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APRIL 30, 2008

What You Seek,

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Jeremiah 29:12-14
This week I received a message from a

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person who happened to read one of the

earlier sermons in the Survivor Babylon series. She wrote to ask my

R AY P R I TC H A R D

advice about a hard time she is going through. After many years of
hoping and praying, she recently started a course of study in a field
very close to her heart. Unfortunately, things have not gone well. Her
first three papers have received failing grades, and one of her
instructors made some disparaging comments. Leaving out some of
the personal information, here is part of what she wrote:

When I started I was scared even when I stepped out in

faith to do something which labeling had told me I was

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Survivor Babylon: How to

Make the Best of a Bad
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inadequate.

Trapped! Jeremiah 29:1-4

The course has been very difficult for me and sometimes I

Some Advice to the Discontented

have almost reached the breaking point. I stumbled on

Jeremiah 29:4-6

your website a few days ago. I read all your messages on

Why You Need Your Enemies and Your

Survivor Babylon and was intrigued with the phrase I am

right where God wants me. He is in control and will use this
incident somehow.

Enemies Need YouPart One Jeremiah

29:7
Why You Need Your Enemies and Your
Enemies Need YouPart Two Jeremiah

29:7

Then she makes raises some good points that anyone would ask in

How to be Happy in Babylon Jeremiah

the same situation

29:8-10

1. I dont understand why if God opened the door for to me

God Has a Bigger Plan Jeremiah 29:10

to go back to school, I am struggling so much.

Rock Bottom Truth Jeremiah 29:11

2. I dont understand why the demoralizing low grades.

What You Seek, You Find Jeremiah

3. I have prayed for Gods help and heaven seems like

29:12-14

brass. Theres been no progress.

Index for this sermon series

4. Does God want me to fail my exams after opening the

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door?

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5. Am I right where God wants me? Twiddling my thumbs

and hoping against hope?
6. Is this an all things work together for good for those that
love the Lord tag?
Pastor Ray, I know you are not God, but I am asking for
your counsel and for God to speak a word through you to
me, if He would.

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I appreciate her honesty. I am beginning this message with her email

partly because she wrote it in response to this sermon series, and
partly because weve all been in similar situations. Its very tough to
take a step of faith, especially when you feel inadequate, and then
have it more or less blow up in your face. Deep inside we all like to
think that if we obey God and do what he tells us to do, then things
may be tough but they will work out somehow. And in the macro

sense, that statement is certainly true. Obeying God is always the best
way to go, and the fruit of obedience will always be ultimately sweet
to the taste. But its that little word ultimately that trips us up.
Sometimes obedience may seem quite bitter to us when we have
tried to do the right thing, ventured out in faith, taken the next step,
obeyed Gods will with as much courage as we could muster,
following the leading we were given, and still we end up frustrated
and wondering if somehow we made a mistake.
No Welcome Abraham Signs
Whenever those thoughts come to me, and they do come from time
to time, I recall the circumstances that greeted Abraham when he
finally arrived in the Promised Land, having left Ur of the Chaldees
not knowing where he was going, by faith following Gods call. And
when after much difficulty, he finally reaches the Promised Land, who
is there to greet him?
No one.
Hebrews 11:9 says that he lived in tents. He was like a foreigner in the
land of promise. In many ways this is even more remarkable than
leaving Ur in the first place. As long as he was traveling across the
desert, he could dream about the future. But when he got to Canaan,
all illusions disappeared. Think of what he didnt find:
* No Welcome, Abraham sign.
* No discount coupons from the merchants.
* No housewarming party.
* No visit from the Welcome Wagon.
* No mayor with the key to the city.
* No band playing Happy Days Are Here Again.
* No ticker-tape parade.
Nobody expected him. Nobody cared that he had come. Nobody gave
him anything.
God had promised him the land ... but he had to scratch out an
existence in tents. Hundreds of years would pass before the promise
was completely fulfilled. Abraham never saw it happen. Neither did
Isaac or Jacob.
Was Abraham in the will of God?
Yes. Was he right to leave Ur? Yes.
Was he doing what God wanted
him to do? Yes. Why, then, was he
living in tents? Because Gods
timetable is not the same as ours.
Hes not in a big hurry like we are.
God works across the generations
to accomplish His purposes; were
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God works across the

generations to
accomplish His
purposes; were
worried about which
dress or shirt to buy for
the big party this
weekend.
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worried about which dress or shirt

to buy for the big party this weekend. There is a big difference in
those two perspectives.

