He is the one who draws us to himself. He is the one who seeks and save us. As Jesus said of his mission in Luke 19:10: “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost”. I was calling out as a teenager, “I’m looking for someone to change my life, I’m looking for a miracle in my life” as Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues wrote. But left to my own devices, I never would have found him. He found me. What a wonderful saviour.

The longer you are a believer, the more you begin to understand that it was not so much of a case of us seeking after God and finding him, but of God seeking after us and bringing us home to himself. Here I leave aside the big debates about things like election and so on, and simply will speak about ‘man’s search for meaning,’ to borrow the phrase from the book by Viktor Frankl.

While Scripture certainly speaks of God choosing individuals and nations, it also speaks to the idea of seeking God. Just a few passages out of many can be mentioned here:

“I love those who love me, and those who seek me find me.” -Proverbs 8:17

“Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near.” -Isaiah 55:6 

“And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.” -Jeremiah 29:13

“And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” -Hebrews 11:6

But two additional things need to be said here. One, most of these ‘seek me and you will find me’ passages are written to those who are already God’s people. It seems it is often more of a case of them seeking God while in their covenant relationship, and keeping that relationship fresh and living, day by day.

And two, we also have passages like this that we must keep in mind: “As it is written: ‘There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God’” (Romans 3:10-11, citing Psalm 14:2-3 and Psalm 53:2-3).

This is another major truth found in Scripture: as sinners we are spiritually dead. Dead people cannot seek God – or do much of anything else. As Jesus put it in John 6:44: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them”.

Again, it is not my intention here to start another theological war. But in the end, it is the grace of God that really matters. He reaches down into our messed-up lives and saves us. How much I was actually seeking and searching God is a moot point. But when I get to heaven, I certainly will not be bragging about what a great spiritual search I was on. Instead, I will be forever thanking the Lord for his finding and rescuing me, a lost sinner.

My ‘Search’

With all that in mind, I can still say that as an old hippy, I was on a search – of sorts. I was not satisfied with life – or at least not with MY life – and I went down various avenues, including eastern religions, what became known as the New Age Movement, and lots of drugs. None of those things delivered the goods however, leaving me quite depressed and suicidal.

That is when God broke through in a quite unexpected manner. More on that in a moment.

While in my youthful hippy days, I followed closely many of the main rock groups back in the late 60s and early 70s. A number of these groups – but certainly not all – seemed to be on a bit of a search as well. They seemed to have longings and yearnings for something more to life.

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