Him. God was fierce to be found by me.

If I can promise you anything based on my own experience it is that God is a God who wants to be found by you.

But sometimes we don’t know where to start. Sometimes we don’t know where to look to find God. Sometimes we are weary. Sometimes we’re disappointed. Sometimes we come with a lot of religious baggage and the weight feels like too much to carry to walk the road in pursuit of a God we may or may not find. Sometimes we feel so lost as to where God has been because our prayers haven’t been answered. And sometimes we don’t go looking for God because we have been told God can be found in a building at 9am every Sunday but nowhere else and just that makes Him feel so limited and small like He ought to get a website and have office hours. And if God is that small, we think, He’s not much bigger than you and I.

I know, friend, that your worry longs for God. The wounds that still bleed long for God’s healing. The confusion you feel longs for God’s clarity and guidance. Even the parts of you that feel really really mad at God, they long for reconciliation. And I know that because I’ve been there, full of worry, wounds, confusion, dismay but yet there was a part of me deep deep inside that couldn’t ignore my longing. I also know you might have this same deep longing because you and I were made to connect with God. We were made to walk with God, know God, experience God, and love God. And when we are far away, distant, when we put up walls with God, when we stop talking to Him, when we give up looking for Him, we don’t feel at home with ourselves. And if that’s you right now, longing for more of God, but needing fresh, new inspiration to do so, I wrote a new Bible study called 6 Places to God looking for God. My hope in creating this was to meet you in your longing to find God and help you know a few places you can start no matter where you’re at on your journey. Whether you’re not sure He exists or you have walked with God for thirty years, this study will meet you where you’re at and invite you to experience God in refreshing, life giving, and practical ways. Happy Colliding!