Famine in the Promised Land

But there is something else even more remarkable in Genesis 12.
What happens when he gets to the Promised Land? He moves from
place to place, he sets up an altar and worships the Lord. Then a
famine strikes (verse 10). Whats up with that? Heres a man who has
dedicated everything to follow God. He sacrificed his career, gave up
his security, traveled a long distance, couldnt even find a home of his
own, and now theres a famine? How do you explain that? As it turns
out, Abraham ends up going down to Egypt where he gets in trouble
because lies about Sarah to Pharaoh (verses 11-20). It doesnt make
any sense. Why the famine and why the test?

The answer is, the test is the whole point. After all that Abraham has
been through, you would think that God would give him a period of
peace and quiet. Life is rarely that simple for any of us. God often
sends trouble following a period of prosperity in order that he may
test our motives. Are we serving him just because things are going
well? But what if we lose our job? Our marriage? Our friends? Our
reputation? Our wealth? Our home? Our health? Will we still serve
him then?
Donald Grey Barnhouse
God often sends
commented that just as every coin
trouble following a
has a head and a tail, so every
period of prosperity in
event in life either draws us to God
order that he may test
or leads us away from him. If
our motives.
Abraham had stayed in Canaan
during the famine, he would have
learned to trust God in a brand-new way. If he hadnt lied to the
Egyptians, he would have given God a chance to meet his needs
without resorting to deception. But because he didnt do those things,
that same famine led him away from God.
How much better it would be if we would learn this lesson. Instead of
complaining at every trial and saying Why me? we would be better
off to say, Lord, what are you trying to teach me through this? Every
difficult situation gives us the opportunity to become a student of
Gods grace or a hapless victim of negative circumstances.

When the famine comes, remember that God has not abandoned
you. He sends the famines of life in order to see if you will trust him
even in the most difficult moments. We should say, Here is another
opportunity for me to trust God. I wonder what wonderful things he
is going to do for me this time. Its not easy to say that. Sometimes it
takes more grace to stay in the Promised Land than it does to get
there in the first place.

What Difference Will This Make in 10,000 Years?

Now I come back to address the questions raised in the email. And of
course, to the specific situation I can give no certain answer. We
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rarely can know when we are in the middle of a discouraging

circumstance why it is has happened or how things will turn out.
Sometimes in our quest to do Gods will, we focus too much on
questions such as, Am I right where the Lord wants me to be?
Good question, but to ask it that way puts too much of the focus on
us and on our own decisions. We naturally tend to see life with

ourselves at the center of the universe. We naturally spend hours

worrying about questions regarding our career, our education, and
our future plans. On one level, this is healthy. If we dont think about
our future, no one else will either so we ought to spend some time
thinking about the details of life. But life doesnt begin and end with
us. Deep inside we know this is true, but we live as if the universe
exists for our personal benefit. Recently I read about a football team
that lost a big game by the humiliating score of 51-0. Its hard to get
beat that bad in football. You really have to play lousy to lose like that.
After it was over, the coach, trying to console his players, told them to
forget it about because there are 800 million Chinese who dont even
know we played a game today. (This was some year ago. Today he
would say 1.3 billion Chinese.)
And along that line, I am reminded
of something I heard Vernon
Grounds say. When we face a major
decision, we ought to ask ourselves,
What difference will this make in
10,000 years? He went on to say
that most of our decisionsthe

Ninety-nine percent of
what you worried
about this week wont
matter three weeks
from now, much less
10,000 years from now.

ones we agonize overwont

matter at all in 10,000 years. What a liberating way to look at life.
Ninety-nine percent of what you worried about this week wont
matter three weeks from now, much less 10,000 years from now. In
the year 2452 it wont matter whether you lived in Minnesota, Santa
Fe, or South Carolina. But what will matter is that you decided to
follow Jesus Christ. All those trivial, piddly details that soak up so
much energy will in that day be seen for what they really aretrivial,
piddly details.
With regard to the specific questions, it may be that my
correspondent needs to find another line of study. Perhaps God
allowed her to enter the program not in order for her to graduate, but
to allow her to see that she has gifts in other areas. Or perhaps this is
simply a test to develop her perseverance. Or a way for her to see
previously unseen weaknesses. Or perhaps it is a test of her motives.
Who knows? I heard a godly man pray, Lord, you did not bring us this
far to cause us to fail. True enough, but our definition of failure and
Gods definition are two different things. Todays failure may be a
steppingstone to whatever God has for us tomorrow. We simply cant
be sure about these things in advance.

