God Hunt Revisited Jeremiah 29:11-13, Matthew 7:7-8 Rev. John Dilworth April 10, 2016
Jeremiah 29:11-13 (NIV) For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. Matthew 7:7-8 (NIV) Ask, Seek, Knock Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
God Hunt Revisited Jeremiah 29:11-13, Matthew 7:7-8 Rev. John Dilworth April 10, 2016 Introduction: Thirty-three years ago, my life was changed forever. I have never been the same since. It was not my conversion, that happened 45 years ago. It was not my marriage, that happened 41 years ago. No, in 1983, Sylvia and I and our one child at the time, Sarah, got in a car and headed south from North Bend, Oregon where we were living. We were going to a Christian family camp up in the Santa Cruz mountains at a conference center called Mt. Hermon. Part of our reason for going was I had been to Mt. Hermon as a teenager and thought it was a great place. You had all these wonderful trails to hike, you could go down to the Santa Cruz beaches and...there were beautiful golf courses nearby. But also there was a couple who were going to speak at the conference that we wanted to hear. Their names were David and Karen Mains. They were a couple in ministry and so were we. We thought this would be fun. It was a few days into the week that they shared an exercise that they used with their children to help them see God present and active in their lives. I have shared this before, although it s been years ago. It is called the God Hunt. What Karen Mains explained to us that day as she introduced the God Hunt was that there are two kinds of knowledge. There is head knowledge, or intellectual knowledge. You know things about a subject or about a person. Even with God, you can know about his
attributes. He is loving, almighty, the creator, but that is only one kind of knowledge. That is intellectual knowledge. There is another kind of knowledge and that is experiential knowledge, or knowing by acquaintance or encounter. Karen said one day she came to the point in her life where she felt God say to her, You know more than you ve experience. That is, her head knowledge of God had superseded her experience of him. So she and her husband, David Mains, set out to raise the level of their experience of God, their knowing him. The God Hunt was the result of their efforts to begin to see and experience the present and active working of God in their life. I was so intrigued with this idea that you could actually know God, experience him in your life. Most of us go through our days oblivious to God. We may pray and read our Bible, but do we experience the active presence of God? So, go back in time with me. Let s time travel back to July 8, 1983. John, as in me, is sitting at his desk in North Bend, Oregon, and he makes his first entry into his first God Hunt journal. I decide I am going to keep a journal of all the ways and times I see God at work in my life. I take the 4 categories or lenses that the Mains use to look at their life and see God s presence and active help. 1. Any obvious answer to prayer. 2. Any unexpected evidence of God s care. 3. Any usual linkage or connection. 4. Any help to do God s work in the world. My first entry back in July of 1983 was about preaching. I was still learning to preach and I was stressed out over the sermon. Has anything changed? But that week I prayed that somehow I could get the sermon done by Friday noon. That way I would avoid all the intense anxiety which disrupts a preacher s family life. At 11:40 am on Friday, I finished my conclusion. And so I wrote my first entry in my first God Hunt journal that God answered my prayer. Lens #1, any obvious answer to prayer. Another thing I was doing back then was leading kayak trips. Three or four times a summer, I would take high school kids or adults down the
various rivers on the south coast; the Rogue River, the Illinois, the Umpqua. About a week after starting this God Hunt journal, I had to lead a trip down the Rogue River. I know it s hard to imagine seeing me as a wilderness guide, but that is what I did as part of my job as associate pastor. It was a three-day trip and we camped along the river. Only on this trip it rained, the first and only time in six years of leading trips that it ever rained. Amazingly, one of the youth had brought along a huge ground cover and one of the girls had brought a tent. Students never did this. But it was enough to keep us all dry all night. I wrote in my journal, I feel in my heart that this was God s providential care. Lens number 2, any unexpected evidence of God s care. Finally, later that month in July 1983, I had to lead a week-long, grade school, summer camp. A camp where parents drop their kids off at the camp and say, See you in a week. I was in charge of 40 kids, plus staff. Only I didn t have anyone to do crafts. And I was not crafty. Out of the blue, this young woman in our church at the time, named Josie, volunteered. Only she didn t do just crafts, she also played the guitar and sang. Without her, I would have had to lead the crafts and all the singing, which, as Ray would tell you, would have been a disaster. Josie s availability and willingness to spend the week with us was an incredible divine coincidence. Lens number 3, any unusual linkage or connection. Or lens #4. She was evidence of God s help to do his work in the world. By the end of the summer of 1983, I was hooked on the God Hunt. I kept seeing God present and active in my life. It changed my life. Sylvia and I raised our kids on the God Hunt. We taught them to look and see God. The Mains taught their kids to call God Hunt sightings, I spies. I spy God. It was fun. And even today, my kids will be telling me about something where they see God s hand and will say, It was an I spy. Why am I telling you about this? Because I have kept a God Hunt journal now for 33 years. Every week, as many of you have heard before, I write down the ways I have seen God present and active in my life, the life of this church, the lives of some of you. The reason I do this is because it encourages me to keep on praying and believing, but also because it is the joy of my life. I have 33 years of evidence that God is present and active in
