Seeking Until Finding
This is Arvell Craig with the Monday Morning Devo for January 5, 2015
Last week I talked about Matthew 7:7–Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and the door will be opened to you.
The idea was about integrity and consistency regarding what we pray for. That doesn’t mean you ask or seek or know for sure what you want. But to realize you are always seeking something and knocking, working for something… So what if you sought or studied and worked for the same things you ask for?
Now this week, I want to camp on just the idea of Seeking.
In the Message Bible it uses the word steep instead of seek.
Matthew 6:33 reads this way: “Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions.” Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.
The seeking here applies to our prayer life, but the scripture really goes beyond prayer to our entire intention and our whole being.
“Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative and God-provisions.”
The wording here is all-consuming and I think we need to be a bit more consumed by God in order to enter into all that He has for us. The word steep itself means excessive. It’s costly or extravagant.
And so, it would seem that to enter into the level where God literally takes care of all your needs requires excessive attention to who He is, what He likes, and what He values.
Of course, it’s your and my choice. We don’t need God to take care of everything, right? We have a mind and intellegence and skills; therefore, we can do quite a bit without falling over into any extremes.
And for most, this is probably good enough.
But as for me, and I hope, for you too — we don’t want to have a little bit of God and little bit of everything else. We want to taste and test and see, “Will God really take care of all my needs?” Is there really nothing that is impossible to those who believe?
These verses are not just promises but invitations.
God is alluring to those of us who aren’t satisfied with the status quo.
And so, when He says to seek Him, I believe a major shift that we have to make is to not just seek, but seek to find.
You know, if we are seeking in order to find… after spending our daily alotted time reading, praying or worshipping, if we didn’t obtain something new from that time, the only logical step would be to keep seeking, right?
If you’re seeking a new job, and put out five applications and still have no job, what do you do? You keep seeking, I hope.
So when we seek God daily, we may need to keep seeking daily until we find or receive or encounter or hear something–daily.
Yes, I believe this is how we become consumed or steeped with God-reality and God-provision. And in that place — having that reality — we would then begin to walk in the peace and assurance that all things are truly taken care of for us.