What Are You Seeking

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Happy easter church. [00:00:04] Speaker B: Let's pray. Mighty God, I. I love to be reminded that you are the only one who can. Where there is an ache in the human soul, you are the only one that can bring life. Where there is a broken heart in the room or online, you are the only one who can mend. Where there is a misunderstanding of identity, you are the only one that can call. And so, in your might, in your beauty and your dignity, I ask, will you fill this room? Will you fill the hearts of every person listening? And will you help us find the treasure that we seek? In your mighty son's name, we pray. Amen. [00:01:07] Speaker A: Okay. [00:01:07] Speaker B: Years ago, my husband Jacob and I watched a show called the Curse of Oak Island. [00:01:14] Speaker A: Any nerds in the room? None. None. Just Jacob and I. [00:01:20] Speaker B: Did you watch it? Okay, good. We. It was on the History Channel, and it was about two brothers, Rick and Marty, and they're the Lagina brothers. [00:01:30] Speaker A: And their whole mission is to find [00:01:33] Speaker B: a treasure that has been being searched [00:01:37] Speaker A: for for over 200 years on the coast of Nova Scotia, and it's an island called Oak island. [00:01:45] Speaker B: And. [00:01:46] Speaker A: And for 200 years, these treasures, searchers, seekers, have been looking, and there is [00:01:54] Speaker B: a curse on this treasure. [00:01:56] Speaker A: And the curse goes that seven people [00:01:58] Speaker B: will have to die before the treasure is found. [00:02:02] Speaker A: And now these brothers, for the past [00:02:04] Speaker B: 21 years, have been looking for this treasure. They have spent tens of millions of dollars. Do we have a picture of them? [00:02:14] Speaker A: I want you to see them. [00:02:15] Speaker B: Tens of millions of dollars. [00:02:17] Speaker A: And they have. Year after year, Jacob and I would watch the shows and we would watch [00:02:23] Speaker B: the previews, and it would be like, the treasure has been found. [00:02:27] Speaker A: And so we would tune in. It was like back in the day when you had to, like, tune in weekly. [00:02:31] Speaker B: They're kind of bringing that back, though, aren't they? A little bit. [00:02:34] Speaker A: And we would tune in weekly to see what these brothers would come up with. And it would be like a button, and it would be like a piece of wood buried deep down below that should not have been there. And they would talk about, like, pirates and Shakespearean manuscripts and the Knights Templar, and year after year, we would watch [00:02:58] Speaker B: them find virtually nothing. And so eventually we stopped watching it because we're like, this treasure is not [00:03:04] Speaker A: going to be found. And yet these brothers have given most of their life, a lot of their [00:03:09] Speaker B: money, to seeking after something that's elusive, seeking after something that they may never find. And I was thinking about, [00:03:31] Speaker A: what is [00:03:31] Speaker B: it that we're really seeking? Like, in the stillness of this room, in the quietness of Your heart. If you had to answer the question, what are you seeking? What would you answer? Thousands of years ago, there were two brothers who sought a treasure. One was Andrew. And he stood on the shores with a mentor. Him and John stood next to their mentor. And see, for years, John the Baptist knew his mission in life. He knew his purpose. He knew his calling. [00:04:31] Speaker A: He knew what he was seeking. [00:04:34] Speaker B: And he was seeking the Messiah, the Christ. And it's important that we know what Messiah means. It's important that we know what the word Christ means. [00:04:48] Speaker A: Because more than 400 times in the [00:04:51] Speaker B: New Testament, you are going to see Christ. [00:04:55] Speaker A: In Hebrew, it's Messiah, but in the [00:04:58] Speaker B: New Testament, it's Christ. And it means the anointed one. [00:05:03] Speaker A: It was an image that there will [00:05:06] Speaker B: come a king, and he will be the final king. [00:05:12] Speaker A: There will come a king who brings his kingdom to earth, and his name is Jesus. And so for years, John the Baptist was seeking, and he would have disciples that followed him. And that day, Andrew and John, who wrote the book of John, stood next to their mentor, John the Baptist. [00:05:32] Speaker B: And Jesus walked by and he unequivocally said, there he is. There is the Messiah. Andrew and John left their mentor because this is what they had been waiting for. This is who they had been seeking. And so they left him and they [00:06:01] Speaker A: went and they started to follow behind Jesus. [00:06:06] Speaker B: I wonder what their heart must have felt, what excitement there must have been. And Jesus sees them following and he turns and he says to them, what are you seeking? And it's a question for us tonight. What are you seeking? [00:06:32] Speaker A: See, I think there is truth in [00:06:35] Speaker B: the verse that says, seek and you will