“You will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart,” God said through Jeremiah. This means it is a matter of choice on our part whether we find God or not. And the choice we must make is to seek Him diligently.
If we fail to keep ourselves open to God’s message and to listen with a real intent to obey, we will lose the ability to recognize the truth even when it is clearly and convincingly presented to us. “Therefore,” said Jesus, “take heed how you hear.”
If we’re not willing to be warned, we risk losing the very things that could contribute to true peace and comfort. So the willingness to be “disturbed” is one of the main differences between those who make spiritual progress and those who do not.
Our Creator has given us our lives, but He has also given us the gift of language and spoken to us! We don’t have to have a technical understanding of biblical inspiration in order to be awed by the concept of having such documents in our possession.
Before our lives are done, we will have had the opportunity to “buy” many things, some of great value and some of much less. But there has always been “one pearl of great price,” a treasure of such magnitude that it defies comparison.
Few things are of more practical value than the simple ability to make decisions and to make them stick. Starting with little decisions and working our way up to the big ones, we must gradually build the strength of our decision-making muscles.
Texts like Micah 6:8 call us back to the center of what really matters most. It is good to be against what is wrong in the world, but God is looking for people who will be for what is right — things like justice, mercy, and humility.
Teaching us to “deny ungodliness,” grace says “we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age.” Grace is the most motivating force in the world. Forgiven of our past acts of rebellion against God’s love, we respond gratefully.
We must move away from self-centeredness. Holiness, like happiness, is a by-product of seeking something more important than concern for ourselves, namely the glory of God. Our principal focus must be kept on Him and on serving others in His name.
Our needs are known to our Heavenly Father before we ask Him. But He wants us to have the humility to recognize those needs ourselves and to ask for His help. The deeper our gratitude for His grace, the more faithfully we will ask and seek and knock.
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