Have You Found Jesus Yet?

Honestly, I didn't know He was missing

It irks me when people say that they "found Christ". I know exactly what they are implying but it's being phrased all wrong. Jesus is not lost, we are. He is seeking us and when we come to Him, it's because He found us, not the other way around. I was talking with a good friend of mine tonight and was trying to explain to him that although God is seeking us, He is not unaware of our whereabouts, our positions. He knows where we are but He wants us to choose Him out of a free will, not out of force. He will of course, tug at our hearts and draw us close to Him, but He will not make us accept Him. If we choose another route, He will not force us to make another turn or scream that we are going the wrong way. A comedian explained it like this: when using a navigational system and following it according to its prompts, we will get to where we need to be. But when we start to deviate from those directions, it redirects. It doesn't give up on leading us to where we need to go, it reroutes and leads us and gets us back on track from right where we are. It doesn't say, "You should've made that right, you're not listening. I'm done helping you." Instead it says something along the lines of, "Recalculating, in 300 feet make a U-turn." No matter how many times we make a wrong turn or get distracted along the road, the GPS does it's job to get us back on track so we can get to where we need to be. The journey may be more difficult and may have lots of bumps along the way but if we drive according to its instructions, we will get to where we need to be.

So Where do we need to be?
With Jesus. Our spirits long to be with Him the way they were created to. Since the beginning. And when we get off track, distracted, the Holy Spirit does His work to get us back to Him. We are the missing ones, the lost sheep that went astray. But Jesus is the Lamb of God Who longs to reunite us to Himself, Who shed His blood to cover all of our wounds, Who was broken so that all of our brokenness could be placed back together like a beautiful stained glass mosaic. Now, your thought process may be something like, "But what I've heard about your "god" is not what I want to be apart of. Besides, I've heard it all before." This was similar to my friend's thinking as I was explaining to him that he and I met for a reason. What I told him was this, "You and I met for a reason, so that you can truly meet God. And not the God you heard about. But the One you didn't." When God spoke that to me, it blew my mind. This is what God is doing for so many of us who believe and this is also what He seeks to do for those of us who have yet to believe. He wants us to know the Him we haven't heard about, not the "Him" that we have.

God is not out to get us or combat us or harm us or throw hot lightening rods in our direction. He seeks to draw us in by His kindness and to teach us that His grace (via the sacrifice of Jesus' death and victory from the power of His resurrection) is sufficient to cover all of our sins. Yours. Mine. Ours. The next thing I'm about to say is in no way easy and it is something I am doing more and more of everyday. Please, come out of your spiritual hiding place and allow yourself to be found by the Seeker, the Savior. And next time someone asks you if you have "found Christ", tell them that He wasn't lost, you were.