find. Seek and you will find. [00:06:42] Speaker A: There's truth that what I am looking [00:06:45] Speaker B: for, I most likely will find. It looks something like this. [00:06:51] Speaker A: I bought a Jeep wrangler. [00:06:53] Speaker B: And I bought a black Jeep Wrangler. [00:06:55] Speaker A: And do you know what your girl sees everywhere? Now, Jeep wranglers, do you know the effect? Anyone in the room tonight? It goes something like this. If I seek beauty in my life, if I seek to try to find it, I'm most likely going to find beauty. My word for this year has been delight. I want to every day find ways [00:07:20] Speaker B: to try to delight myself in God. [00:07:23] Speaker A: And so it's sometimes little. It's sometimes sitting outside, and I let the sun hit my face, or I let the wind blow through my hair, [00:07:30] Speaker B: and I just find delight, light in God. [00:07:34] Speaker A: Sometimes it's my beautiful little granddaughter being a crazy little animal running around, and. And I just look at her and I find Delight that God would love me so much that he would give [00:07:47] Speaker B: me a family like mine. What I am looking for, I find. But church, it goes negative, too. [00:07:57] Speaker A: If you're seeking reasons to be unhappy, [00:08:01] Speaker B: you will find them. Any amens in the room tonight? [00:08:05] Speaker A: If you find, I don't know, seeking reasons to be disappointed, guess what? [00:08:12] Speaker B: They're everywhere. You will find them. [00:08:16] Speaker A: We are seeking after things. I think some of us are seeking after love. And some of us are seeking after comfort. And some of us are seeking after peace. [00:08:27] Speaker B: Maybe quiet. [00:08:30] Speaker A: We are all seeking. [00:08:34] Speaker B: What are you seeking? The problem is, where do you go to find what you're seeking? Where do we go when we are seeking to feel loved? Oftentimes it's not the right places. Where are you going to seek comfort when it's all a mess on the inside, when there's turmoil? Where do you go to seek when you're striving after success, or to provide [00:09:25] Speaker A: or to get ahead? [00:09:28] Speaker B: You're seeking, but the problem is you're never really reaching. You're never really arriving. There's always more. And Jesus looks at these men and it's a question that in the heart of it, it's deeper than what it seems. What are you seeking? And the guys say to him, they say, jesus, where are you staying? I was thinking, often the desires of what we are seeking can lock us in, keep us stuck. Where are you staying? Are you staying in places that you have no business staying in? Are you staying in areas of your life that you say you want to [00:10:31] Speaker A: get out of, [00:10:34] Speaker B: but you keep staying stuck? Ideas of, like, I'm not enough. And so everywhere you go, you bring a little voice inside your heart, says, I'm not enough. You believe it and you live it, and you stay stuck. It's ideas like, I long for a family and a relationship. And so you stay in broken dating scenes or the relationship with the wrong person because you're so longing to be married and for a family. And it's easier to stay than it is to leave. We stay stuck in maybe the identity of what someone put us on us, maybe a parent, or when we were young and they called us something and it stuck. And so now you bring that where you go. You stay in the areas of, like, I've got this, I can control this. And so you carry a weight you were never meant to carry. Where are you staying? Jesus looks at his disciples. Two men that have no idea what is about to become of their life. Two men who for the first time [00:12:18] Speaker A: have met [00:12:21] Speaker B: the creator of the Universe, they can't possibly know what's to come, but something in their heart is yearning for him. [00:12:35] Speaker A: Something in their heart is longing for [00:12:39] Speaker B: something more in this life. And Jesus says one of my most favorite lines in the whole entire Bible, come and you will see. I always looked at this line as come and see. And when I read it like that, come and see. [00:13:06] Speaker A: It gave it [00:13:09] Speaker B: option. It gave it like, come and see. Maybe something good will happen. [00:13:14] Speaker A: Come and see. Maybe you'll meet God, maybe you won't. [00:13:17] Speaker B: But when I reread this line, it's definitive. [00:13:21] Speaker A: Come and you will see. Come and you will see. See, I think what happens is we [00:13:34] Speaker B: are seeking after things that are no good for us, or we're seeking after [00:13:40] Speaker A: things that we truly desire. Or maybe if you're like me, I am. I'm trying to follow God with all my heart and all my soul, but I'm still carrying stuff that I have no business carry. I'm still seeking after things like approval that I have no business seeking after. I'm still carrying things that keep me stuck in areas of my life I doubt. And I doubt, could God use a broken girl like me? And then I sit in this doubt. My husband last night, he's like, babe, [00:14:15] Speaker B: that is not