You will seek me and you will find me

Jeremiah 29:10 For thus says the Lord, when the 70 years are completed in Babylon, I will visit you and awaken my good word upon you to bring you back to this place. For I know the thoughts I have about you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil to give you the end you expect. Then you will call on me and you will come and pray to me and I will hear you. Say with me, and you will seek me, and you will find me. Amen.

For you will seek me with all your heart, and I will be found by you, says the Lord, and I will restore your captivity and gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you. I did carry.

My brothers, our God for those who arrived here, knows that it is nine outside in Boston, 9, not even 10. As we would say at home, it is cheap outside and in that cold these crazy evangelicals here we are in the house of Jehovah. Amen. Something you are looking for. Praise the Lord.

And I have good news for you, our God is an expert in turning the negative into the positive. Our God is an expert in taking the things that Satan, if they let him, would take advantage of to destroy us and turn it into a blessing. He only asks one thing of us, look for me. He wants to be found but requires that we search for him.

Now, my brothers, I have loved it for years, especially as a young man in the Lord, I spent a lot of time meditating on verse 11 of Jeremiah 29, quoting it, I wrote it wherever. It was a statement about my life. It is one of the reasons, I believe, that the Lord has blessed me throughout, and blesses many of the young people with whom we work.

See if one works in a social ministry, is one of our theme verses, because I know the thoughts I have about you. I know the plans I have for you. Amen. Armed with that, I thought, look, even though my mother and father didn't get to study because I know the plans that God has for me, the Lord is going to lead me to do something unthinkable. The Lord is going to do something with my life that he has not done with anyone else, only because he has decided to do it.

But last week at an academic prayer resource center meeting, the Lord wasn't speaking much differently and I realized that maybe the focus of this passage isn't so much on that victory banner in verse 11, but in this entrustment of the Lord, this recipe and this is the recipe that I leave you.

I believe that this message, if God wants to encourage you to do something, is this, the Lord encourages you to do what you have been doing tonight, search for it incessantly. Look for it for more obstacles that come your way, look for it, feel what you feel, look for it if you feel chills or stop feeling them, look for it if you feel like it or not.

You know, the reality is that many of us don't bother to seek the Lord until we find ourselves in captivity. And that is fine, that is precisely the situation in which this town finds itself in Jeremiah, chapter 29. That verse I know the thoughts I have for you, I love you, they are thoughts of good and not of evil, to bless you, to give you an end that you cannot imagine. The Lord is sharing this promise with a people that he has allowed to go into captivity far from home, and far from their situation, living a very negative new normal.

How many of us have not experienced something like this or maybe we are experiencing it? A Babylon. From a moment everything they knew in their world disappears, the temple, their neighborhood, their house, their farm, their vineyard, their neighbors, their parents, all of that is stolen and they find themselves in a place they never thought of. their lives that they were to meet there.

And the most that they wanted the Lord to tell them was, when, Lord, are you going to take us back to our community, to what we knew? And the news that they receive from the Lord is not very encouraging, the Lord told them, sit down and wait, it will not be tomorrow, it will not be after, it will not be next year, you will be in that situation for a long time. But I know you are there. It is my will that you be there for a while, for a while. And that place is going to be a blessing to you for a while, for a while.

But don't worry because even there, I know something, my thoughts for you are good. All along, what I want for you is good. Throughout, when I see in you are thoughts of blessing. My goal is to bless you.

You know, many times what causes us to seek God frankly is a personal Babylon where we lose all boundaries, all sense of security, if we have not lost it we are risking losing everything we love, everything we value. And I don't know about you, but there are many who don't make it to the house of the Lord until every frame of reference in their life is reconstructed or erased and we find ourselves in a forest with a compass that doesn't work and the lights off, and finally one see, in the distance, this little light in the night, a night without a moon and without stars and without a frame of reference, but one sees that little light in the distance and our soul instantly follows that light and we open the door and to our surprise, we find ourselves in a church.

Almost by accident we found ourselves in the house of God. The first to be surprised that we are there, that we ended up there, are us. My brother, if that is you, I hug you, I bless you, I tell you that it is the best favor that the Lord has done for you.

Do you know why? Because it is no longer religion, that church already represents something else for you. The pastor has said it over and over again and brothers we don't know how true that is. Religion truly, my brothers, does not save anyone, on the contrary, what is more, religion can inappropriately serve as a veil, religion can serve as a veil, covering the reality of the bankruptcy of our relationship with God.

Religion numbs us, makes us feel good so that we don't realize the extreme of our need, and the depth of our soul and the hunger of our being. That is the danger of religion when we supplant religion in place of a warm relationship with Christ, with the God behind that religion. When we can cover up with religion, make ourselves feel better because we heard something or maybe we give or are in community, but we don't confront the burning in our souls that only Christ can fill.

And God sometimes helps us with this because anything that separates you, that separates your heart from the heart of God is an obstacle, even if it is religion. And the Lord in his grace, in his favor, many times makes the Lord take you out of your place and you find yourself in this captivity and perhaps in that despair you find yourself crying out, but then this God... I am going to the church, I have been religious, my God has abandoned me then. And God tells you, no, no, no, on the contrary, my thoughts for you are for the best. If you knew what I see when I see you, if you knew what I had in mind when you were created, when I saw you woven into your mother's womb, what you were created for.

