Looking For God in all the Wrong Places

God doesn't play hide-and-seek with his children

They say there’s an app for everything. Did you know there’s an app for tracking your child and setting up boundaries for where he’s allowed to go? While some people are striving to live a less digital life and leave their phones at home, I carry mine at all times so I have a way of finding my little boy. I’m not a helicopter mom; my son flees regularly without looking back and doesn’t respond to his name. 

This device quickly became a necessity, not just an anxiety reliever. I’d turn to speak to one child and look up to see that the other had disappeared from sight like a spooked squirrel. With my heart in my throat and a brick in my stomach, I’d race around the yard looking down every driveway and peeking behind every hideaway. Sometimes I find him crouched in a ditch behind our house and other times I spot him trekking through the woods.

Oftentimes, I find him in the most unlikely of places. One time I circled the entire house and found him playing at the same place I had started (despite my confidence that I saw him go around the house). 

I wonder if we take the same attitude toward knowing God. We think of God like my son—someone we must chase, search for, and grapple to find. “Catching” God is as elusive as trying to cup water in our hands. When we find him, we must do all we can to hold him there, knowing that within no time he’ll slip through our fingers again. We must become bird watchers; travel to the right location, carry all the necessary gear, plant ourselves in the best spot, and quiet everything in our bodies to the point that we question if our heart is still beating. 

Don’t we apply all the same rules to knowing or finding God? We spend extravagant amounts of money on books, studies, specialty Bibles, markers, pens, stickers, notebooks, music, candles, and the like to set the right aesthetic scene. Then we retreat to a spot that warms our souls—someplace quiet, perhaps even in nature or a cozy place we created in our homes. Then we silence everything, hoping against hope that God will show up in that quiet voice we are constantly told to listen for. 

Or perhaps we turn inward. I watched an Instagram Reel a few weeks ago that chronicled a Christian influencer’s journey to finding God, and it ended with a picture of her and the words, “And I found You in me.” Maybe instead of finding God through setting the right scene, we find God by working to find ourselves first. We strive to re-establish our own identity by traversing the many paths that weave out from our souls, and we believe we will find God at the end—and maybe we’ll see that he looks a lot like us. 

Yet what if we didn’t have to find God at all? What if God isn’t hiding?

God finds, renames, and remakes us. We fled from our Creator in the opposite direction like Jonah, bearing a distorted image of God within us. Yet he calls out to us, beckons us back, and takes that dishevelled form and fashions it back into the likeness of Christ, his Son.

In You Are Not Your Own, O. Alan Noble writes about how the reason our society is so burnt out is because we’ve impressed upon everyone the need to create themselves and make an identity for themselves. Meanwhile, God already defined us and offers us a restful identity in Jesus. As Christians we should know this, yet we further burden other believers with this need to not only form an identity for themselves but to also discover God within themselves. 

God is not like my little one who I need to inevitably find whenever we go outside. He is not like that closed-off person you know at work or church who is impossible to get to know. God holds out his hands to be known by his children, and he often draws near when we aren’t even calling out for him.

Noah didn’t seek God to make the ark; God first spoke to him. Moses never searched for the burning bush; God startled him with the miracle. Jacob fell asleep, and God showed him a ladder between heaven and earth. The little boy Samuel kept going back to his bed, but God didn’t relent. God struck Paul on the road as he sought to kill believers. Mary never prayed to be the Messiah’s mother. Our Father pursues his children. 

God gave us Scripture and general revelation (nature) to know him. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge,” David sang (Ps. 19:1–2 ESV). Paul likewise wrote that “his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made” (Rom. 1:20). 

Scripture bears an even clearer revelation of God; it’s his very words spoken for us. “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16–17). Paul reminded the Corinthians church that God gives believers knowledge “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined” through the Spirit to those who love him. The Holy Spirit interprets the spiritual truths about God that are hidden from the world for those who believe (2 Cor. 2:6–16). 

Because of our sins, we were kept distant from God. In the Old Testament, people could only draw near to God with costly sacrifices and through the work of a priest who could only enter the earthly presence of God once a year. Yet in Jesus, God is revealed to us. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth … For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known” (John 1:14, 17–18). This is why Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Some have used this to say that we shouldn’t hold our Bibles too highly or closely because Jesus, not Scripture, reveals God to us. Yet the only way to Jesus is through his Word. 

I often fear, even with this tracking device, for my son’s safety. Yet I know in those moments I can turn to my heavenly Father as I run and my breath heaves. Without pausing, quieting myself, or falling to my knees with my eyes closed, I can cry out in my mind, Be near Jesus; help me find my son and keep him safe. For his children, God promises that when we search for him we will find him. “All that the Father gives me will come to me,” Jesus proclaimed, “and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” Fellow siblings in Christ, take to heart this promise King David gave to his Solomon:

“And you, Solomon my son, know the God of your father and serve him with a whole heart and with a willing mind, for the LORD searches all hearts and understands every plan and thought. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will cast you off forever” (1 Chr. 28:9).

Only when we forsake him does he turn away. Yet for every person who trusts in him with faith, he will remain near with open arms—even when we forget to ask.