RC Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle

‘Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. Everyone who asks receives; everyone who searches finds; everyone who knocks will have the door opened.’ (Matthew 7.7)

This is Jesus promise to you.

Are you seeking to know the truth?
to know the meaning and purpose of your life?
to know who you are?
to know why you exist?

Many people today have given up asking such questions.
They have despaired of ever knowing the truth.
Some people even reject the very idea that there is truth.
They say that truth can never be known.

But Jesus makes this promise to us:
‘Seek, and you will find.’

Keep asking the question.
The most urgent questioning of your heart will be answered.
Do not give up the search.
Your searching will lead you to a treasure
more wonderful and valuable than you can imagine. (Matthew 13.44-46)
Bang on the door
with absolute confidence that it will be opened to you.

But will you open the door?
Jesus says, ‘Here I am! I am standing at the door, knocking.
If anyone hears my voice and opens the door,
I will come in and eat with him – he and I together.’

If I want the door that leads to eternal life to open for me,
then I must open the door of my life and allow Jesus to enter in.
Truth can be given to me
only insofar as I am willing to give myself to Truth.

‘Lord, You have made us for Yourself; and our hearts will always be restless, until they rest in You.’

Are you restless? Do you feel dissatisfied with things as they are?
Do you want more, but you are not sure what that more is, or where to find it?
Are you always busy achieving your goals, but find when you have achieved them that you are left with a feeling of unfulfilment? We have been made by God.
God made us for Himself.
Only in God will we find our peace and our joy.
Every attempt to find an ultimate resting place will fail, until we accept that our home is in God. But how do we climb up to heaven? We cannot. We do not need to.
God, in His love and mercy, has come down to us.
In Jesus, God has come among us as one of us, as a human being, to be seen and touched and heard. He speaks to us,

‘Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.’ (Matthew 11.28-30) Allow Jesus to be your Way to God. Follow his gentle voice and he will guide you to the only home where your heart will find rest.

‘Come back to me with all your heart.  Don’t let fear keep us apart.’
We were created for loving union with God: God, who is our merciful and tender Father.
He longs for us to return to Him.
He will help you to demolish every barrier that stands between you and Him.
Whatever wrong you have done, whatever trouble you are in, whatever harm you have done to others or yourself, whatever sin you have committed, His love for you is greater than all these things.
We cannot change the past. We feel unable to change our lives. But what is impossible for us is possible for Almighty God. He can enter our present and create for us a future more wonderful than we can even imagine.
God asks us to turn to Him in trust. Trust in His mercy.

Accept the truth of your own sin. Accept the free gift of forgiveness. Set off once more on the journey towards God, and keep going, ever deeper into His love. Step by step, day by day. Never giving up, no matter how many times you fall or how far from His path you stray. Never doubting His limitless desire to forgive, or His absolute commitment to bring you to your heavenly home with Him.

‘Like a deer that thirsts for running streams, so my soul is thirsting for you my God’

Our need for God is as essential to us as our need for water.

As a body thirsts for water, and soon dies without it, so our soul thirsts for God and for the life that only He can give us.

When Jesus spoke with a woman he met at a well he offered her ‘streams of living water’. He offered to satisfy her deepest need: her need for union with God, who is the source of all life and goodness; her need to be loved and to realize her own capacity to love, her need for grace.

Jesus makes the same offer to you today. He wants nothing more than that you should recognize the thirst at the centre of your being and allow him to satisfy that thirst.

Even more amazing, As he hung upon the cross, Jesus cried out ‘I thirst!’ He thirsts to be loved by you. No one else can love Jesus in the way that you can.

No one else can satisfy the thirst that he has for your love. ‘Jesus, I do love you. But I know that my love is shallow and inconstant. Open my heart so that your love can flood through me.’

‘Can you not buy five sparrows for two pennies?

And yet not one is forgotten in God’s sight. Why, every hair on your head has been counted! There is no need to be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.’ (Luke 12. 6-7)

Many people live with a sense of insecurity. They doubt their own worth. People care so much about what other people think of them, about their image, about how they look to other people.  They struggle to achieve success so that they will be respected, admired, even envied. Their status at work, the size of their car, the clothes in their wardrobe, the value of their house are taken as a measure of their own worth.

But we are so much more than the things we own. Jesus wants us to understand how valuable we are. What matters is not how other people see us, but how God sees us.

And God sees us with the eyes of a devoted Father, who gazes at us with delight, counting every precious hair on our head.  To God, you are more valuable than the whole of the material universe. 

The universe He made for you.  You He made for eternal happiness with Him. That is why you must not be afraid.

This life, with all its beauty and pain, is a short journey into the eternal life for which God has made you. This life is a priceless opportunity to turn in faith to God, who holds us in existence by his love, to listen to His Word, to open our hearts to Him, and in reply to make our life into a song of thanksgiving.