You know, urgently, the Lord does not waste his creation. If there is something that raises the wrath of God, it is to see a life perfectly lived, a human being that does not reach the level, does not reach the goals for which God created you.

And there is a spiritual struggle in which God is in command, he does everything possible, merely so that you become the creature that God has created you, that he knows, and in your heart you know, you are capable of being. Because if you didn't know, you'd be calm. But you are here because you know that God, God's purposes are much deeper perhaps than you have seen with your eyes yet.

You have no reason to believe that you are capable of more, but it is the spirit of God speaking with your spirit saying that you were made for an eternal purpose, but that purpose cannot be..., says the Lord, that... and I will wake up on you my good word.

There is a word that the Lord spoke about you even when we were merely germinated, in our mothers' wombs, the Lord spoke a word about you and there it is waiting for that word, interwoven with your chromosomes and your DNA. May the voice of your creator be declared over that word and may it awaken what you are, may it awaken for which the Lord has created you. Religion does not awaken that word.

The presence of the Lord, the closeness to God, your heart being caressed by the hand of God, that will awaken the purposes of God upon you. The Lord moves heaven and earth for this to happen, but he needs one thing, he needs your heart. He only waits for your heart, not dissembling, not appearances, not religiousness, he needs for this miracle, he is waiting, scheming, doing everything possible for you to reach the point of merely making a simple transaction, because the Lord has given you made owner, the Lord has made you steward of your own heart. The Lord is not going to tear your heart out, the Lord is not going to steal your heart, the Lord cannot force you to give him your heart. From your account for love you have to approach your Creator and tell him, you know what? You win, here is my heart.

You will find me and you will seek me because you seek me with all your heart. Wow! How God longs for that moment, my brothers. Find me, he tells you. Find me. You know, the true captivity is the captivity of the heart. It may be that God is in no rush to get you out of your Babylon, don't be surprised by that. What's more, many of us who have walked this path and who have experienced this miracle, have found ourselves at this same altar where we see so much... look, it's a process. People come saying, don't be surprised, this is going to be you, believe me, this is you, this is waiting for you, they are coming... Lord, get me out of my Babylon. And before long, when this process begins and you have given this heart to the Lord, you will find yourself thanking the Lord for your Babylon.

You yourself will not want to get out of your Babylon. Because? Because you realize that true captivity is a captivity of fears. We are captives of our fears, we are captives of character defects that contaminate everything we touch, we are captives of a reality of God so small, so limited, so narrow that it does not allow us to see the greatness of God or see what God is capable of. to do with you or through you.

You know, the interesting thing about this captivity… people walk the streets in this captivity, they get on their cars in this captivity, they get into their cars in this captivity, they go to work in this captivity, they raise their children and their children with this captivity, they marry captives, they live out their days, they walk captives. It is a captivity where his cell is his own heart that does not let us see how great God is and how great your life can be through his hands.

And we, perhaps, I have seen, my brothers approaching me and telling me, pastor, what shall I do? And it is not me that they are asking, it is truly the Lord. Sir, when will my wife return? And they arrive at the house of the Lord in despair because they perhaps have marital pressures. And instead of the Lord answering him, on such a date, the Lord tells him this, look for me. Find me.

When will I get out of this economic mess? And the Lord's answer is, look for me. When will this pain of this loss subside? And the Lord's answer is, look for me. When will I be free of this depression? And the Lord answers you, look for me. You know why? The moment you start looking for the Lord and find him, the moment you give yourself up... well, I'm already in Babylon, I build a house here, I look for work here, I raise children here, this is my reality, and what's up with me? but seek God?

The Lord had to take away from those people the temple, the priests, the sacrifice, Jerusalem, just so that the only thing they could see, the only thing left, the only thing missing was God. And at that moment you discover something, my brother, you don't need anything else. You don't need anything else. When you found God, you won the lottery, when you found God, you found everything you lost and more. When you found God, you found the purpose for which you were born. When you found God, you found a peace that no one can take away from you, when you found God, you found the voice of the Savior speaking to you at night, directing you to where the treasure of your life is.

When you found God, you found provision. When you found God, you found health. When you found God, you found healing. When you found God, you found eternal life. When you found God, you found why that mirror was created so that you can see the glory of God marked on your face and the Lord transforming you into his image. When you found God, you found everything.

You don't even realize Look, you forget that 70 years so quickly? And where did they go? Lord, leave me here with you, calm down, here with you.

My brothers, indeed, here is a survey, how many have thanked God for their captivity? And for having found God? I am the president of that club, amen. Glory to God. Search it.

Let's stand up. The Lord declares through another prophet, the prophet Amos, seek me and you will live. The Lord is so interested in being sought out that he puts on flesh, comes out of his safety in heaven, walks on this earth so that we can walk, touch with him, and so that we can pour out our needs before him, so that he defeats death itself and show us that the cross is not our end. Lord, we seek you tonight.