An Unexpected Journey: From Seeking To Seeing

The other day I had a new experience during a Bible study.

It’s difficult to explain, but I felt something deep within me—like a swelling in my chest that seemed like it might burst, but it wasn’t frightening.

More than that, I had an overwhelming sense that God and I were together in a way I couldn’t put into words.

For a while, I wasn’t trying to be anywhere else, become anyone else, or chase anything else.

I simply felt whole.

I felt content.

The feeling lingered long after the study ended.

I didn’t want the closeness with God to end.

I wondered, did it have to?

I didn’t know exactly what happened but I did know I wanted more.

So my next study wasn’t about trying to recreate an emotional experience.

It was about understanding the reality that experience seemed to reveal.

I opened my notebook and wrote a simple prayer:

“Where can we meet today?”

Not long afterward, a thought came to mind:

“Seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart.”

I knew there was a verse in Scripture that said something very close to that. Once I found it, I decided to begin there.

That decision did not disappoint.

What does it actually mean to seek God?

What does it mean to seek Him with your whole heart?

Those two questions led me on an unexpected—and almost wild—journey of discovery.

I started these studies out of curiosity.

But the glimpses of God I’ve seen have slowly turned a curious heart into a captivated one.

His beauty, His goodness, His wisdom, and the incredible peace He offers have made it clear that He is infinitely worthy of my trust, my love, and my allegiance.

I no longer want to rule myself. I want every part of my life to come under His good authority.

In Scripture, the heart isn’t just our emotions. It’s the center of who we are—our thoughts, desires, words, and decisions.

I desperately want every part of me to become united under His rule and aligned with the reality of His Kingdom .

An integrated life—every part of the person oriented toward God.

This is what it means to seek Him with a whole heart.

The desire to know Him and be made whole seems to grow with every glimpse I catch of Him.

The more I look at Him and the ways of His Kingdom, the more I want to keep looking.

I think I’m beginning to understand what it means to hunger and thirst for God.

I want to know His character so I can love Him more deeply, and I want to know His ways so I can imitate Him.

This time, as I dove into His Word, I found myself surprised by joy.

Finding God isn’t a temporary emotional experience.

It’s waking up to reality—and learning to stay awake.

The Christian life is practicing the habit of seeing reality as it truly is until your thoughts, desires, words, and decisions begin to align with it.

Reality is what remains true regardless of what anyone believes, feels, or experiences.

Our opinions don’t create reality. Our emotions don’t change it. Reality simply is.

The physical world is real.

But it isn’t permanent reality.

It is temporary, changing, and passing away.

It isn’t an illusion, but neither is it reality in its fullest sense. It is part of a greater reality.

Everything receives its meaning when understood in relation to God’s Kingdom.

If everything temporary were stripped away, God and His Kingdom would still remain.

They are the final, unbreakable foundation beneath everything else.

Once you understand that God’s Kingdom is our current reality, Jesus’ teachings stop sounding upside down.

The world interprets life through what is temporary.

Jesus teaches us to interpret what is temporary through what is eternal. 

Looking at these comparisons side-by-side was extremely helpful in solidifying my understanding of this:

Jesus doesn’t say ignore the physical world. He teaches us to understand it through the deeper reality of God’s Kingdom —to filter it through truth.

Scripture speaks so often about renewing the mind.

It isn’t just learning Bible facts or memorizing verses.

Renewing your mind is learning to think in agreement with reality.

Little by little, your thoughts stop being governed by appearances and begin being governed by what is eternally true.

Every act of obedience is really an act of agreeing with reality instead of only what can be seen.

I think when we realize that His presence and His story are reality—not merely beliefs about reality—everything else begins to shift.

I can feel my own striving and frantic chase for control begin to loosen its grip.

Peace slowly starts replacing anxiety and fear.

I think maybe this is what Jesus meant by abiding.

To make my home in His company.

To live with Him as my constant companion like a branch connected to the vine.

My attention naturally moves to countless responsibilities throughout the day, but I intentionally keep returning it to Him. Again and again I remind myself of reality—that I am in His presence and that my allegiance belongs to His Kingdom.

His presence and His ways become the steady anchor I return to whenever part of my heart begins to forget what is true.

Being human means parts of my heart will drift.

My thoughts wander.

My desires become disordered.

My words become careless.

My decisions become self-centered.

Instead of panicking, I practice realignment.

The moment I notice a piece of my heart drifting—whether a thought spirals into worry, a desire becomes selfish, my tongue responds in anger, or a decision begins moving away from the ways of His Kingdom—I don’t stay there.

I seek Him.

I deliberately turn my attention back toward Him.

I name the specific place where my heart has drifted and hand that fractured piece back to Him.

Then I remember who He is.

I remember what He has already done.

I remember what is ultimately true.

As my mind returns to reality, my heart begins returning with it.

By bringing those pieces back to Him, the distance disappears—not because He moved closer, but because my mind has remembered that He’s always there.

The peace of God enters, keeping both my heart from panic and my mind from spiraling.

This is what Paul describes in Philippians 4:6–7.

And it’s the very peace Jesus promised to leave with us.

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you…”

The world’s peace is fragile.

It depends on circumstances going our way, so we’re constantly tempted to chase control.

Jesus’ peace is entirely different.

It is anchored in the permanent reality of God’s Kingdom.

Because His presence is an unchanging reality—one that remains true regardless of what I feel, fear, or experience—my peace no longer has to rise and fall with my circumstances.

What’s happening around me changes.

Reality does not.

God is still with me.

His Kingdom still stands.

His promises are still true.

That is why peace can remain, even when everything around me is shaking.

At the beginning of this study, I asked God,

“Where can we meet today?”

The meeting place wasn’t Jeremiah 29.

It wasn’t the Bible study.

It wasn’t the emotional experience.

It wasn’t a feeling I had to chase or recreate.

The meeting place was the present moment.

Because God was there. He always had been.

Seeking didn’t bring Him closer.

It opened my eyes to the reality that I was already standing in His presence.

Now, prayer and Bible study serve a different purpose for me. They are the means by which my attention is reoriented to reality rather than the means by which I persuade God to become present.

Seeking was never about finding Someone who was far away. It was about waking up to reality and living there with Him.