Why Do I Seek Him?

Jesus answered them and said, "Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. (John 6:26)

For the past few weeks I have been going through a time of internal trouble and conviction. I was confronted by someone back then who seems to find it pleasurable to publicly try to control and manipulate me. Evidently it gives him a sense of power, authority and self-esteem that fills a great void inside his heart. However, it also tends to touch on some of my rawest triggers and so far I have not had the most exemplary responses each time he does this. Though I have managed to exercise a great deal of outward self-control to some extent my ability to love him the way God loves him has been significantly lacking.

But my struggle to honestly view this man from my heart through heaven's eyes has also brought up a lot of tangent questions about the depth of my own relationship with God. Many things are highlighting my sense that though I enjoy receiving many insights from God's Spirit and truly enjoy spending time in His Word, the practical living out of the principles that I am learning and sharing with others seems to lag far behind what I know with my mind.

I guess that this discrepancy between my heart and my head makes me very afraid of being shamed and deeply humiliated at some point when my lack of Christ-likeness becomes even more publicly exposed and I am sneered at by others as a hypocrite while those who trusted me realize that I am not as mature as my interactions with them have led them to believe. My own heart keeps questioning why it is that there can be such a wide disparity between what I know my life should look like and my ability or willingness to actually live out these principles I am learning at the heart level.

I have known for a very long time that my heart is severely damaged and so selfish that it is beyond my ability to overcome its self-protective defense reactions. I may be able to suppress my defensiveness much of the time but when it comes to an intense crisis and I feel abused, especially by those in authority, my reaction is to withdraw and feel deeply offended. My emotional withdrawal is primarily a mechanism to avoid acting out the rage that I feel internally and getting myself into a heap of trouble. But that still throws me right into the trap of Satan which always happens when holding onto an offense of any kind.

As I am going through this chapter in John I have been impressed by many things that apply directly to my own experience. That is the main reason that I am spending so much time immersing myself in this study. I am not soaking in the Word to become an expert in the details of the Bible but more to learn to listen to whatever the Spirit of God wants to use here to apply to my current situation and to transform my own heart more into His likeness. Its just that the more I learn and the more exciting I see truth to be, the more dread or embarrassment I feel when I realize how slow my own heart is to embrace these things at a level much deeper than I have control over intellectually.

When Jesus speaks to the people in this verse about their motives for seeking Him that day, I sense mournfully that I may well be included in His indictment of them as well. My natural heart is hopelessly selfish and I am incapable of escaping this fact without a miraculous intervention on the part of God. I suspect that much of my desire to draw closer to God is motivated by a secret desire to look good to others around me so they will think I am a superior spiritual person than the average Joe. That has certainly been the case at times, but it does not contribute to the kind of transformation deep inside that I know I so desperately need and want.

These people who had come over or around the lake to figure out how Jesus had gotten to the other side overnight without a boat were fresh from the experience of the previous day culminating in a mass movement of high emotion to declare Jesus as their triumphant king and conquerer for the Jews. Their national fervor had been inspired to a fever pitch and they had only been thwarted from their plans by the withdrawal of Jesus Himself to defeat their purposes. This had created a great deal of frustration and even resentment on the part of many but they still had strong desire to rid themselves of the hated Roman occupation and oppression and had not completely given up on their belief that Jesus might yet be the superhero who could rescue them from all their political problems.

In this mindset and with the memory from the day before of Jesus' ability to feed thousands of people from a small lunch bag, they were intent on trying to discover if Jesus had pulled off yet another amazing feat due to the fact that there was no logical explanation of how He had gotten to the other side of the lake so quickly without getting into the only boat that had left the night before containing His disciples. They suspected that something fishy had taken place and they may have even heard rumors from the disciples themselves about Jesus walking on the water the night before. If this was true then it would only add to their excitement about His potential to use supernatural powers to advance their patriotic dreams and satisfy their own personal plans for greatness.

This is not unlike many today who seem eager to exploit any and every opportunity to get a free lunch – quite literally. One thing that is ruining society all over the world today is the idea of 'entitlement' that has set things up for governments to strip away the freedoms of people in exchange for promises of so-called security. Despots and power-hungry politicians employ the manipulated desire of the masses through handouts and provisions without needing to work for it. They exploit this by making promises that will attract the allegiance and support of millions who have been conditioned to depend on government handouts, bailouts and welfare in place of a willingness to participate in honest work and contribute to what is necessary to produce supplies needed for everyday living.

