I must have heard, read and spoken the first part of this verse a zillion times. But on Monday night at the healing service in St Annes Cathedral where I lead worship, I suddenly understood something new. The new thing was the word AND
We know that we need faith to please God - faith which consists in believing that God exists, that Jesus is God in human form who has died for our sins and was raised to life again to buy us back to God. That part isn't a problem for most of us I think. But there is an AND. It is not enough to believe in those things, we ALSO have to believe that God is ' a rewarder of those who seek Him'
And that might be a bit more problematic for some of us 😊
If you are as old as I am you might remember The Sacred Diaries of Adrian Plass which came out decades ago as a Christian parody of the Secret Diary of Adrian Mole ( If you are under 40 you want have a clue what Im on about - never mind ) I distinctly remember that in one of the Sacred Diaries Adrian describes meeting someone who tells him that the gospel is basically this - God is nice , and He likes you! For some reason those few words have really stuck with me over the years. It is true. God is nice. He is really nice. And He likes you. Alot. If only we could grasp this fully - that He is good and kind and sweet and caring and that we are the apple of His eye then how much easier would it be to have faith. If we could pray just knowing, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that God is for us not against us. That He is 100% on our side and that He is busting a gut to make it happen for us. But somehow it seems so much easier to believe the opposite.
How often, when we come to pray, do we qualify our requests with ' if it is Your will God'. And what we mean by that is ' I'm not sure if You really want to do this for me.... so I will hedge my bets here and throw it all back on You'. It is why we pray the same thing over and over - just in case He didn't hear, or we didn't say it right or we didn't have enough faith the first time. And yes yes, I know about persistence and I know about praying in the will of God. But you know what Im getting at.... do we really understand. accept wholeheartedly, that if we go after God He will reward us?
Ive got a friend who is going through a tough time at the moment. God seems to have been silent during a time when she has really needed Him to be there. People have been mean, unhelpful, wounding ( church people obviously - its never our worldly friends who kick us when we are down is it??! ) She is weary of doing battle and feeling that she is getting nowhere. She wants to give up.
I cast my mind back five years to another friend who was in a similar position - who was so angry with God's apparent inactivity and indifference that he said he was going to walk away from God. Jack it all in. Forget about being a Christian altogether. I stood on the sidelines and watched and prayed. There was nothing I could say to persuade him that God was on his side, loved him and was actually present and active in his situation. He couldn't see it and didn't believe it. But that didn't matter. Because God knew his heart and knew that despite the raging and the storming my friend was desperate. For answers. For change. For Jesus. I really do believe that he was seeking God more during those really dark days than he ever had in his life before - but from where he was standing he had given up on God. He couldn't see that the wrestling was all part of the process, that the doubts and questions and struggling with big questions about the very nature of God were part of the diligent search.
Whilst it was all very difficult for a good couple of years, Im now happy to relate that God has brought him out into green pastures and done things which he could scarce have imagined when he was in the bottom of the pit. God does not let us go. Even when we feel as though He has. Even when we feel as though we have let go of Him. He rewards those who seek Him. We don't need to seek Him when He is up close and personal. It is when He is hard to see, difficult to hear, when He seems to have disappeared...... that's when the seeking happens. And sometimes the seeking is ugly and frustrating and difficult.
If we go back to the verse in Hebrews, it seems to me that what it is saying is that we can make God happy by believing in His existence and in His nature. Lots of people believe that God exists. Probably the majority of people in the world would say that they believe in a creator, or in a higher purpose, or in a god of some sort. But so many of them don't know Him. They don't know what He is like. In Jesus God has shown us what He looks like - and we have seen that He is approachable, generous, just, kind, powerful, wise, funny, compassionate, patient, super attractive and with us in the middle of our mess and brokenness. If there was ever a time to reflect upon the nature and character of God it is Christmas time. Every word of the Christmas story shows us what God is like. And even though the world didnt receive Him , He came anyway. Because it's never been up to us. 💗
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