A woman's heart should be so hidden in God that a man has to seek Him just to find her.

The Koran presents Allah as being forever hidden from humanity. The Bible presents Jehovah as drawing near and seeking us out.

Proverbs 2:4—5 challenges the body of Christ to seek the Lord as silver. We must gain the knowledge of Him, for there are hidden things that God will only give to the hungry.

I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord. They will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart" (Jeremiah 24:7).

We mustn't imagine that our feeling of being close to God is a true index of the reality.

An undefined "mysticism with nobody there" is not enough. It does not fill the hunger in the human heart for connection with a personal God who knows and loves us.

Much of the greatness of the human spirit can be seen in our passionate pursuit of knowledge, truth, justice, beauty, perfection, and love. At the same time, few things are so haunting as the stories of the very greatest seekers falling short. Leonardo da Vinci's magnificent failures point to a very personal entry point to the wonder of calling - when something more than human seeking is needed if seeking is to be satisfied, then calling means that seekers themselves are sought.

True seekers are different. On meeting them you feel their purpose, their energy, their integrity, their idealism, and their desire to close in on an answer. Something in life has awakened questions, has made them aware of a sense of need, has forced them to consider where they are in life. They have become seekers because something has spurred their quest for meaning, and they have to find an answer.

As Pascal observed, when God addresses our human hearts, there is always enough light for those who desire to see, yet enough obscurity for those who do not wish to see. What makes the difference is the heart.

We cannot find God without God. We cannot reach God without God. We cannot satisfy God without God—which is another way of saying that our seeking will always fall short unless God's grace initiates the search and unless God's call draws us to him and completes the search.

We look upon prayer simply as a means of getting things for ourselves, but the biblical purpose of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself.

Are you seeking great things for yourself, instead of seeking to be a great person? God wants you to be in a much closer relationship with Himself than simply receiving His gifts—He wants you to get to know Him. Even some large thing we want is only incidental; it comes and it goes. But God never gives us anything incidental. There is nothing easier than getting into the right relationship with God, unless it is not God you seek, but only what He can give you.