If from there you seek the Lord your God, you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul. When you are in distress and all these things have happened to you, then in later days you will return to the Lord your God and obey Him. For the Lord your God is a merciful God; He will not abandon or destroy you or forget the covenant with your ancestors, which He confirmed to them by oath. (Deuteronomy 4:29-31, NIV)
Call upon the Lord from where you are. Moses encourages the people in Deuteronomy 4:29, ‘If from where you are… you will seek the Lord your God, you WILL find Him, if you seek Him with ALL your heart.’ So, in the midst of every distress, fear, want, even sickness – whatever situation you are in – there you will find God! So often we are told that if you want to find God, you’ve got to be ‘holy’, to give up everything, separate yourself, shut yourself up like in a monastery. No, the reality is that spirituality is not isolating yourself, not trying to be some kind of ‘holy’ person – it’s YOU dealing with GOD right where you are! If you want to meet with God, you don’t have to wait until you have done this or that. I would never have become an evangelist, never seen a miracle of healing if God had waited until I was perfect before He answered my prayers. I call on God, He deals with me where I am. That’s why I was healed, not because I was ‘holy’. What God looks at is the deep desire of your heart.
Some years ago I was invited to speak at a conference. The theme was how we can know God, how we can come into His presence. Most of the speakers were saying you need to have holiness, quietness and peace. I caused some revolution because I began preaching from this passage in Deuteronomy 4:29. You will find God if you search for Him from just where you are! When you are in tribulation, when all the problems of life have come on you!
When everything’s going well, when you’re not sick, when you have no financial problems – you don’t call upon God as much. But when you are in difficulty, when you’re sick – that’s when you begin to call on God more intensely. I have had long years of experience with God and I know personally that I learned more about prayer when I had cancer, when I was in prison, when I had financial problems, than at any other time! Prayer becomes more urgent when there is no other way – no alternative. When I had both experiences of cancer there were two ways – an operation or a miracle! I chose to go the hard way of asking and believing for a miracle – but this meant a total commitment – not accepting ‘no’. When I was in the prison, there were two alternatives: either accept the inevitability of five-to-ten years incarceration or ‘barnstorm’ Heaven until I got out! That’s not holiness, it’s just following the prayer principles Jesus laid down for desperate widows and people like me! – Luke 18:1-8.
I don’t see the powerful miracles and life-changing conversions in my ministry because I am more holy or better than you, but only because I am desperate to see God’s power and call upon the person of the Holy Spirit to help – ‘from where I am’! I want to encourage you: the people who are healed and converted are not the righteous or the ‘holy’, but the sinners, the poor, the needy, the desperate! You don’t have to be ‘holy’ to find God, you find Him when you need Him!
When the disciples asked, “Lord, teach us how to pray!”, in answer Jesus replied, “When you pray, say, Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be Your Name, Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven...” When I was imprisoned for Bible smuggling, I felt abandoned by God. In the first few months it seemed as if God did not answer any of my prayers. When I prayed for food, there was none, when I prayed that my wife would come, she was not allowed a visa to visit me – it seemed that every prayer that I prayed, God said no. I began to despair. “Oh God, if You don’t hear me, I’d rather die, because life has no purpose, no meaning if You don’t answer me.” While I was still saying, “Oh God, I cannot pray anymore”, I remembered the words in the Bible (I had no Bible in the prison – it was forbidden) where Jesus said, “When you pray say…” – and I began hesitantly to say those words, ‘Our Father’ – but as I did I began to argue, I cannot say ‘our’, that’s plural – I’m alone in here, no family, no friends, no believers, how can I speak in the plural? I have to say MY Father. Suddenly I knew the reality of those words, He’s mine, He’s my Father!
Then I came to the next part, ‘Who is in heaven’. Then I argued, Yes, You are in heaven, but I’m in a stinking filthy cell, don’t You understand? Joy, happiness, glory – that’s in heaven. But I’m down here – and then I remembered the truth – You sent Your Son – Your only Son – and You sent Him down to this earth, He was in a prison cell like me. Yes, God was willing, not only to let His Son die, death is easy, but He was beaten and tortured – why – because God loved me! He allowed His Son to suffer – for me! How could I complain? And then I realised, God is not just in heaven; He’s here, in this prison cell with me! Suddenly the glory of that revelation flooded my soul. I began to understand who God is.