A person who seeks God is a person who seeks truth. All truth is God’s truth. To seek means to genuinely wrestle with the questions of life and earnestly desire to find truth. The essence of faith in God — what He wants from us on a daily basis — is to seek Him with this purity of heart.
I know the days that I personally am most filled with peace are the ones when I’ve sought after Him because I don’t know what’s going on or what’s going to happen next. In these uncertain moments, I’m forced to chase after truth.
Breaking my hand near the end of this past season was one of those times. I sought God by looking back at my life, to the moments of uncertainty when something happened, yet God carried me through. These times have been some of my most peaceful moments — moments when I find myself walking blindly. I don’t know what’s next and because of that, uncertainty has placed me in a place of seeking and understanding what real faith in God is all about. When I seek Him, I’m able to experience true peace.
When God’s Word says, “Seek first His Kingdom and all these things will be added” (Matthew 6:33), I think the first thing that’s added is a sense of peace. Things may not get better in your circumstances — you may not get a promotion or the car you wanted, you may not meet the person you hoped to meet, things might just not go your way — but I do believe that when you earnestly seek the Kingdom, you’ll find a peace that can overcome any situation you’re involved in.
When I’m focused on so many other things, trying to control every situation I’m in, and/or trying to manipulate circumstances (sometimes even in my prayers before God), it’s a clear sign that I’m not seeking Christ. When I start to give God a to-do list, I might as well stop praying to Him and just pray to myself. In that case, I’m the one calling the shots and ultimately I’m the one responsible for it not going well. I’m trying to be God. You’ll find that when you try to control things, it gets pretty turbulent because we don’t make very good gods. You won’t experience the peace of Christ until you let go and give the controls over to God.
Only you can know, deep down in your soul, whether you have peace or not. You can tell people you’re OK until you’re blue in the face, but until you experience the rest that only God gives, you won’t know true peace.
A lot of times when we talk about faith and seeking first His Kingdom, we believe it’s something that will always positively benefit us. But it’s not always positive, sometimes it gets worse. Yet in these hard moments, the peace in your heart grows because you can look around and see that although circumstances may not be good, the God inside of you is. I’ve known times when things are going great externally, but I had no peace. I would have gladly traded the good circumstances just to be able to rest well at night and know that God has it all in His hands.
Are you seeking God and experiencing the peace that only comes with genuine faith in Him?
— Josh McCown, New York Jets quarterback
The Increase, part of the Sports Spectrum Network, is a community of Christian pro athletes sharing their personal stories of the decrease of self and the increase of Christ (John 3:30). Visit TheIncrease.com for more stories and videos.
