DAY 12
EVERYONE IS LOOKING FOR YOU
JUSTIN CHANDLER, LEAD PASTOR HARBOR TRINITY CHURCH, COSTA MESA, CA
Before daybreak the next morning, Jesus got up and went out to an isolated place to pray. Later Simon and the others went out to find him. When they found him, they said, “Everyone is looking for you.” —Mark 1:35-37
For significant portions of my life, I did not consider myself a morning person. As many parents have experienced, my desire for sleep didn’t meet the reality of young children. Currently, our youngest children wake up at 6:30 am at the latest, and my day doesn’t “end” until 10:00 pm. Everything else in between will be a series of tasks, requests, and notifications to fill my day. Life, like nature, abhors a vacuum, especially in regards to time.
Jesus was the opposite of me. “And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed” (Mark 1:35). If ever there was a person in history who did not need to pray, it was Jesus. As He said, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). And yet, “he would withdraw to desolate places and pray” (Luke 5:16). Clearly, there is something for us to learn between the “have to-s” and the privilege of His presence.
Unlike Jesus, if anyone needed to pray, it would be me. Life is hard enough and, at times, I don’t help make it easier. I need God’s help in my marriage; I need God’s help as a parent; I need God’s help in my work; I need God’s help with my family, friends, coworkers, and neighbors. Rarely a moment goes by that I do not need God’s help. As the need for God extends beyond myself, my world is filled with those who are in need of God. Not just in His saving grace, where there are plenty, but the many aspects of my world where I am praying for a move of God.
As Jesus rose early to pray, we soon found out why. “And Simon and those who were with him searched for him, and they found him and said to him, ‘Everyone is looking for you’” (Mark 1:36-37). “Everyone is looking for you.” That feels eerily similar to my life. For Jesus, the request was for preaching, teaching, healing, and miracles; the requests upon my life are different. While they may come from my family, more often than not there is one culprit that everyone can come looking for me through: my mobile device. Despite how beneficial it is in so many aspects, the notifications keep coming.
As a phone call turns to text message, then email, social media, and next thing you know the doom scroll has begun...
Psalm 1:2 encourages us, “but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.” While God is no respecter of the hour or time of day we spend with Him, I find that my heart and soul are. When I wait until later in the day to spend intentional time with God, the happenings of my day are the filter that I experience the Word of God through. I could point to specific moments where portions of the Scripture would apply, but the day often spoke first. In an effort to find some morsel of time alone, I began to rise “very early morning, while it was still dark.” I experienced the Word of God first, and God’s Word became the filter through which I experienced my day, not the other way around.
Regardless of your role in life (spouse, parent, grandparent, employee, neighbor, etc.), “everyone” is looking for you. They are looking for your time, attention, and focus. While many of these things that request our attention are not in their own right evil, the impact they have upon our heart may be. Any rightful attention
due to God and turned toward something else is the beginning of forming an idol. John Calvin says, “Man’s nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols.” In the United States (and everywhere else in the world throughout all human history), we have no shortage of idols the factory of our hearts have produced. Every one of them is looking for you.
This devotional you hold in your hand, and ultimately the time you spend with God is the antidote. Jesus recognized that from the moment He woke up until the moment He went to sleep, everyone would be looking for Him. He would either let those who are looking for Him guide how His day would go, or He would allow communion with the Father to. Jesus, who did not need to, “[rose] very early morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed.” As I have done the same, and what do you know? I am a morning person. May the same be true for you.
PRAYER
God, my day has barely just begun and “everyone” is looking for me. Rather than moving through my checklist or on to the next thing, would you help me first to look for you. Would my time in Your presence be the filter that I engage in the world, not the world being the filter that I experience You. As the old hymn sang, “In the morning when I rise, give me Jesus.”