“No one has real understanding; no one is seeking God.” — Romans 3:11
Some people speak about their search for God. They might say something like, “I’m on a spiritual journey. I am trying to find the truth. I am trying to find the light. I am trying to find God.” Yet the Bible says that no one is really searching for God on their own.
Years ago I heard the story (that I have probably already related to you) about a little girl who was lost during a snowstorm. The parents and neighbors desperately tried to find her, knowing if they did not, she would soon die. Just when they thought they had exhausted every possible place, they saw a small bump in the snow next to the porch. They pulled away the snow and saw the smiling face of their daughter who looked up at her parents and said, “I found you.” Obviously, the finding was in the hands of the parents, not the little girl’s.
We like to think that God is distantly hidden away somewhere and through many years of tedious search, we come upon him and we have finally completed our journey. The fact is that most of us are hiding from God. He calls 
our name, He puts signs of His presence all around us, and He maps out clearly in His Word how we can be with Him. He desires for us to come to Him, more than we desire to go to Him. We go searching for God “in all the wrong places,” and wonder why He is not there. If we wait upon Him with an open heart then He will come to us, for He desires that none will be lost.
If we want to know God we need to ask Him to come to us with open and willing hearts. He has done all the groundwork for us. Our seeking should not be some blind, dart board effort that samples every religion known to man. Life is not Baskin-Robbins where you order the flavor you like and it’s all good. The difference between Christianity and all the other “religions” is not like the difference between vanilla and rocky-road. There is no “right” flavor of ice cream, but when it comes to spiritual things there is one truth. Christianity and Islam are not two faiths on two sides of the same coin. They are not on the same coin.
If we try the sixties approach of sampling everything out there, that does not mean we are necessarily searching. It can be a built in excuse for never having to accept anything. We can’t commit if we haven’t tried everything. God says, “If you look for me in earnest, you will find me when you seek me.” (Jeremiah 29:13). So although all roads don’t lead to heaven, all earnest-seeking leads to Christ.
Sometimes people will say something like, “I found the Lord 10 years ago,” as though God had been lost. But God is not the one who is lost; we are. God is seeking to save us, and if we really want to know Him, then He will wipe the snow away and rescue us. What keeps most of us from earnestly seeking God is an unwillingness to accept God’s assessment of us. We are unwilling to acknowledge our guilt. We might glibly say we are bad, but those are just words. We accept our “badness” as a reason to be bad. We want believe the Christian life is based on our goodness or badness rather than the shed blood of Christ. If we fully accept Him and His Word, goodness and badness will not be our focus- serving Christ and loving Him will be.
If we are “searching for Jeus” we need to look to the WORD and objectively look at what it says. There was a commercial once that used a different approach to the product advertised. Let me paraphrase it- “Some will 
tell you to get prices from many others and come here last because you will see we are the best in every way and you will use us. I say, instead, come here first and save yourself the trip to other places. We will let you know their prices if you want, but I can say with confidence that you will stay with us.” I think that God’s Word says something similar. “If you want to go around trying out other faiths, hobbies, relationships, locations searching for lasting and deep satisfaction, you can, but if you are earnest in your search you will end up here. If you come here first, you will save yourself the other trips.”
There is no other place you can find a single inoculation for a seemingly endless number of afflictions. Although pain may come in varieties, the cure for them all comes in one antidote…. the healing power of the cross of Christ. He the only God who desires us to come to Him, and He will work sacrificially to that end. So we can search if we must, but the path is laid out, and all the searching for something to make us happy does not create something that will make us happy. He already exists and He is reaching down to us.
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