My song repeat of choice recently has been a new release by Paul Wilber – “Your Love Is Far Better Than Life”. One line reads, “I will seek You as long as it takes ‘till I behold You face to face.”
This reminds me of Jeremiah 29:13: “And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.” (We see this same promise in Deuteronomy 4:29.)
The word translated “seek” in Jeremiah 29:13 is the Hebrew baqash, which means “to search out (by any method, specifically in worship or prayer); by implication, to strive after” The word “search” is the Hebrew darash, which means “to tread or frequent; usually to follow (for pursuit or search); by implication, to seek or ask; specifically to worship.”
Gesenius’s Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon describes darash as “to rub, to beat, to tread, to trample with the feet,” as in “to tread or beat a path.”
If you’ve ever walked through untouched nature, you know walking once does not a path make. Or walking twice, or three times, or four. You get the picture. Treading a path requires persistent walking in the same place over and over again.
God promises He will be found by us if we seek Him with all our hearts. Do we persistently tread the path of worship and prayer in pursuit of Him? Do we search for Him with ALL our hearts—or only the parts we think we can spare. Do we search half-heartedly then wonder why we don’t have the relationship with God that we want. I know I’ve often done the latter.
God longs for a relationship with us, but we will find Him when we search for Him not only when it’s easy, convenient, or we “have time”–but with all of our hearts. As long as it takes. And finding Him is worth it all.