I Would Not Let Him Go

It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings to search out a matter. — Proverbs 25:2

Ours is a God who not only hides and beckons His beloved ones to seek for Him, but a God who, when found by His own, instructs:

Hold fast to the Treasure found and do not let go.

First, He hides Himself while drawing us to search for the gold of knowing Him. He awakens hunger for Himself—inviting us to cry out for wisdom, to lift our voice for understanding, to seek as for silver and search as for hidden treasure until we find the knowledge of Himself (Prov. 2:3-5). And He promises that He will be found by those who seek Him with all their heart (Jer. 29:13).

Such desperate searching for Him is not poetry to those who have walked these paths. The seeking is arduous; the digging is desperate and dry; the fears that come in the night with whispers of waste are real. But His promise reveals His heart. He desires to be found by us. And the promise burns too hot to cease the pursuit.

This was the search of our youth.

We gathered the oil. We sought for the treasure of the knowledge of God, giving ourselves to the cost and the trade-offs it required. We pored over the Word, waited in prayer, fasted and hungered and lifted our voices in song, reaching for the deep things of God, even when we couldn’t feel the warmth of affection. Even when despair would set in because of the delays and the darkness. Even when we felt the sting when others seemed to succeed in places we’d given up in the trade-offs of the sacrificial search.

And at times we would have abandoned the difficult course altogether except for the sound of a fellow seeker’s song on their own nearby path—and a wave of comfort would wash over us with the distinct fellowship found in such pursuit. Their song would stir confidence in us once more, laying hold of our thirsts again and compelling us forward.

And all the while, unseen by us, the One we sought for stood watchful, receiving our cries and songs with delight, holding every hunger close to His heart.

Then at last, in our seeking, we did find Him—just as He promised to be found by us.

Not in a swift and singular unearthing, but in incremental flickers of His beauty, tastings of His goodness. One flashing opening of our eyes by His Spirit, a changing of our understanding as His implanted Word transformed us in the inward parts (Jas. 1:21). We found the One our soul loves—in whom all the treasures of wisdom and understanding are hidden (Col. 2:2-3).

But the searching and the finding were not the arrival. The end of the search was only the beginning.

The long search was the forging of a kind of holding fast that would not quickly let go. It was not only for the capacity it would carve out within us, but also for the grace to guard and keep. It is in the darkness of these delays, when the word of the Lord tests us, that our soul comes into iron (Ps. 105:18-19).

The God who set us searching, who wounded us with an aching that compelled us forward into the darkness, longing for more of Him, had our good close to His heart. He called us to seek and find, even hiding Himself long and causing our yearning to deepen, so that when we at last unearthed His beauty, we would cling with fervent devotion to the Treasure—as one only clings after they have sought for it for so long and at such cost.

The arduous searching of our youth was meant to tether us with vehemence to the treasure we found—to the living understanding of Christ we unearthed by His grace. The Lord is free to reveal Himself however He desires, but when He hides Himself long, we must remember how purposeful are His ways. He knew that quick findings result in quick relinquishings, and only if the seeking was costly and marked by the greatest yearnings of the heart would our later clinging be fierce. A ferocity we would need for what lay ahead.

We thought the test was in the searching, and it was. But there were other tests to come. Having come through the desperate seeking and at last laid hold of the Treasure, we arrive at the hour of wrestlings, when that which we’ve tasted and seen—the gold we are clinging to—is itself brought to the fire.

Did we not taste of the sweetest truths in Him?

Did we not drink of His goodness and experience the abundance of His comforts?

And even beyond the tasting and drinking, did we not take in His Word like an implanted seed, transforming us?

Has He not written it upon our hearts so indelibly that it has made us who we are?

Is not even the memory of Him enough to lay hold of Him again, no matter the cost?

And more poignant still, did not our love and our lifted songs move His heart, received by Him as an offering He called good?

Was it not too real to doubt?

Was not the Treasure Christ Himself—the One who purchased us with His own blood (Acts 20:28)? And if He has given us Himself—if He knows what His own Spirit has wrought in us—how can we do anything else but call good what He has imparted? Would it not be a denial of Him to do otherwise?

