To Seek Or Not To Seek

When one ignores or puts aside any of God’s instruction from the Word of God, that instruction becomes of no effect to that person. You can say in a sense, God's Word is effectively "lost" to that person. That person can be compared to many of the Jewish leaders Paul addressed in Christ’s day and Matthew 13:15 described such a person, "For the heart of this people has grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes have they closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they should understand with their heart and turn so that I should heal them."

The same can be said of the world today. God's Word is lost to the world by choice. BY CHOICE! Not because there is no truth. THE TRUTH has been on this earth for over 2,000 years. The problem is, truth is ignored. We have the choice to seek or not to seek. So many are hardened against God and are against anything that has to do with God. We see this in the United States for example in a battle over the Ten Commandments or the effort to remove the motto “In God We Trust” from everything in the public eye. God's Word is openly ridiculed, discredited and called evil! These people have lost touch with the reality that God is their creator. That which is evil is now called good and that which is good is called evil. Scripture speaks of this too in Isaiah 5:20, "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness, that put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!" For instance, if you stand with the pro-life movement because you believe in saving an innocent life, you are, as New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand suggests, a racist! Being pro-life and standing for innocent babies is now considered wrong and that you should somehow side with those who want you to agree that murdering a full term baby is a right! A right? A right of the woman and her body? NO. Because it isn't her body any longer! There are 2 separate lives there. Two hearts. Two brains. TWO SOULS!!

Here's another, people ignore God's Word regarding homosexuality and refute God's truth plainly pointed out in Leviticus 18:22; 20:13, Romans 1:18;32, 1 Corinthians 6-9-10, 1 Timothy 1:8-10. These are the very passages that show us homosexual activity is a sin- making it clear that it is not a unique sin because it isn't any worse than any other "sin," it is one example of what is wrong with all of us. If you stand on God's written Word regarding this subject, you're considered a hater, intolerant, homophobic, and prejudice. What God tells us is evil is now called good. We are living in prophetic times! These rebellious, indifferent people are like the Gentiles spoken of in Paul’s letter to the Roman Christians in Romans 1:23;25, " And changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen" (Refer to my blog "The Seed and the Soil" -Homosexuality- listed under January's blogs.) This is a perfect illustration of what is happening today, yet people do not want to hear the truth which God gave us over 2,000 years ago. And there are consequences for ignoring, BY CHOICE, what He warned us of.

Too, these same are like the hardened soil in the Parable of the Sower I wrote about: “When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, then the wicked one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is he who received seed by the wayside” (Matthew 13:19). The Word of God is hidden from their minds: “Whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them” (2 Corinthians 4:4). How terrible that some just can’t find the truths in God’s Word. There is something else that comes to mind. Think of the thousands of dusty Bibles lying on coffee tables or shelves that are never opened! In this case, the “Good Book” is in plain view, but it is never opened. If it is never read, if it is never consumed in the minds of people, the Word is lost and truth cannot be found though it is in plain sight. Ignorance will not be a legitimate excuse on the day Christ judges each and every one of us.

Finding TRUTH is as easy as this: (pay attention to the words I enlarged):
Proverbs2:1-5. "My son, if you RECEIVE MY WORDS and treasure MY COMMANDS WITHIN YOU, so that you INCLINE YOUR EAR TO WISDOM, and APPLY YOUR HEART TO UNDERSTANDING; yes, if you CRY OUT FOR DISCERNMENT, and LIFT UP YOUR VOICE FOR UNDERSTANDING, if you SEEK HER as a hidden treasure, then YOU WILL UNDERSTAND THE FEAR OF THE LORD and YOU WILL FIND THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD.
God's intention is that you and I make His wisdom our own. We are to learn it from the Bible! Pastors, preachers, ministers, and teachers are charged by God with helping us grow. However, we must make God's Word ours and keep it in our heart. Just as with a family heirloom, a lost diamond ring you cannot find. You don't half-heartily eyeball a room and say it isn't there, that it "cannot be found." You have to search, dig, systematically sweep the floor, lifting every throw rug, pulling up couch cushions, moving things off and examining the coffee table, looking in pottery, around pottery, in pottery, getting on your knees to observe the floor from a different angle. And if it isn't found, you go back and repeat your search, maybe three or four more times often going over the same areas do you not? Jesus said, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for everyone that asks receives; and he that seeks finds; and to him that knocks it shall be opened." How have you sought the Lord? How have you looked for truth by eyeballing the pages of the Bible and exclaiming, "It's too hard to understand so I will give up my search." Treasure is never found on the surface, it is hidden well and hidden deep. But it's there. The Word is no different. It is there for the serious and for those who desire to know God and know His truths. It's the surest way to separate the half-hearted, lukewarm, heedless and indifferent from the mindful, ardent, fervent, zealous seeker. Which are you?
Until next time,
-Pat-