It never ceases to amaze me how my kids can bring up the most profound ideas and questions at the most surprising of times.This weekend my family was making the long 20 hour (with stops) trip from Thunder Bay to Southern Ontario. After 15 hours of driving, what felt like a dozen bathroom stops, and countless squashed bugs on the windshield, the conversation starting getting hot!My youngest 2 turned their attention away from the road games and mp3 players and started asking questions about faith.Esther: Daddy how do you know that all of this isn’t just made up?
Me: well because God has done too much in our lives for us to believe that it’s all made up.
Shiloh: Well, how do you know that it wasn’t some other all powerful being that is responsible for the life change?
Me: … well… that’s definitely the first time I’ve ever been asked that one, son. Well, I believe that it’s the God I know because the things God does in my life and in the lives of the people around me, match the things that I learn about God in the Bible. That’s why we read the Bible, so we can learn to recognize him at work around us.
Esther: In Jump we learned that it’s ok to have doubts, but you just have to find answers to them!
Me: (… smart kids…) You bet it is Esther!
As I think about the start of our summer pathways initiative, I’m reminded that each of us is coming from a different place in the journey and we really can’t make assumptions as we take these first few steps. In the days that the Bible was written, God revealed himself supernaturally to people who were looking. As they encountered God they wrote down what he said or did and told the generations that came after them all about what God had done.
In Psalm 105:5 the author challenges his readers to, “remember the wonders he has done, his miracles, and the judgements he pronounced”. Then he continues by telling story after story of how God transformed the lives of generations before him.
More incredible than these stories is the invitation that God gives to each and every generation to, “seek His face” in order to know Him for themselves.
I was reminded of that as I talked with my kids in the van, and just as importantly as I write this quick note to you.
The invitation to seek God’s face is the invitation to seek him and the characteristics by which he reveals himself to his kids.
This summer as you are reading the scriptures take special note of how God revealed himself to and interacted with people. Learning to recognize those characteristics in the stories of the Bible is a key part of learning to recognize Him at work in your own life and in the lives of the people around you.
God b less you this summer as you seek Him and grow in your faith.
Darryl
Hebrews 11:6 God rewards those who earnestly seek him.
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