Good News from Jeremiah 29

In all of this, our starting point is very significant. In times of great
discouragement, we can start in one of two places:

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Our Problems
God
Starting with our problems leads to confusion and more
discouragement. Starting with God leads us to the only solid ground
for hope. I am not smart enough to reason my way from my

problems back to God. If I get a rejection letter (its happened to me

more than once), I really cant read any great divine purpose into that.
Its just a no. Period. Maybe its no, not now. Or no, not this. Or no,
move in a different direction. Or maybe its just no, and dont spend
too much time dwelling on it. My point is, when I look through the
tiny lens of my life and try to divine Gods huge purposes, I am like
the flea riding on a cows tail trying to count the stars in the sky. You
cant start with yourself and hope to find satisfactory answers.
If you start with you, youll end with you and be no better off.
So we have to start with God.

Thats where Jeremiah 29 becomes so instructive. The last part of the

message from God to the disappointed exiles in Babylon contains a
promise, a condition and a reward.

Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me,
and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when
you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,
declares the LORD, and I will restore your fortunes and
gather you from all the nations and all the places
where I have driven you, declares the LORD, and I will
bring you back to the place from which I sent you into
exile (vv.12-14).
The promise is, I will hear you when pray (verse 12).
The condition is, Seek me with all your heart (verse 13).
The reward is, I will bring you home (verse 14).
Consider what these things mean:
God always intended to bring his children home again.
God invites them to seek him even in captivity.
God desires an intimate relationship with them right now.
I find this very suggestive and very hopeful. As we peer into the
unseen future, we know that God intends to bring us to his appointed
end for us. That means he will see to it that we are led step by step

from where we are to where he wants us to be. But exactly how he

will get us there, what intermediate steps we will take, that is not
revealed. And certainly it means for us what it meant for the exiles,
that sometimes we may feel that we are consigned to Babylon, that
God has forgotten us, that we have messed up so badly that there is
no hope or future for us. God says, Do not judge my purposes by
what you see in the mirror or what you see around you. God is
reminding his people that they are in no position to judge him at all.

Sometimes Slow is Best

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What is left for us when we find ourselves discouraged and confused?

We are invited to seek the Lord. What a thrilling thought this is. God
wants us to seek him because when we do, we will find him. Hes not
playing hide-and-seek with us. He is always near at hand. And do not
miss the point of Jeremiah 29. This invitation to seek God was given to
his own wayward children who had blown it so badly that they were
taken from their homeland and transplanted into the heart of
heathen idol-worship. Many of them would never go home again
because they would die in Babylon before the 70 years came to an
end.
What do you do when you find yourself in Babylon?
Seek the Lord!
Seek him with all your heart!
Seek to know him!
I smile when I think that God
desires an intimate relationship
with us even when weve blown it
badly. Sometimes we just have to

Sometimes slow is
best. There is great
wisdom in those
words.

slow down enough to hear Gods

voice speaking to us. I got a call
from a friend in another state. Some months ago he felt led to step
out in faith and start a new ministry. I agreed to help him and
encourage him in whatever way I could. He called to say that he is
slowing down the process in order to have time to work through
some issues with spiritual leaders he trusts. As he explained it to me,
I felt the Holy Spirit confirming in my heart that this is the right
decision. We Americans love to rush forward with our plans because
were in a hurry to serve the Lord. But Gods timetable and ours are
two different things. I told my friend about a conversation I had with
a Chinese pastor who in discussing our dreams of working together
said, Sometimes slow is best. There is great wisdom in those words.

Better to Be in Babylon
As we study the events of life and try to discern what it all means,
keep in mind that God intends to bring us to the place where our
hearts will be focused on him alone. And that explains why it was
good for the Jews to end up in Babylon.
Were they being punished? Yes, but that wasnt the end of the story.