my life, in our lives. Let me take just a few minutes this morning and let s look more deeply at this concept of the God Hunt, and how it works itself out in our lives. A Seeking God What is it that I have said numerous times to you over the years that sets Christianity off from all other religions of the world? There are actually more than one, but the one I come back to again and again is this truth...god is a seeking God. He seeks us. You have nothing of a seeking God in Hinduism or Taoism or Buddhism or Islam. It is only Christianity that tells the story of the lost sheep and the shepherd who goes searching for the one lost sheep. Or the story of the lost coin that the woman cleans the whole house for in order to find. Or even the lost tax collector. Jesus not only told stories about the God who is seeking us, searching for us, but Jesus lived it out. Zachaeus was a hated man. He had no friends because he ripped people off collecting taxes. But when Jesus came to Jericho one day, he seeks out Zachaeus and finds him hiding up in a tree. Then invites himself over to Zachaeus house. Why? In order to find him, to save him from his greed and loneliness. After Zachaeus makes his startling statement of repentance, that he will pay back people 4 fold, Jesus said these words, The Son of Man (meaning himself), came to seek and save the lost. God is a seeking God. In Jesus, he comes seeking each and every one of us. Why? God wants a relationship with us. This is the story of the Bible. From the story of Noah, to Abraham, to Samuel, to Deborah, to David, to Jesus disciples, God was seeking after men and women to have a relationship with them. God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit, are all about relationship. They seek us to know us.
Through Jesus, that relationship is very intimate. Through his death and resurrection, then the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Triune God indwells us. We are united with them. God has found us through Jesus. As Jesus said, On that day (when a person believes in him) you will realize that I am in my Father and you in me and I in you. Those are the words of Jesus. God is with us intimately. The God Hunt is all about helping us see and experience this very present God who has made himself one with each one of us through faith. It was a year and a half ago that I did a very daring and dangerous thing. I decided to listen to this God, this Jesus who was in me and in whom I lived. I have mentioned Richard Foster s book, Sanctuary of the Soul. It is all about learning to sit in the presence of God, of Jesus, and listen to them. Prayer, for most of us, is all about talking to God. But Foster talked about learning to listen to the voice of God. I wasn t sure about this at first, but I will never forget the first time I did this one evening. I sat quietly and prayed for spiritual protection, I didn t want to hear the wrong voice. Then I simply sat and meditated on the truth that Jesus was present with me, in me, beside me. I still remember those minutes I first quietly sat in Jesus presence. I felt this overwhelming love. In fact, I would say I felt immersed in his love. The words of Psalm 103 came to me, As high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is the Lord s love for those who fear him. As high as the heavens, can you picture that? God s love is an immense love for those who trust him. God is a seeking God. He longs for us to know his presence and working in our lives.
Seeking God That is the basis of the God Hunt. In Jesus, God is seeking us. But we have a part to play, we must seek God. This is what the passages I read this morning teach us. God, speaking through the prophet Jeremiah, declares, You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you. It almost sounds like God is playing hide and seek with us. He isn t, but there is an analogy there. I use to play hide and seek a lot with my girls. They loved the game. Only they didn t really like to stay hidden long. So if I didn t find them fairly quickly, they would begin to make noises to let me know where they were. I never could figure this out. Well, with God, we too must seek him, with all our heart, Jeremiah says. Why? Because as the great contemplative A.W. Tozer wrote, God waits to be wanted. God waits to be wanted. But I think he makes noises every now and then to help us find him. It was Jesus too, though, who said, Ask and it will be given, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened. As I have told you before, all of those verbs, ask, seek and knock are in the present, continuous tense. Which means we are to ask and keep on asking, seek and keep on seeking, knock and keep on knocking. That is why we all need a War Room, to help us in our seeking. Have any of you seen the movie, War Room? I thought it was such an interesting movie. Not so much for the story, but the concept of war room. In times of war, the war room is where top military brass meet to plan the right strategy to gain victory over the enemy. So in life we need to seek God to find the right strategy to gain victory over the enemies within and without.
