I’ve had people say to me, “Adaora, how do I find God the way you’ve found him?” My response is usually, “God found me even before I sought Him. What started off as an initial friendship, and our relationship has evolved over time into what it is now. In fact, our relationship is still being built day by day. I don’t believe that spirituality is about trying to seek out God and signs that indicates His presence. I believe that if God created every single one of us, then He surely knew that we would be born into different families, cultures, places. He also knew that not everyone would connect with Him. Yet, He allowed your birth. If that’s not powerful knowledge, I don’t know what else is!
Humans are seeking God everyday, but forgetting that God found us already. So..why do you “seek”, the one that created you, when He’s not missing ? There’s a difference between seeking and finding. To seek is “to attempt to find”. To find is to identify something as being present. The latter is where the key is - to first identify God’s presence. To know that He created you, and that He knows every strand of your hair. To know that He surrounds you and isn’t lost.
Think about it this way - Imagine that you were part of a set of twins separated at birth. You don’t know that you have a twin, and so you may not actively search. Or…you feel a nudging in your heart that there’s something missing - a bond that you crave, and no one else can fill. You know it, but you’re not 100% sure where to search. Searching has its place - of course when you seek out the twin, you may get close to finding them. However, this twin can choose to either accept you, or decide not to have a relationship (it’s not always like the movies where twins are excited to find each other. Sometimes they aren’t!). The good news about this is, we don’t need to search - God already found us, and we just need to choose if we want to connect with Him. But first, we need to consider ourselves worthy of the relationship. We need to put our shame behind. We need to remove our doubts of His existence or love for us. We need to stop seeing Him only as an authority, and start seeing Him as a pillar of support - as someone who truly wants us to thrive in this world. When you shift your perspective of who God is, you will move closer towards Him. Connection with God is in your BEING. Your deeds are secondary.
When it comes to connecting with God, I believe that our one job is ACCEPTANCE - to remove all the obstacles blocking us from that connection. There’s a quote I love that says, “Spiritual evolution occurs as the result of removing obstacles and not actually acquiring anything new. Devotion enables surrender of the minds vanities and cherished illusions so that it progressively becomes more free and more open to the light of truth.”
God isn’t lost, we are.
I love that this came in at the right time. This is another evidence that God needs me to acknowledge his presence.