God put them there so that in Babylon they would seek him in a way
that they had not done in Jerusalem. He does the same thing with us.
Thus Jerusalem can become like Babylon to us, and Babylon can
become like Jerusalem because God is not limited by time and space.
He cannot be contained in buildings built by mannot even by the
beautiful temple in Jerusalem. He is above and beyond all human
limitation. When Paul explained this principle to the men of Athens in
Acts 17, he pointed out that God gives us life and breath and spreads
us out in different nations around the globeand he does it so that
men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find
him, though he is not far from each one of us (Acts 17:26). Have
you ever wondered why you were born into a particular family at a
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particular moment in history? After all, you could have been born 500
years ago or in Brazil or India or New Zealand. Why did you end up
where you are right now? God arranged everything in your life so that
you might seek him. You are where you are right now because God
wants you to seek him and to find him. He desires a personal
relationship with you.
This sheds some light on things like cancer, the death of a loved one,
financial collapse, and the breakup of a marriage. Why would God
allow such things? One part of the answer is that God uses these

awful events to teach that we cant make it without him. Many of us

could testify that it wasnt until we hit rock bottom that we finally
found the Lord. When you are flat on your back, totally broke, health
gone, marriage dissolved, children estranged, career ruined, with
nowhere to turn and no hope in the world, in the blackness of that
moment you cry out, Oh God, have mercy, and he responds, Ive
been waiting for you to ask for my help. So we learn the hard way
that life is meaningless without the Lord.

Our Own Personal Bablyon

We come at last to the bottom line as we face our own personal
Babylons. If you are in a hard place right now, do not despair and do

not think that God has forgotten you. Remember these truths:

* God often puts us in places we dont like so that we

are forced to confront our own weakness.
* We will often be in those places longer than we like.
* Those times are wasted if we mope or complain or
become bitter at God.
* Those times are redeemed if we use them for our
own growth, to serve others, and to know God better.
The great mystic Thomas a Kempis
(who wrote The Imitation of Christ)
said, Seek God, not happiness. We
have it all backwards. We seek
happiness and hope to have God
thrown in as a bonus. But we end

If you are in a hard

place right now, do not
despair and do not
think that God has
forgotten you.

up with neither. The paradox of the

gospel is that when we truly seek God, we find him, and we get
happiness (deep fulfillment, lasting joy, the abundant life) too. But it
takes years for many of us to figure that out, and some of us never
get it straight. To the very end, we pursue earthly happiness and our
own agendas and we wonder why life leaves us frustrated and
disillusioned.

Rejoice Evermore
What do you see? What you see determines what you seek.
If all you see is Babylon you will be miserable.
If you see the hand of God, you will have hope.

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Marcel Proust said, The real voyage of discovery consists not in

seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. There are always

choices to be made, even in the tiniest details of life. I was struck by a

scene from the final episode of the recent miniseries on the life of
John Adams. He is now almost 90 years old, having outlived his wife,
several of his children, and all of his contemporaries (except Thomas
Jefferson). His health failing, Adams looks and moves like a very old
man. Yet on a sunny day at Peacefield, his Massachusetts farm,
Adams takes a walk on a country lane with one of his sons.I am not
tired of life, he says. I still have hope. Pausing to catch his breath,
he bends over slightly. Its time to go home, father, his son tells him.
Leaning on his sons shoulder, Adams says, Rejoice evermore, as
they turn for home. Seeing his sons puzzled look,Adams grabs his
sons face and laughs. Rejoice evermore. Its from Saint Paul, you
fool!Then spying a tiny blossom,he adds, I have seen the queen of
France bedecked with millions of dollars in jewelry, but I tell you
(pointing with his walking stick to the tiny blossom), there is more
beauty in that flower than I ever saw in the court of France.
As Adams turns to slowly walk back
to the house, he says, Abigail often
told me I needed to appreciate the
beauty of small things more than I

What you see

determines what you
seek.

do. She was right. Now I find that if

I look at the smallest thing, my imagination begins to roam the Milky
Way.
Life is so short for all of us, we come quickly, we leave quickly, we will
all be buried someday. But oh, how precious is the gift of life, and
how blessed we are to be here. Even in Babylon, we can seek the

Lord. What sadness if we go through life complaining about our

misfortune, focused on ourselves, and blind to all the beauty that God
has placed in our path.
Rejoice evermore.
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