Seekers Draw near to God

The following video transcript has been lightly edited

Hi. We're continuing our series, Drawing Near the Kingdom of God. And the concept of it is that how we live, the rhythms and habits in our lives, can help us feel near the kingdom of God. We can draw near it, versus it just being a reality that we miss out on in terms of experience. One of my favorite things about the fall is fall golf, and fall golf is particularly wonderful not because I'm a great golfer, in fact I'm an avid but mediocre golfer, it's how beautiful it is.

As the leaves change, especially up at Green Lakes, a course near me. You look out at incredible scenery and the light and the leaves. It's just beautiful. One of the challenges of fall golf is that it can often be harder to find your ball. In fact, sometimes when the light is hitting at a certain angle, you can't see it at all between the light and the leaves on the ground.

You have to reposition yourself. You have to look from a different angle. And when you look from a different angle, all of a sudden, what you couldn't see before, now you can see. Your eyes have been opened. And sometimes, you find some other people's balls, who left them behind because they couldn't see, and they didn't think to look backwards.

What I want to talk about today is this idea that faith is something for us that is supposed to be dynamic and alive. That if we want to draw near to the kingdom of God, we want to be people of faith. Not just one time faith, not just, oh, I believe this, because we can believe something but not live into it.

Rather, we want to be seekers. Dynamic Seekers, because Dynamic Seekers draw near to God. In Mark, chapter 10, Mark writes about Jesus in Jericho healing a blind man named Bartimaeus. And Bartimaeus is poor and on the side of the road, asking for money, for help. And he hears that Jesus is coming. And he cries out, Son of David, have mercy on me.

And the crowd tries to quiet him. Shh, shh, leave him alone. Jesus is too important for you. Is essentially what's captured in that response. But Bartimaeus cries, all the more, out, again, more loudly, it says. Son of David, have mercy on me. And Jesus stops in the midst of the crowd and calls Bartimaeus over to him.

And says, what do you want? And Bartimaeus says, help me see again. Jesus says, you can see again. Go, your faith has healed you. And it says that Bartimaeus joined him on the way.

I want to point out a few things, because I think that Bartimaeus behavior shows us how to have dynamic faith, how to engage, how to lean in, so that you and I can see.

Throughout the scriptures, there's a theme of people's eyes being opened, both physically and spiritually. If we're honest, you and I walk through life a lot of times with our eyes closed, but God is desiring to open them. Open them to new ways of living, open them to kindness, open them to ways in which we relate to others.

But just like Bartimaeus, we have to have the desire to see anew. He heard about Jesus and he desired to engage with him. He desired to be active in his faith. And then he pursued Jesus and asked for healing, and Jesus offered him healing. So you and I have to desire to see things from a different angle, from a new vision.

And God is the one who invites us into that. Now there are always things that are pushing against that. Our own apathy. Our own blame of others. Our own closed mindedness. It's these kind of things. Keep our eyes closed. Keep us, our lives filled with blind spots. But if we want to be seekers who draw near to God, what we want to do is we want to be a people who desire to see.

So, hey God, open my eyes. Open my eyes to the ways I might grow as a human being. Open my eyes to the way I might be able to love a little bit deeper and a little bit more. Open my eyes to the ways that you are already at work all around me. Because when we desire that, desire to see anew, then we're being seekers, and we're drawn near to God.

So the text says that when Jesus called to Bartimaeus, He threw off his cloak, leapt to his feet, went to Jesus, and then immediately followed him after that. And it's this reminder to us that when we see, when our eyes are open, that action is required. So, when we become aware of a blind spot in our life, when we become aware of the way we're perhaps hanging back, then we have to act.

Well, how do we act? Well, we want to act boldly. Bartimaeus has never seen before in his whole life, and now he can see, and he's following Jesus. And I'm sure that there's all kinds of things about that that are really disorienting. So recognize that as you act boldly, you're going to feel uncomfortable.

There's gonna be parts of it where you're like, what exactly am I doing? As Bartimaeus cried out, the crowd told him, hey, hush, quiet down, stay where you are. As your eyes are open and as you try to create change, the world will try to hold you where you are. So recognize that you've got to push through. You have to act and not give up.

And lastly, you get a chance to meet God and experience faith. And so all the things that we do, we want to be people who act with boldness. And so let me ask you, what's a way that maybe your eyes have been opened to some thing that you're doing that's not healthy for you, or something that you're caught in, or some kind of pattern of behavior that you feel like, if I could only just get outside of this, whatever that looks like, if your eyes are open to it, don't close them.

Don't allow the cruise control of life or your apathy to change to keep you where you are. Act boldly in faith.

Lastly, what we want to do as we have our eyes open and as we act boldly in faith, we want to trust that God will meet us. This is what happens for Bartimaeus. He cries out, and Jesus calls him to himself.

And then when he goes to Jesus, Jesus restores his vision, and says, come follow me. Now, I think there are some times where we think that what God promises us is healing in the same way that Bartimaeus received it. But that's not really a promise that Jesus makes. You and I sit in this in between world, in which we are part of a world that has had Christ enter it, and in Jesus life, death, and resurrection, offered hope and a picture towards the future, and that future is one of restoration.

But here and now, Jesus actually promises us that there will still be trouble. And so, healing is not always the way that God meets us. And some people will teach you that it's because you don't have enough faith, and I would just say that that is a lie. That is not how God operates. But we can have faith that God will always meet us.

But what does it mean for God to meet us? And here's how I think God meets us in this life. Is that God forever brings a new door that opens. God forever brings a path that felt like it dead ended to something that opens back up. God forever brings resurrection, even in the face of death itself. That's the most powerful message of Christianity, is that death is not the final word.

It is not a dead end, but rather, even death itself has been overcome. And through death, we experience. And so as you have your eyes open, as you act boldly, God will meet you. God will meet you in the uncertainty and the discomfort and provide a new path for you to continue to grow. Sometimes it can be hard for us to see that we're in the midst of it, but each of us, as we look back, we can see how what felt like a dead end actually became a new beginning and a new opportunity for restoration. And in that moment, we get to experience God meeting us - having life.

So if you want to be near the kingdom of God, to experience peace and joy and love and patience, you want to be a seeker, a person who lives faith dynamically as you always cry out, open my eyes, as you always act boldly at this opportunity and as you trust that God will meet you in the midst of it.

I hope this week is filled with you drawing near to God and living a dynamic faith. Looking forward to next week. Take care.