P. Schaller

Tonight we’re going to speak about seeking God. Seeking God. Has anyone seen him around lately? Seeking God. Isn’t that a good theme? Have you been paying your tithes? Have you run out of money? Have you said prayers and not had answers? Have you been on the missionfield and came home empty? I have. Have you been educated and not found God? Have you been in Bible college and not found God? Have you come to this church and not found God? Have you read the Bible and not found God? Good subject, isn’t it? This meeting is over! It will be a good message.

Stand with me and be refreshed. Express love to your neighbor. Encourage your neighbor. Praise God. Amen. Halleluiah.

When I have a couple days free and come back, I feel like praising God a lot. I feel rested and relaxed and I think of praising God. We have great teaching in our church. We heard a great message from P Scibelli. P. Love is awesome. Great friend. One of my favorites. Didn’t the twins do a good job singing? He’s good to us. Isn’t he good? Praise God. Praise God. The prayer – was it Amber that prayed? Amber. The prayer was O God, you are great. It was a beautiful prayer. O God, you are great. So good.

Attitude check. How is your attitude? Do you love yourself, your neighbor? Do you love life? Are you alive? Praise God. Attitude check. Halleluiah. God is good to us. This morning we said we’ll speak on our devotional life. I think that will happen but what is on my mind behind the devotional life – how many went to Bible college and learned about a devotional life and it didn’t leave you? We learned about having a devotional life in Bible college and church life and some Christians have some type of struggle with that sometimes. They struggle and they get guilty that they do not spend enough time with God. I’d like to say a couple things about that. It will come later I hope.

We’ll read Psalm 62 but first 2 Cor. 4.

I love you guys. I can’t help it! Look at the Silver Spring group here. Two. A big number! Two is a big number when God is in it.

2 Cor 4:18, I live in a normal world like everybody. We are virtually the same. The variety is so narrow in one point of view. Our intelligence, emotional, conscience, human bodies. The variables are very narrow. We are very much the same. Which of you thinks you are the greatest? Would you stand up please? We had a funny story in Azerbaijan. Big crowd, 600 people and the preacher – I think it was me. That’s how bad my memory is. Men have lusted after women. If there is a man here who never lusted after a woman would he stand up? Three guys in the front row stood up and the whole group behind started laughing. They turned around and realized they were the only ones standing and they sat down.

Let’s have a prayer right now! Look at this verse, 18. We live in a world all of us understand it. Here we seek God. We seek God. It’s something like that. I cannot see him here in one way. I believe he is here. I know he is here but I have to look in some other way than just my eyes and my heart. I have to look and seek in faith for the invisible God and actually see him. Look at the verse. We look at the things which are not seen. I’m looking for this. I can’t see. I’m looking for what is behind there, what is not so obvious. What you can’t handle with your hands and see with your eyes. I’m looking for God, the Spirit of God and the mind of God. In the Scripture, seek the Lord and his strength. Seek his face forevermore. When we have a devotional in the morning and I’m a strong believer in meeting God in the afternoon if I can. Even take a minute. How many times I’ve gone into a bathroom even in a public bathroom but a place where there is privacy and I take a moment and I’m seeking. I can’t say I find but I know there is more. When I have an important meeting, it might be I’m not so excited about the meeting but I can go to God who is more than the meeting. We can find him. People that seek him, their lives are different. People meeting God and it’s not a matter of giving him my time. Even though because of our attitude and we are looking for him there is a time element.

It says in the Scripture in Jer. 7: 13, he met God rising early in the morning. I know some people are not morning people.

In Ps. 63, it says rising early. David, early morning. Moses, early morning. Jesus, early morning. It’s giving him my day. Giving him my heart. The way we find him is surrendering and saying Lord, all this in my life is a big part of my life but can’t be bigger than you. My details of life. We know what it is to say I don’t have enough money. It might be if I seek God, I will have my money. I don’t have enough time but if I seek God, I’ll get time. I don’t have any time. It might be God is taking my time away from me and saying are you tired yet? Empty yet? Exhausted yet by this world and feeling the vanity of this life Ecclesiastes says. I’m saying these things because I feel I have escaped a lot of trouble in my life by simply having a philosophy, the hunger, the desire to seek more than this world. To find him. Blessed are they that keep his testimonies that seek him with their whole heart.

