Seeking with all our heart

I received a letter from a friend the other day, and while telling me how he was doing, he asked me to pray for something specific: that he would not try to fix the problems of his heart on his own. "It takes something deeper though. It requires me to accept defeat to realize I can't follow God without His help, just like I can't be washed clean without His help," he wrote.

So very often, we try to refocus our lives on God, to pass the distance we feel from him, to repent from sin on our own accord by reading the Bible and praying more. The very acts that are so important become our ritual, the solution themselves. But alone, they cannot save. It takes us letting go, accepting defeat, and relying on God to truly change the state of our heart, to bring about that sanctification that is on going in our lives.

Jeremiah 29:13 - "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart."

So very often when I read that verse, I think that it is all me doing the seeking, but that is such a misconception on my part. God calls us to desire him. He puts that desire in our heart, so that we can truly seek Him. Without His placing that within our souls, we could never come to know him. It is commonly said that we all have a God-shaped hole in heart. And this verse looked at in light of the God-shaped hole makes sense finally! If there is a hole in my heart that can only be filled by God, then in order for me to seek God with all of my heart that hole has to be filled. This verse does not imply that I am doing the seeking on my own, but rather because of God's pursuit in my heart, I can seek Him.

"There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, made known through Jesus." - Blaise Pascal