The Benefits of Seeking Him

Seeking God’s face is not something that comes automatically to the Christian.  Such endeavor involves a conscious effort on our part.  We have to make a conscious choice to fix our minds on Him.  Our minds tend to wander or coast and we can find it difficult to bring our attention into focus and fixation, but we must take time out to seek Him.  As this is a gift from God to usward.  We do not seek God because He is lost.  Rather we seek Him because we have allowed the demands and pressures of life to have control of our minds and hearts.  We fall into the human trap of trying to make something happen or preventing something from happening, and we lose sight (with our spiritual eyes) of His presence .. His Beauty .. His Glory.  His Personal Character becomes hidden behind the curtain of our own natural and carnal and fleshly desires.
Yes, God is always near everyone and everything.  And God is always near His children because He has a covenant commitment with them.  But, He is not always near the conscious mind of a person, unless they are seeking His presence.  There are moments in every Christian life that we neglect Him or fail to trust Him.  Moments when we all forget to put Him first and forget His Greatness .. His Valuableness.
We should be experiencing His presence on a regular basis.  This will require practice because there are obstacles and fleshly or natural concerns that are vying for our attention.
How can we know that we have experienced being in His presence?  There is a sense of joy (Ps. 16:11) and there is a sense of glory and of honor (1 Chr. 16:27).  There will be a sense of peace and energy and excitement (Ps. 27).  In His presence, there comes the sense that nothing is impossible (Luke 1:37).  We must not stop seeking Him until we are sure that we have experienced His presence, because there is nothing on this earth in it’s entirety with which we can compare His presence.
God promises us that when we diligently seek Him, He will be found (1 Chr. 28:9).  We have all, at one time or another, sought His presents rather than His presence, but God Himself is our greatest reward (Heb. 11:6).  As David says, “Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere” (Ps. 84:10).  And in His presence we will see and know that we have everything we will ever want or need.
We seek Him first for our salvation and we are filled with the sense of His presence.  Joy and excitement, the newness, the hope rising within us as we become born again. But, soon after this salvation experience, we return to our former selves and our natural minds and go on about our usual way of doing things and continue on with our daily lives.  We too quickly lose sight of Him .. His Beauty .. His Light .. His Hope .. His Glory.  And as He fades into the backgrounds of our attention, we begin to unconsciously block out the love, acceptance, forgiveness, grace, and absolute beauty that is of His character that we were privileged to have glimpsed in the first place.
When we become saved by His grace, He puts everything aside to receive us and all we are, unto Him.  And after our new births, it is our own responsibility to put everything aside and receive Him and all that His is and has to offer.  As we practice seeking Him, we will enjoy the benefits of His presence and all the fullness of what is good and beneficial to us both spiritually and naturally. As we practice seeking Him in His Word and in His creations, in prayer and in meditation, in praise and worship, in the assembling of ourselves with our brothers and sisters in Christ, in our attempts to gain knowledge and understanding of Him and His ways .. We will  reap the benefits of knowing Him in an intimate way and our gratefulness and thanksgiving will increase our desire to know Him even more.

Inspired by and special thanks to .. www.desiringgod.org