Jim Van Gelderen: I am broadcasting from Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. I am usually broadcasting the podcast right about the time we send it out, but this one’s a few days early because just a couple of days from now, I’ll be getting on a plane heading over to Kenya for some ministry in the Bible college over there, International Baptist College of Ministry, as well as preaching for their opening. So when you hear this, that’s where I’ll be, and I’d appreciate your prayers for the ministry there that God would stir hearts and encourage these young people that are studying to be in the ministry over there in the country of Kenya. Well, we’re facing a new year, and every time at new year, it’s certainly a time to reevaluate how did the past year go. In fact, I just got a text today from a young man who told me he had a great year.

That was a great thing to hear. Usually I hear people talk about the negative part of the past, not the positive, but he said, I had a great year. I hope you did too, that you can look back and see a lot of good things that happened. I know that God is working in each situation. I hope you’re able to see it and thank God for what he has done for you this past year.

But many times in a new year we also look forward to the future and we are looking forward to the next year, 2018, and what God wants to do in this new year. I want to talk to you about this new year and something I hope will be a great encouragement and help to you. Deuteronomy 4:29 says, But if from thence thou shalt seek the Lord thy God, thou shalt find him, if you seek for him with all your heart and with all your soul. Now one thing you need to understand about God is God does not play hide-and-go-seek. God doesn’t hide himself and then say you try to find me.

You know, he says, if you seek me, you will find me. The New Testament puts it this way, draw nigh to God, he will draw nigh to you. James 4 and verse number 8. If you read the book of Psalms, you will find an example of a man who is seeking God. The psalmist David was often seeking God.

My soul thirsteth for thee, my soul longeth for thee, he said in Psalm 63. In other passages he talked about as the hart panteth after the water brooks, so my soul panteth after thee, O God, my soul thirsteth for God. So David certainly illustrated what we’re talking about. So everyone listening, let me encourage you with this thought. 2018 there’s something that ought to characterize it and that is a hunger for God, a thirst for God, a seeking of God.

So it’s like this, if God’s not close to you, can I say it carefully, it’s not God’s fault because God is not a respecter of If you want God, He will respond to that hunger in your heart. Sometimes I put it this way, you know why Peter, James and John were closer to Jesus than the other disciples? I’m just going to put it out there this way, because they wanted to. They wanted to be close to God. And why was John closer to God than Peter and James?

Because he wanted to. And so these are important things to understand, no matter who you are, what your circumstances are, whether you’re raised in an unsaved home or a saved home. God’s not a respecter of your upbringing. He will respond to a seeking heart. Now let me just give you a personal testimony, and certainly we’re all on a conquest for God, and that search in a certain sense never stops in the sense that we continue to need God, want God, want our relationship with Him to deepen, or at least we ought to have that hunger in our hearts.

But I remember in the fall of 1981, I was a college student, I was traveling on a college ensemble of where I attended, and I was the preacher on that group, the leader, and God began to put a stirring in my heart for the ministry I’ve been in for now for 33 years. But I remember that tour, we were in a church in Houston, Texas, pretty sure the name of it was Southwest Calvary Baptist Church, and Houston was booming at the time, and it was on the right of the edge of the growth. And I remember the pastor called all six of us up after the service, and he handed us each a biography entitled Bush Aglow by Richard Ellsworth Day. It was simply a biography of the life of D.L. Moody.

I remember reading that biography and I will tell you, God began to burn a fire in my heart. And I read the words of D.L. Moody when he reached a point where he was sick of his situation. He was just crying out to God. What happened was this.

Moody had built a great ministry there in Chicago. He had a—I guess you’d call it a church, but it was really more of a preaching center. Every Sunday night he’d preach to over a thousand people, many of them lost, and he would say a handful saved. And he was on 13, I believe, committees that were evangelistic in nature, but really in light of all that he was doing, his results were minuscule. And what happened was the Chicago fire.

He preached one night and at the end of the third stanza of the invitation hymn, they heard fire bells out in the street, they dismissed the service. Many of you are familiar with this, and basically that night everything Moody had worked for went up in ashes. Well, he got on a train to go to New York City a few days after this to beg money to rebuild this evangelistic empire, but his heart was not in begging for money. There had been two ladies in his church who said, Mr. Moody, we’re praying for you.

And he said, Oh, don’t pray for me. Pray for the people. But so, oh, no, we’re praying for you. And they saw something in their preacher that was in need. They knew he needed he needed God.

And he certainly was a worker for God, but he needed God in a deeper sense. And Moody on the way there to New York City. He began to cry out to God, oh God, I’d rather die than go on this way. Oh God, change me. He had a hunger for God that he hadn’t had before.

There in New York City, God met with him in a way he had never met with him before, answered that prayer. And Moody, even though I wouldn’t necessarily always agree with the way Moody theologically packaged what happened, I do agree with this. Whatever happened was real, and it came because Moody believed God. The simple promise, if you seek him, you will find him. And he expected God to meet his need, to meet with him.

And Moody will tell you after that, he preached the same sermons, but whereas ten would be saved, now hundreds would be saved. Many of us know the rest of the story. I think Moody, before sound systems, preached live to over a million people, saying literally, thousands come to know the Lord. Remarkable story of a life. But you know, I read that story and God began to stir something in my heart.

I knew I needed something more. I needed God. It was really what it was after. And I began to seek God. I remember that Christmas vacation.

I began to seek God. I came back to college for my final semester of my undergraduate, and I’ll never forget. These are sometimes moments that you don’t talk a lot about because they’re sacredness too and they’re holy ground. But I remember I was called upon to preach in the dormitory, the men in a Sunday school setting, it was actually in an auditorium, but it was the dormitory men, and about a thousand of them. And I remember I got up that morning to get ready to preach and to polish up the message and don’t know how to explain it except that I knew God had met with me.

And I believe it came because I had a hunger for God. God had stirred something in my heart, a hunger for God. And I’ll never forget that message that morning. Before I ever preached it, I knew God was going to move and I knew God met with me in a way I had probably never had been met with to that degree. And the liberty that morning was on another level than in the past.

Although God had met in the preaching event before, this was again, even more liberty and a greater sense of God’s presence. And all I’ll simply say is that God answers the seeking heart. I wish I could say from that point on, I was able to move forward constantly, but no, there’s times where you get cold again and your heart starts getting distracted by other things, or you get dulled by things that are in the world, or just distractions, and you gotta get hungry again. God, I can’t go on this way. God, I need you.

Now, teenager or even adults. If you seek the Lord, you’ll find Him. Every one of you is gifted if you’re saved. You have a Holy Spirit gift inside of you, and God wants to use your life in a remarkable way. Let me encourage you in 2018 to make a decision right now.

God, I’m gonna seek you. I’m sick and tired of living a Christian life without your power. It’s a simple truth, but if you seek the Lord, you will find Him. So let me encourage you here, Thee Generation and all that God is doing, remember the byword, total surrender to the will of God and a total dependence on His strength to live it. Can I put it this way?

Even a dependence on Him as you seek Him, that He will meet your hungry heart.