from God. It's like, I know that I've told myself this for years, yet I stay stuck. What you seek, you will find. I was reading the story of the crucifixion this week. It was interesting because I saw a line I had never seen. And it said Jesus had risen. His body was gone, and a woman named Mary, she had followed him every step of the way. [00:15:08] Speaker A: She trusted in him, and she saw what her life looked like. She saw her life from a grave into a garden. She saw dead bones that her life was. And how following Jesus transformed her. And I love the Bible because if this book was fake, if it was not written by real authors, you would [00:15:33] Speaker B: only see everyone living their very best version of themselves. [00:15:38] Speaker A: It's. It's. Actually, there's a word for it. It's slipping my mind. But it's what historians actually use to [00:15:43] Speaker B: prove if a book is historically accurate. It's one of the things they use. Do people tell the truth and show [00:15:48] Speaker A: the bad side, or is it only [00:15:50] Speaker B: kind of the highlight reel and the good stuff? [00:15:53] Speaker A: If your sister is going to write a book about her life, you better [00:15:55] Speaker B: believe it's going to be good. [00:15:56] Speaker A: You know what I'm saying? [00:15:57] Speaker B: But the power is in the broken. [00:16:00] Speaker A: The power is in the things that [00:16:03] Speaker B: we show the vulnerability of what we really think. [00:16:07] Speaker A: And in this moment, the people that followed him, trusted him. None of them expected for Jesus to be alive. None of them expected it. And Mary is sitting there, and she has given her life to Jesus. And it's Sunday morning and the tomb is empty. And she's not looking for a risen [00:16:27] Speaker B: savior, but instead she's looking for the body of Jesus. [00:16:33] Speaker A: And she's asking everybody and she's calling, where is he? Where have you put him? And she sees this man who she thinks is the gardener. And she says, where have you laid his body? I will go get it if you just tell me. [00:16:48] Speaker B: She wasn't expecting a risen king. And Jesus looks at her and he says, why are you weeping? Who are you seeking? And when I read that I had been studying for this sermon and all my thoughts had been pouring into what are you seeking? What are you seeking? What are you seeking? And when I heard the question, who are you seeking? It was like. It is less about the what, and it always, always, always about the who. See, if I'm seeking love, I'm asking my husband to love me. It's a weight he can't bear on his own. I'm a lot. [00:17:55] Speaker A: It's. It's. It's too much. I'm seeking too much. But when I go to Jesus Christ, [00:18:01] Speaker B: there is a love that is infinite. [00:18:04] Speaker A: There is a love that is powerful. There is a love that is healing to the soul. There is a love that fills the ache when I'm searching for comfort in the wrong things, food or people or whatever it might be, wherever you might [00:18:23] Speaker B: be searching for comfort, there is a [00:18:26] Speaker A: weight that this world cannot hold. There is a hole inside of the humanity of our human soul that cannot be filled. Except by the who. Except by the true treasure that our soul seeks, except for the treasure that is Jesus Christ. And when we are. When we are in this world and we're trying to look for the things that are truly our desires, we are human beings. And no matter how long you have been following God, you will be seeking something. Different stages of our life, you might be seeking different things. [00:19:12] Speaker B: And the need, the what, it should always pull us to the who. [00:19:20] Speaker A: See, we look through this broken lens, [00:19:22] Speaker B: we look through this dirty lens, and the truth is. Jesus Christ is the answer. The truth is that this invitation of [00:19:39] Speaker A: come and you will see is not [00:19:42] Speaker B: just for those two men that day, but it's an invitation he invites every single one of us to. And see, what I have to do [00:19:52] Speaker A: is I have to take it day [00:19:54] Speaker B: by day with Jesus, day by day, [00:19:57] Speaker A: I want to seek Him. [00:19:59] Speaker B: I want to know Him. [00:20:00] Speaker A: I want my life to just be enmeshed with his life. Day by day, week by week. [00:20:05] Speaker B: I have to seek him because he fills, he guides, he leads, and he satisfies. The invitation to come and you will see is for every single one of us. My daughter Lex and I were talking today and we were talking about what it looks like for a lot of Christians on Easter. We were talking about that it can become just this, like, religious holiday where you go to families and you do the Easter baskets for the kids and it's easy to miss it. And she asked the question, what would it look like to truly remember. The call of God on your life when it first happened? What would it look like. To really, truly believe that Jesus is who he said he was? That it is not a story that [00:21:40] Speaker A: we