Well, welcome back to season four.
Can you believe it?
We are in season four and I have to let you know this as much as I enjoyed my
break over the last two weeks, I missed you.
I missed connecting with the posture community.
So I am so excited to be back today.
So today you and I are going to take a posture of peace by going on a treasure
hunt, by seeking the Lord and finding him.
Posture is a short, audible fist bump to remind you God is with you in everything.
Together, we're going to be emboldened to take a daily posture of perfect peace.
In Jeremiah chapter 29, verse 13, there is a beautiful promise from the Lord.
He says, you will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart.
Another way of reading this, when you search for me with all of yourself.
So recently during break, I was listening to a teaching by an author and
speaker named Danny Silk, and he made a comment about the prodigal son,
about the parable of the prodigal son.
Now, if you're not familiar with that parable, it's a parable.
It's a story that Jesus told in Luke chapter 15.
And if you've never read it, or if it's just been a long time, since you've
read that story, I would encourage you go ahead and just push pause on this
episode, if you can, and go spend some time in Luke chapter 15, and then you
can come back later and listen to the episode if you like, so I'll
give you a chance to pause.
You know, I've heard a lot of great teachings over the years on
the parable of the prodigal son.
Now, most of the teachings that I've heard have focused on the prodigal son.
And then some teachings I've heard have actually focused on the brother that
you read about in the parable.
But Danny made a different observation and it really captivated me and I've
been staring on it ever since.
I mean, here I am sharing it with you.
So obviously it has greatly affected me, but what he said, and of course
I'm, I'm paraphrasing just a little bit, cause I don't have his direct
quote in front of me, but he said.
The parable, it's not a story about the prodigal son or his brother.
It's a story about a superstar father.
Now, I think the reason that his observation captivated me so much, one
of the reasons I think is, I believe it's true, what he said, I go back and
I read Luke 15 and I see it with fresh eyes, but his observation, it stirred
in me again, this great awareness of the nature of God.
You know, it's so like my old dead self to read scripture and solely
focus on my old dead self, to identify as the prodigal son or the brother,
and then just get stuck in the muck of the injustice and the bad behavior
and the sin, and then totally miss the point.
What if the point of Jesus sharing that story and all the stories that
you'll find in Luke 15, cause there's more than just the prodigal son's
parable, what if his point was not to say, this is what you're like.
What if his point was to say, this is what our father is like, this is what
I'm like, and oh, by the way, the father and I, we are making you into our likeness.
This has been our primary purpose since the beginning.
Just check out Genesis 1.26.
You know, I used to waste a lot of time, a lot of my mental capacity, a lot of my
emotion on seeking ways to improve myself, seeking answers to my problems,
seeking answers to other people's problems, seeking a roadmap to success,
to being a good Christian, but all that seeking only led me back to myself.
So these days, you know, I'm learning and practicing seeking the Lord.
You know, for example, when I read scripture, I'm seeking out who he is,
his nature, his ways, his perspective, and you know what, I'm finding him.
But what's really interesting is I'm also finding me when I seek him.
The real me, the me who has been raised with Christ and who is being made
into his image and his likeness.
Now, to be quite honest, it's a practice.
It's a practice still, you know, I'm, I'm still breaking some old mindsets
and some old habits, and it's been a slow learning, but it's been such a
delight and there's been so much freedom in the practice of seeking him.
with all of myself. It's changing the way that I read scripture. I'm not necessarily looking for me
anymore when I read these words. I'm looking for him and I'm finding him and it's blowing my mind.
You know, his affection for you and I is so abundantly clear in his word.
His permanent passion for us is actually very hard to miss.
I'm changing the way that I pray. You know, I'm no longer concerned with
telling the Lord what I think or feel about things. Instead, I'm coming to him to hear
what he thinks about things and then I'm aligning my thoughts and my actions and my emotions to his.
This seeking, it's changing the way that I view my circumstances and my relationships and
even the times in which we are all living right now. You know, so often I used to come to the
Lord with so many different lenses on. The lens of my circumstances, the lens of my hurt feelings,
the lens of my bad behavior or somebody else's bad behavior, the lens of my regrets, the lens
of how other Christians treated me, whether it was good, bad, or ugly, the lens of self.
And I'm learning and I'm practicing to take those lenses off and purely seek him
with my whole heart. And it's interesting because in this practice, he is becoming my only lens
with which I now see my circumstances and my emotions and my feelings and my past and my future.
Now, if you keep reading Jeremiah 29, there's so much treasure in this, but in the beginning of
verse 14, the Lord says, I will be found by you. You know, seeking the Lord is never a pointless
pursuit. It never returns empty. He will be found by you. You will find treasure. So today, I just
want to encourage you take all the other lenses off and seek him with your whole heart. Seek him
with your whole self. You will find him and it will change everything. The promise of perfect
peace is found in Isaiah 26, three in Hebrew. It is Shalom, Shalom, meaning complete wholeness,
nothing missing, nothing broken. This is who you are in Jesus because of Jesus.
You are a living testimony of Jesus's ultimate win. With every step you take today,
you're putting Jesus's victory on display and Satan's defeat on replay.
you