Test everything, yes. Remove the dross and separate the precious from the worthless. Let the sifting do its work. Incorporate the tragedy and the grief along the way, but hold fast to the beauty (Rom. 12:9; 1 Thess. 5:21-22). What was truly Him must never be relinquished. Let us never let go of what was given from above. Let us never cease to call good what came down from the ancient and everlasting Father of lights (Jas. 1:17) and was given life in us, bursting forth from its incorruptible seed (1 Pet. 1:23).

Cleave to Christ. Cling with all your might. Guard the good and costly deposit entrusted to you—by the Holy Spirit who dwells within (2 Tim. 1:14).

We underestimated His jealousy once again—the jealousy of the One who formed us for Himself. It was there, hidden in our paths, and we did not see it. He does not only want to be sought and found. The very nature of the search tells us there is more.

The way He forges hunger in us, sometimes hiding His face, enlarging the ache, shows how strategically He leads—so that when He gives Himself, we cling as though to life itself. Even when holding to Him is costly, and He Himself is silent, we do not let go.

All the way, He has been forging in us an overcoming love. A love that first seeks and hungers for Him—and when it has finally laid hold of Him, binds us to Him with inextricable bonds—even when such clinging to the good calls for the suffered loss of all else. A love set like a seal upon the heart, with flashes of fire that many waters cannot quench and floods cannot drown (Song 8:6-7).

He leads His friends to such forks in the road for just this purpose. In fact, the whole winding road behind us has been readying us for just this holy junction—when the precious treasure of Christ that we have found, after years of heart-rending, passionate quest, comes now to a greater proving of His worth.

We find ourselves in a crucible which serves as the summit toward which all the long searching, finding and cleaving have been leading—to the glorifying of His name when weak ones of the earth hold fast to Him—to all He has spoken and all He has given—even when facing the costliness and singularity of such love. Underneath each step forward is our exchange with Him: His living voice compelling us, “Hold fast to what you have,” and our only response, “Where else can I go? Whom have I but You?”

This is now the reckoning—and with it comes His grace for our response of tested fidelity. We remember what we have received and heard from Him, and we guard and keep His word with patient endurance, just as He instructed (Rev. 3:3, 10-11; Heb. 10:23, 35-39).

He yearns with jealous longing, looking for our love to come through the fire, to join the anthem of His holy bondservants, not just with chorus sung but with lives wrung out of all else, confessing:

I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ. — Phil. 3:8

We already paid Him our vows. We already sold the field and confessed our love for Him as our chief Joy (Matt. 13:44-46). We cannot turn back now.

He is worthy of such loyal love—from those who have not only professed their singular affection for Him through the sacrifice of searching, but now suffer loss rather than let go of the Treasure they have found in Him.

Such a life arises before Him as the pleasing fragrance of sacrificial love He has longed to receive—a living epistle of His worth, bearing witness that His ways are just and true, a life that says:

I will not offer to the Lord that which cost me nothing. — 2 Sam. 24:24

Such is the leading of the Beloved Master who calls us up the mountain of myrrh (Song 4:6):

Leave all, take up your cross, and follow Me. Lose your life in your singular love for Me (Lk. 9:23-24).

Such is the leading of the jealous Bridegroom as He forms the Bride for whom He gave Himself up (Eph. 5:25-27). He has led us this far, through these costly paths, to ultimately bring us to this kind of piercingly loyal and undivided love—a love commensurate to His own self-giving, crimson fidelity.

He was in every hunger along the way—groaning from within us. Behind every delay, He drew us with ancient cords of lovingkindness. And in every discovery and unearthing, with joy He unveiled His beauty to our hearts.

And even now, He is in these wrestlings, bringing back the remembrances and saying to us: Yes, it was Me you tasted. Yes, it was Me your eyes beheld. And forever your love has been to Me as a memorial.

Having led us to this place, He watches with yearning for our answering love, the love He has been forming all along, now proven through fire, fierce wrestlings, and loss.

And with the whole of our lives, we give Him our answer:

I found him whom my soul loves.

I held him, and would not let him go. — Song of Songs 3:4