“God does not hide things from His children. He hides them for His children.”
Bill Johnson
Senior Pastor of Bethel Church in Redding, Ca
“You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”
Jeremiah 29:13
Men love a challenge. If men are bored with life, not being challenged, or feel helpless about a given situation, like David (2 Samuel 11:1), they will be tempted to fall back into the dark side of life that manifests in its various forms.
Often times in order to stay challenged men will take up the pursuit of certain hobbies and since my earliest memories that hobby has been hunting and fishing. As a young man the hunt was all about the kill and my motto was “if it flies it dies” or “if its brown its down”, but as I pass through the decades of life hunting has become something much more than simply killing (although I have no aversion to pulling the trigger). It has become something much deeper, on the soul level. I love the challenges the wilderness boasts and as such I love to hunt the hard way whenever possible, which often means public land, high pressure and going deep for days on end with a 60 pound pack on my back. When the leaves begin to turn, days begin to shorten and the air seems to change to fall I can hear the wilderness beckon me to walk deeper, explore further and climb higher.
There is something spiritual on the top of that ridge as well as the bottom of that canyon. My dad often boasts, “The mountains are my church!” and though I disagree with him on principle my soul longs to journey into the mountains to meet my Creator. Sadly, it is often the wilderness and not the Church where I sense the closeness of God. The Church is noise, structure, and brokenness, but in the mountains I find silence, solitude and freedom. There is a sense of purity out there when alone with God on a mountainside.
However peaceful the wilderness may seem a man had better be wired tight or as Jesse “The Body” Ventura said in the movie Predator, “He is in a world of hurt.” When things go bad miles from your rig, out of cell service, and hours from the nearest town you had better have your stuff together. Unlike the Church, I am responsible for the pursuit of my game and unlike the Church that pays men like me to, as we say, “assist you in you spiritual journey.” Although this is not a bad thing at first it will eventually kill you in the realm of the wilderness. The Church is tame and although we do the best we can to unleash the wild side in men let’s be honest, churches in America are pink foyer, floral designed, high room temperature, and feminine. How can the man of God learn to hunt for God on his own when so many American churches tell our men the best way to be a godly man is to become a woman!
But the wilderness is different. Mess up and die. Hunt on your own or burn your tag. Overweight and out of shape in the wilderness will get you a life flight if you are lucky. In the cool silence of the gray morning if you spot your trophy feeding uphill it’s on you to plan your stalk, get into position, and ultimately squeeze the trigger. The great pursuit for God is no different. God is not needy and God is not desperate. I am convinced that the reason so many men have a hard time hearing God is because they simply do not pursue Him. God knows what men need. They need to be challenged to seek the God that is not easy to find as Jeremiah 29:13 reminds, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”
The challenge is to hunt for God, to stalk Him, to pursue Him. The challenge is to take the hobbies we are so passionate about and return to the original intention of those passions and, “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness… (Matthew 6:33).” We need the eyes of a hunter to see God just as Paul prays that, “the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you. (Ephesians 1:18)”
God is not hiding from us. He is hiding for us. Don’t you get in man? What challenge would Christ be to man if he offered himself to us like some drunk college co-ed. Is that the God you want to give your life to? Me either. You can have your feminine Father. You can have your desperate God. You can have your Jell-O Jesus. As for me, I will pursue the hard to find Creator of the Universe, Almighty, Sovereign, King of kings, Lord of lords, God of the Bible.