I believe we are fast entering a time when we will see the events leading up to World War II replicated on a world-wide scale as far as the public mindset goes. Hitler made many social promises and was creating enormous economic growth in his country which gave him immense popularity just before the war. Nearly everyone was caught up in the excitement of the progress he was achieving and very few saw the sinister side of his plans. In fact, pretty much all the organized churches of that day were in full support of his regime because they believed that God was behind him and he was doing such a great job in restoring dignity and wealth back into the lives of humiliated and impoverished people. Even most other countries believed that he was accomplishing much good and had little idea what lay ahead.

Because of the later events that transpired and finally became public knowledge, Hitler's reputation has since become the very opposite of that which he had world-wide before the war. It is almost impossible for people today to grasp how intensely popular he was at that time and how much people trusted him to bring them national greatness and restore the fortunes of the poor and discouraged masses. But the very same situation exists today as did back then but because we are so ill-informed about what took place then we are ripe to follow down the same path as the people did back then without realizing the immense dangers we are facing right now.

Hitler, along with many other despots in history, started out by offering people welfare, health and wealth in exchange for loyalty and cooperation with his way of doing things. He kept his real character and plans hidden for many years, even long after the war started so that almost no one realized the horrendous atrocities taking place in secret until nearly the very end of the war. What he was known for at that time were the many wonderful achievements he had brought to Germany like building the Autobahn, starting up a very successful car company called Volkswagen (the common people's car) and restoring housing and food for many who were struggling just to survive. His government handouts came at a price however and the same is still true today.

Whenever we fall into the trap of longing for free handouts instead of cooperating with God's means of provision for us we are in danger of getting into a wrong way of viewing life and reality. And while it is true that there may be times when God steps in to give us things through such means just as Jesus did on that mountainside the day before, we must be very careful that our motives are not distorted by those miracles and we begin to see God like we often see our government, simply as a big sugar-daddy who is supposed to give us everything we want without any responsibility on our part to follow His appointed ways of living.

I find it compelling to note the shift in motive that the text points out here. Jesus that day plainly said that they were no longer seeking Him because they saw the signs He had performed. Yet just the day before John points out that the original reason these same people had come to see Jesus was because of the signs.

A large crowd followed Him, because they saw the signs which He was performing on those who were sick. (John 6:2)

The conclusion that seems rather evident from comparing these two verses is that God really does want us to seek Him because of signs that we see. That may not be the only reason we should seek Him, but it seems to be one of the legitimate reasons. However, it is also very easy to fall into the trap of demanding signs from God as a precondition for belief which can quickly place us into the trap of deliberate unbelief like the religious leaders did back then which is also extremely dangerous.

Jesus was trying to get these people to realize that their motives had radically shifted from their motives just 24 hours previously. They had first come to Jesus because of the blessing He was having on those who were sick. Jesus healed many types of sick people for a very specific reason, but that reason is very easy to miss even today if we are not careful. In healing their physical bodies Jesus really was only bringing temporary relief to them. Eventually they might get sick again and even if not they all were destined to die anyway before it was over.

The main reason that Jesus did so many acts of healing was to impress people with the truth that what He wanted to do so much more for them was to bring healing to the sicknesses of their hearts. According to His explicit mission statement He wanted to preach good news to the poor, release to captives, give sight to the blind, set free the oppressed and proclaim the truth about God's feelings toward sinners. (see Luke 4:17-19 and Isaiah 42:1-12 and 61:1-3)

But instead of turning their minds inwardly to see how the acts of Jesus and His power might apply to a much more significant healing that needed to take place in their hearts, they allowed their prejudices and social agendas to perceive the demonstrations of Jesus' power in such a way as to pervert them for potential political gain and personal advantages. Not much has changed today.

What presses me as I ponder these things is my own personal motives. What are my gut-level desires that keep me pressing to know God more intimately? Why do I want to be a better Christian? Is it so others will think better of me? Is it to escape the problems of this life and get my skin into heaven at last? There are all sorts of less than noble motives that can easily circulate around in the heart and mingle with the legitimate drawing from the true Spirit of God.

How easy it is to begin to try to manipulate the things of God in my life for my 'political' or social advantage. I may try to appear pious and sanctified so that I can leverage my status in a church. I may want to control what others think about me and desperately attempt to manage my reputation by manipulating the availability of information about me. The politically correct term for that now is Public Relations.

But am I really more interested in the temporal advantages that following Jesus might gain me than in allowing Him full access to the messy places deep in my own soul? Am I willing to candidly admit that I just might be much more spiritually blind that I ever dreamed? Can I see how imprisoned I am because of the grudges I still hold against people in my life? Am I willing to see the true broken condition of my own heart and cry out to God for healing where it counts for eternity, or am I more interested in appearances and religion and the social advantages Jesus might be able to afford me?

Why do I seek Him?