”Seek first the Kingdom of God” Matthew 6:33
Seek to go in search of, to look for, to try to discover. Seek is an action verb.
So many times in our lives we ‘seek’ passively. God is omnipresent, and the soul has gotten into the habit to just sit back and let Him come to it. The soul grows lazy in this and can even become very prideful or dejected. When the soul has a passive experiencing of God, it is so easy to take pride in that, ‘look at how God loves me!’ or become dejected when it doesn’t have that experience with God.
I speak of firsthand experiences in this type of life. Expecting God to be there for me, when I need Him. But, not looking for Him at all. For so long, I expected that if God loves me as much as He says, He should seek me out and be there for me. Of course, this wasn’t my active thoughts but I can see now how this was in my subconscious. God does come to our rescue, of that there can be no doubt. Look at the incarnation, Jesus’ life and crucifixion for proof. But, if this is all we expect of God in our lives, we give the enemy freedom to work in our thoughts in all the other moments.
The soul must actively SEEK God with all its might. What does that look like for each soul? That is up to the soul to determine. But, it must be an active pursuit of God. The lost sheep (Matthew 18:10-14) cries out to its Shepherd when lost. It doesn’t sit behind the tree quietly eating grass and soaking up the sun. It bleats out, calling out to the Shepherd to be found. This is often the form of prayer the soul takes. A prayer calling out to God for Him to find us. This may seem like its putting all the action upon the Good Shepherd to seek us out, walk to us, find us and carry us home, but that is also an active SEEKing out of God as well.
Prayer is a very active form of the soul seeking to draw close to God. This is maybe the easiest and most difficult thing for the soul to do. Difficult because we listen to the enemy when he tells us that we can’t pray without ceasing so we aren’t good enough Catholics. 1 Thessalonians 5:17. But, as everything else from the mouth of the enemy, this is a lie. You don’t have to be a great saint or a bishop or a super holy person to pray and seek out God. You don’t have to have all the right words in prayer or make grandiose statements. Just pray. Call out to God.
In our Emmaus retreats, we have an opportunity to pray. Many men have never really done public, vocal prayer before though. So, this is a very difficult thing for most men, Catholic or not, to get through. The sense of needing to make the ‘perfect prayer’ weighs upon each of these men. One of the things we convey to help settle the hearts and minds is that the most powerful prayer there is in existence, is simply the Name of Jesus.
My most powerful prayer experiences have been the most simple and base. Calling out to God when my daughter was diagnosed with Lupus, “Father God, please help her”, calling out to God that terrible night in the ICU, “God, I don’t even know how to pray” and calling out to God from the depths of my soul in that Dark Night of the Senses, “God, where are you? Help me”.
“When we cry, ‘Abba, Father!’ it is the Spirit Himself bearing witness with our spirit…the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words” Romans 8:15-16, 26
Romans 8 shows that the Spirit of God knows what we need before we even ask. Of course, for we know God is omniscient – He know all things. But, what this is also saying is that we MUST pray. We must SEEK God’s favor and presence in our prayer. Even though my cry my not be the best prayer or even that it may be from my emotion and lined up with His Divine Will; We trust God the Holy Spirit to listen and God the Father to respond.
Prayer is an action of seeking God. The key to prayer isn’t about sitting back waiting for God to determine what we need and come to us but it is to call out to God, to seek Him. While we know that God does know what we need before we ask, He also wants us to seek His Counsel and assistance.
Call out to Him. Then, Trust that He also hears and ALWAYS answers.
SEEK!