read, [00:21:43] Speaker B: but it's a history that was lived. And I think in every single one of us, there need to be moments where we still our heart, where we still our mind. We don't let this just be something we check off the list and go home. We let it be personal. Come and you will see. I often think back on my life because the power of God is in it everywhere I look. And when I stop and I think to myself, what have you been seeking? What is your life? Proof of [00:22:52] Speaker A: what is, what is. [00:22:54] Speaker B: If I was gone tomorrow, what would I be known for? I think back on my life and [00:23:04] Speaker A: I think about stuff that was not easy. [00:23:06] Speaker B: Church. [00:23:08] Speaker A: It was not a road that was like [00:23:12] Speaker B: easy. [00:23:15] Speaker A: It was hard fought. It was dependency on God. Time and time and time again when I had no hope, [00:23:27] Speaker B: it was an [00:23:28] Speaker A: identity that was lost in shame. And I would show up with shame and hiding and hiding and hiding. And now I want the glory of God to be revealed in my life. So I will not hide. I will proclaim that I was a broken, lost girl. But Jesus Christ called me by name. He said, you are mine, follow me. You are mine. Come and you will see. And I would seek him and I would want to quit because I wasn't singing. The promise didn't feel real. It felt empty. And I felt just needy. Come and you will see. And I would go to him and he would say, persevere. Every scripture, persevere. Every scripture, persevere. And so I just held on. And day after day I would come. And day after day I would see. And the thing about time is we don't see the power when we're in it. It's when we look back, we don't see the transformation of how God's moving when you're in it. It often doesn't feel like that, but it's when you look back. It's when you look back and you see. When I didn't want to get out of bed, I did. And there was a God who fortified me. When I wasn't sure what my family would look like. There was a God who sustained and strengthened and built. When I was seeking after love in all the wrong places, I found a God who said, stop wasting your time. I am for you. When I feel not enough and I turn back and I look at my life and I see a God who says, I'm enough, I will cover you. Stop seeking after the what and keep seeking after me. Come and you will see. But don't you dare quit too soon. Don't you dare walk away too soon. Because there is a God who loved us so much. He gave us life. It's not a story, Church. It is history. There is a God who said, you [00:25:58] Speaker B: are mine and I love you. [00:26:03] Speaker A: There's a God who said, sin has separated us. Your decisions and the things that you're seeking and you're going to in all the wrong places. It separated us. [00:26:16] Speaker B: And I care too much to let it happen. So he sent Jesus Christ to bridge the gap, to look at all of us and say, stop seeking in the what and start seeking in the only person who can truly fulfill and the [00:26:43] Speaker A: only one and true God. Come and you will see. [00:26:54] Speaker B: Mary was expecting a lifeless body. In one word, she recognized Jesus and his word was Mary. He called her by name, and he calls you tonight. He calls you by name. See, the beauty is what we are seeking is already found. He's already here. We follow a God who is not [00:27:36] Speaker A: distant, not far, but a God who is close. A God who knows every ache. A God who knows every flaw, every brokenness, and says, you are mine. Anyways, [00:27:56] Speaker B: Don't let this Easter slip. Take a moment in this silence [00:28:08] Speaker A: to [00:28:09] Speaker B: close your eyes and just say, father, whatever is done in me, will you show me life? Whatever you have been seeking, Church, you will not find it in what this world has to offer. So right now, just whisper it. Father, I long for comfort. So I ask that you will be my comforter. Father, I long for peace. Will you be my peace? [00:28:54] Speaker A: Father, I long to fix the things [00:28:56] Speaker B: in other people's lives that I love. But you have control where I don't. Will you be the Lord of their life? What are you seeking it is only found in the name of Jesus. Mighty God, I thank you for showing us stories in scripture that aren't stories, but they are the lives of men and women who followed you. [00:29:40] Speaker A: I thank you that you give us [00:29:41] Speaker B: questions that give us clarity. And in this question, it gives me clarity, Father, that it's not about the [00:29:48] Speaker A: what, but it's about the whole. And so I pray, when we are seeking for success, that you will define what success looks like. When we are seeking for provision, you will be Jehovah Jireh, the God who provides. When we are seeking to feel better, Father, that you will be the restorer, you will be the God who transforms. You will be the God who brings [00:30:17] Speaker B: us back to life. I pray for every heart. Will you meet them, Father? And will your name be glorified in your one and only Son's name? We pray. Amen.