Ps 119:2, 10. I wait for the Lord and my soul does wait and in his word I hope. Ever have a devotional time and it was flat, empty? Sometimes in my devotion I believe in variety. Sometimes I go for a walk, get on my knees, sit in a chair. Maybe I go to the water and I’m there by the Chesapeake. I might be in my truck saying a prayer. I might do it when there are people around in the house. I have in my heart this desire and you have it too. I’m not saying anything to make us guilty about it. God is not only here but he shows up here in our world, doesn’t he? He is here showing up coming right across.

We have a brother who shared an amazing testimony and he said I drank every day for 4 years. I was a nobody loaf, an oaf, an unemployed dead beat, alcoholic, drunk. I woke up in my miserable state and God was in my bedroom. I stopped drinking and it changed my life. Wow. This was a couple years later, have you had anything? No, He took it away from me. God can you do that to more people? He says I do.

Variety, meditation, the word. P. Scibelli told me on the phone the other day he is just writing Bible verses in long hand and as he writes it out, he meditates on it. Speaking it in the air. Learning a Bible verse and walking around the room and saying it out loud and a heart to seek God. It seems in the Bible verse God is speaking. Sometimes nothing happens but you put it in and a certain hour God brings it out. You put in the word and when it’s needed when God wants to speak to you that word becomes alive and governs your life. It helps you in your life. God is with you, all of us. The same way for all of us. Nobody has any, nothing here is any different. Our new heart says there must be. I stretch forth my hands unto thee. My soul thirsts after thee as the thirsty land. The Lord is nigh to all who call upon him, who call upon him in truth. That’s why we have emphasis in Bible teaching. Doctrine helps me focus. Father, Son and H.S. are all God. Three persons and each one is God but God is one. That’s to the human mind illogical but it’s scriptural. Wouldn’t we expect God to reveal a mystery to us? We said in the administration the theologians call it an economy of administration. The Father sent the Son and the Son and Father sent the Holy Spirit. You can’t change the order. You can’t say the Holy Spirit sent the Father to die on the cross …I say this to say our Bible is a unique and fascinating book of divine insight. Never ending interest in it in the H.S. He has been sent to teach us the doctrine so we can seek him in truth. If you cry after knowledge and lift up your voice for understanding and seek her as silver and search for her as hidden treasure.

I remember the California Gold Rush in 1848 or ‘49. They went after the gold. Then the Alaska Gold Rush and the race to the moon. Who will get there first, Americans or Russians? Search for treasure in the ocean but who is seeking for God? Who will seek him with all their heart? If we do, we will find him.

If you cry after it, you will find it and understand the fear of the Lord, Prov 2:5. God is incredibly so amazing and awesome. If we saw a little bit we would be shocked, amazed of what we are talking about and who he is.

Those that seek me early, Prov 8:17, shall find me. Blessed is the man that hears me, watching daily at my doors. Here’s the gate and the post. We are here waiting. We are seeking. Jesus said knock. It will be open. Maybe nothing is happening but we are waiting. I can’t believe how life can be so blessed if we seek him. It’s so beautiful we can’t figure it out. It’s not what life is. Live is more than that. In our hearts saying God please show up. Be with me. Emmanuel, God is with us.

Song of Solomon 3:1, by night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth, but I found him not. It’s like I sought him. I couldn’t find him. I kept seeking him. I was looking. Sometimes it happens. God wants to teach you. There will be a time the world hates you. Can I be hated? I don’t want to be hated by anybody. I don’t want to be rejected by this world. Can you be hated? I don’t want to be hated, rejected, and embarrassed and ashamed. When we are seeing this, we are saying it’s okay if they hate me if I can find him. It’s okay if the world doesn’t understand me. That’s okay if I seek him. I seek him and God will help me in my life. Some say how can you accomplish what you’ve done? How did you get the blessing? God sent people to be with me and I can’t believe the things that happen. I know it was God that did it. God sent people and has done things. What about your finances? I pay my tithes because God said so. I was seeking for God in my tithing. If you give me 10%, I’ll take your 90% and I’ll bless it. I will bless you and you will find me. I will follow you with all my heart but when it comes to my pocket book, I will be a reasonable man. That kind of reasoning means you will reason your way out of an opportunity, out of a calling, out of faith, out of sharing your faith. You’ll reason your way out of evangelism, out of mission, into sleeping all day in a spiritual way. Lighten my eyes lest I sleep the sleep of death. In one sense I am asleep. Wake thou that sleepest and arise from the dead.

