“You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”
– Jeremiah 29:13
Now, this is clearly a promise that God was giving to his people, the people of Israel, when it comes to the judgment he was showing to them and the way he would restore them to him through their seeking after him.
Satisfaction Found in God
God give us grace to seek and be satisfied in You. May we boast only in You.
But this is a picture we see all over the Bible, and into the New Testament specifically. Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength. And so we see this command here, God saying to his people, “You will seek me and find me. You will find me when you seek me with all your heart.”
Jeremiah 29:13 Boasts in Knowing God
Just let that phrase soak in, all your heart, the attention of your mind and the affections of your soul focused on God. I want to know you more, God, just like Jeremiah 9:23 and 24 talks about. “Let him who boast boast not in wisdom or in riches, in anything in this world. Let him who boast boast that he knows me.” God, we pray that this would be our boast, that we know you.
God, we want to know you more. We want to love you more, with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our might and all our strength. God, I pray for this in my own life. God, I want to seek you with all my heart. I want to know you with all my mind. I want to exalt you with all that I do.
God, I pray for this in my life. I pray for this in each of our lives as we’re thinking about this verse together. God, we want to know you. We want to find you. We want to be found in you. God, we want to be with you. We want to experience you to the full. We want to experience life in you to the full. God, we want to know you. We want to seek you. We want to find you. God, we want to worship you. We want to exalt you. We want to love you with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Jeremiah 29:13 Praises God for His Invitation to a Relationship With Him
God, we praise you for the privilege, for this privilege, O God, even as we say this. It’s not like we’re doing you a favor by seeking you. We’re doing ourselves a favor that you have granted to us because of your grace and your mercy.
Thank you, O God. Thank you for this invitation, for this command. This is a great command, O God, to seek you and find you as we seek you with all of our hearts. Thank you for making this possible, relationship with you possible, knowledge of you possible, enjoyment of you possible.
All glory be to your name for the truth in Jeremiah 29:13 that we see all throughout your Word. May it be the case in our lives that we are people who, day after day after day, all day today, we seek you and we find you. We walk with you, we know you, we experience you, we exalt you, because we seek you with all of our hearts. O God, we pray this in the name of Jesus, who makes seeking you possible. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