The movie portrays this idea through the lives of Tony and Elizabeth Jordan, who have a big, beautiful house, good jobs, a lovely daughter, and a marriage on the rocks. Tony is chasing skirts, and Elizabeth is the nagging, critical wife. Then in comes elderly Miss Clara, who asks Elizabeth to help her sell her home, but who in reality is God s agent in Elizabeth s life. Miss Clara begins to teach Elizabeth about the need for prayer. She tells her she needs a prayer room where she seeks God on behalf of her husband, and where she keeps track of how God faithfully works in her life in response. Elizabeth, one day, cleans out her closet and makes it into a war room, or in more spiritual terms, a prayer closet. She begins to seek God and keep a journal of how she sees him active in her life. I m not going to tell you any more, you ll have to watch the movie to find out what happens. Don t miss the point, though. Jesus tells us to ask, to seek, to knock. We must have our own war room or prayer closet where we go to seek him. His promise is he will be found. Seek and you will find, is Jesus promise to us.
God Hunt Revisited So let s revisit the God Hunt. I mentioned there are four categories, or what I call, lenses, through which to look at your life. The first is so obvious, we are to pray and one of the central aspects of prayer is we ask. We ask for the Lord s help, his guidance, his provision, his protection, his strength to do things. When we see answers to our prayers, we need to write them down. Journaling is critical to the whole concept of the God Hunt, or seeking his presence and action in our lives. Again, the Mains, in their talk, said, If we didn t keep these journals, then we d lose the sense of God s presence in our daily lives. I like, too, how they emphasized the need to look in the everyday activities of life, not just the big events of life. They said, The God Hunt is in the nitty-gritty of life, in the mundane flow of every day. It is, in a sense, the naturalness of the super-natural. I can testify. God answers prayers in the daily events of our lives. Last week, I was seeking a story to help me explain one of the points I was making in the sermon. I stumbled upon this story of an elderly Catholic sister trapped in an elevator. It was perfect. She experienced the peace of Jesus despite her 4 day entrapment. Interesting she made her elevator prison into a prayer room. The Lord provided me a great story. Also, we had been praying about where we would stay when we move to Kenya. The area director of Africa Inland Mission wrote us this week and said they had secured a place on campus where we can stay, and it is right next to my
Kenyan professor friend. Ask and it will be given, Jesus said. The second lens is actually one of my favorites because I so often see the Lord s unexpected care in my life. Sylvia and I have been under a lot of stress these couple of months, but this last week was really stressful. But then came this letter from someone in our church that was so encouraging, so affirming of our ministry and seeing God work through us. It truly lifted us up, it was evidence of God s unexpected care for us. The third category or lens is one of my favorites because I call it the lens of divine coincidences. Any usual linkage or timing is those moments when things or people come together at just the right time. You could never have planned it, it is so timely. I may have shared this with a few of you, but my sister wanted to go visit these long lost cousins of ours down in S. California. Last fall, she had actually run into one at Ashland completely unexpectedly. We hadn t seen these cousins in decades. She insisted that I go along. She paid for my plane flight, with mileage, so how could I say no. We get down there and we had the greatest time reconnecting with these long lost cousins. By the way, they were the children of my dad s twin brother, who had been a missionary in Ecuador. So I am telling them about the fact Sylvia and I are moving to Kenya to be missionaries. My cousin, Patty, says, Well, Johnny (my childhood name), we have a Foundation and we support missionaries. Sure enough, about a month ago, she wrote and her Foundation is now helping to support Sylvia and I to serve in Kenya. I mean, you couldn t have planned such a meeting after decades of no connection, and it be at such a timely moment. The lens of any unusual linkage or timing, is fun. Finally, there is that lens of any help to do God s work in the world. This I see every week. It can be stories or ideas the Lord gives me for sermons or my classes. It can be people like Dennis or the Whites, who come over to our house and help us get it ready to sell, so we can go to Kenya. It is something simple, like last week my daughter Grace wanted to have a Spanish speaking friend with her 4 kids over to our house. We had helped her out and she wanted to cook a meal for us. But we had to get our house ready to put on the market and keep it clean. We didn t really want to have a houseful. Then, graciously, the Pena s said, Well you can all come
over to our house. So all 14 of us got together at the Pena s and ate homemade tamale s together. It was fun and evidence to me of help to do God s work in the world. Listen. Jesus is the risen, living Savior. Through faith in him, he brings us into relationship, into oneness with the one true God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God is present in all of our lives, and active. But to see and experience his presence and action, we must seek, we must look, we must practice the God Hunt. Every week I go into my war room, I pray over all the concerns of my family, all of you, and all of my friends overseas who are serving Jesus. But I also sit and look back over the week and write down my I spies. I can testify, after 33 years of the God Hunt, keeping my journal, God is very real, very present, and very active in the mundane flow of everyday life. Let s go hunting.