Wesley Benoit is risen from the dead. He came from Baltimore to Texas.

I will give you light. Light that comes in the darkness. Everything is rolling along the same but the Lord is saying, where is the man that paid his tithes? I’m blessing that man. Where is the man that believes me beyond reason….Enoch will be blessed. We don’t have any time because we don’t have enough God in our life. We don’t have enough blessing because we are not seeking God. We can all get into these ideas of programs and operations and get very disappointed. Greater Grace didn’t do this for me. The Bible doesn’t say this for me. I tried that and got these same headaches. Is it about GG or is it about God? Hello? Is it about me seeking God? I can show up and you folks are amazing. I can be in tears about it. I’m not scolding. I’m sharing. It fits me as much as for anybody. Somehow there is something going on that is from God in your life. How does this look? I don’t know exactly. I want to share it with you. Sometimes I read the Bible and years ago I read it and it was dry as cardboard. I hardly got through it but by prayer and faith and it started to happen. Song of Solomon says I will arise now and go in the cities and streets and in the broad ways.

I have to get a half a tub of hubby chubby ice cream. I drive at midnight down the street flying and Jack Hadley is racing after me in his trooper car! If you can go after ice cream, could it be we could say somehow to our heavenly Father, pour it on Lord. I want it, Lord Jesus.

This is what happened to her. She said I sought him but didn’t find him. The watchmen went about the city…saw ye him whom my soul loves? Saw ye him whom my soul loves? Have you seen him? Nothing written there just a little I passed from them and I found him whom my soul loves. I held him and wouldn’t let him go till I brought him into my mother’s house, into the chamber of her who conceived me.

I’m so thankful we have a big, beautiful, awesome future with God. If you live here on this side of the door as you get older, it may not get much better. If we get older, it’s not improving. My body isn’t upgrading. It’s degrading. Hey, man, so that’s it.

We didn’t get to Psalm 62 but this is good enough. May I read this piece? Ps 62. This is from The Message Bible. The Message Bible we don’t use as an authority in our pulpit. It’s a free, open translation in modern language but sometimes it might help. I use it alongside my Bible just for freshness of the language. “God, the one and only–I’ll wait as long as he says. Everything I need comes from him, so why not? He’s solid rock under my feet, breathing room for my soul, an impregnable castle: I’m set for life. How long will you gang up on me? How long will you run with the bullies? There’s nothing to you, any of you – rotten floorboards, worm-eaten rafters. Anthills plotting to bring down mountains, far gone in make- believe. You talk a good line, but every “blessing” breeds a curse. God, the one and only — I’ll wait as long as he says.” I’m waiting here. I’ll wait at his door. I’ll wait at his door post. He is my solid rock. “an impregnable castle. I’m set for life. My help and glory are in God. Granite-strength, and safe-harbor God. So trust him absolutely, people; lay your lives on the line for him. God is a safe place to be. Man as such is smoke. Woman as such, a mirage. Put them together, they are nothing. Two times nothing is nothing.”

There is a lot of nothing here. Big organizations, big money and so on but come on. Is it wind and chaff without God? Is it blown away one day? Is it that important? We have our responsibilities and purposes and desires but put them over there and seek him and he will lead you. We will meet with God and pick up our staff and it will become our rod of authority. We pick up our computer, our relationships and we got something on. Our God is showing us and helping us.

We may not have because we are not asking. If you seek him, you will find him. You’ll say at the end of the day, Halleluiah Lord.

“And a windfall, if it comes, don’t make too much of it. God said this once and for all, how many times have I heard it repeated? “Strength comes straight from God.” I believe God strengthens you to do the things he wants you to do. “You pay a fair wage for a good days work.”

Awesome. Amen.