Asking, Seeking, Knocking? (Part I of II)
By Chris Voss
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a leader in the German church called the Confessional Church, was arrested by the Gestapo in April 1943. (The Gestapo was the ruthless and murderous Nazi war machine’s secret police during World War II.) A year later, Bonhoeffer was jailed in Berlin’s Tegel prison. Bonhoeffer was later hung by the Nazis at Flossenburg concentration camp only a few days before the camp was liberated by the allies. But on April 30, 1944, Bonhoeffer was still very much alive, though imprisoned. He was mulling over the significance of religion — what it meant to be a Christian in such trying times. Nazi Germany was testing German Christian discipleship in a direct and crushing attack. Christians in America have never been brutalized and terrorized like these German Christians were in Hitler’s Germany.
Bonhoeffer had seen a tragic appeasement among Chrstians in Nazi Germany. Most church leaders and their flocks had tactily accepted the pagan and anti-Christian sentiments at the heart of Nazism. Only a few Christian Germans had spoken out like those Germans who formed the Confessional Church.
Bonhoeffer knew his Christian commitment was on the line, as was his life. It’s not surprising that when Bonhoeffer sat down to write a letter to his close friend Everhand Bethge on that April day in 1944, the meaning of the Christian faith was uppermost on his mind.
Bonhoeffer wrote, “What is bothering me incessantly are those Christians who do not in the least act up to it. I am dismayed at the many German Christians who have sold out. Very few are truly seeking God.” And so it is today.
Matthew 7:7 (Jesus speaking), “Ask, and it will be given; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.”
Today in your own life, are you sincerely asking, seeking, and knocking to know God and His will and purpose in your life? Or do you find yourself going through the motions on Sunday morning and the rest of the week, not really seeking to know God personally? Has Jesus become a religion of ceremonies to you — going to church, putting money in the collection plate, taking communion, listening to a sermon and then going to Sunday lunch; somewhat untouched by it all, except for the lunch?
God’s greatest desire is for us to truly and completely find our way back to Him. To an audience of unbelievers, Paul spoke about God’s desire that people “...would seek God and perhaps reach out for God and find Him, though God is not far from each one of us.”
(Acts 17:27) So greatly does God want us to seek Him that in Jesus Christ God paid the Ultimate Price to make it all possible to find Him. But where is God that sinners and indifferent Christians may reach out for Him and find Him? Actually, God, through His Holy Spirit is everywhere. He is, as we have seen, “Not far from each one of us” (each one — very personal).
Next time: The importance of the influence of the Holy Spirit in our lives and two ways to come to know God, all considered, in the conclusion to “Asking, Seeking, Knocking?”
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Chris Voss is a pastor at First Christian Church, 317 S. Main, Donna.