Jesus said in Matthew 7:7, "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you." There is a huge theme that runs through Scripture about the culpability, responsibility, and accountability of man to seek the truth (Romans 2:6,10:9-10). God doesn’t force someone into salvation or to do the right thing. Of course, He is sovereign over all things, including salvation (Romans 8:30), but He gives each and every person the chance to choose for themselves their own eternal destinies (Joshua 24:15). Even beyond the choice of receiving or rejecting Christ, we make decisions all the time every day. Some people spurn the truth in their decision-making, not caring about God’s wisdom and direction. Others desperately want to know what the right thing is to do, and they earnestly plead for the wisdom of God. So there are two kinds of people according to the Scripture, the humble and the proud, the pliable and the stubborn, the teachable and the unteachable, the wicked and the righteous, and the seeker and the scoffer. All of these terms and categories are interrelated because the true seeker is the one who will become the righteous because he is also humble, teachable, and pliable. Of course, it is God’s gracious calling to people that enables us to even want to seek the truth given that nobody seeks God of their own natural accord (Romans 3:11). However, in this grace-drawing process as God calls all people to repentance and to knowing and loving Him (Luke 19:10,2 Peter 3:9), we all have a choice to make that God is not going to force upon us. He is not to blame for our scoffing or mocking the truth. Only we bear that responsibility, culpability, and accountability.
The idea of seeking in a Biblical sense really is a healthy thing, something even commanded of God for both unbelievers and believers to do (Matthew 7:7). We are responsible before God to seek the truth in salvation and in sanctification according to God’s Word. This Biblical seeking is not a fleshly process of self-discovery or self-enlightenment. It is not a careless, disconnected trial and error based on a "comfortability" factor. For the unbeliever, Biblical seeking is a humble, driven, willful searching out to find the God Who made the universe and to know Him by His Word. Once a person is saved, Biblical seeking is a humble, driven, willful searching through the Scriptures to know and love God deeper and with increasing wisdom and maturity. There is nothing about the salvation process or spiritual growth process that can be manipulated or sped up by works and ingenuity of man. Only God draws a person, and only hearing the Word of God can bring faith to the seeker of truth (Romans 10:17). Once saved, only the grace of God through the ministry of the Holy Spirit in our hearts enables us to choose by faith to continue to seek God through the truth of His Word. So God is gracious, and, at the same time, we are responsible to keep seeking.
Jeremiah 33:3 says, "Call to Me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know.’" We get to a point of staleness in our Christian lives when we are content with what we know about God and His Word. The reality is that we will never exhaust the wisdom and knowledge of God. There is so much that God wants to teach us about Himself and His ways, and He asks us to call out to Him so that He will tell us great and mighty things. He even promises to answer that prayer because it is indeed the will of God! This is a prayer that we all should take a moment to pray. God wants us to spend our lives searching out truth by way of His Word. Of the faithful Berean Christians, we read in Acts 17:11, "Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so." God called these Christians noble because they received the Word with eagerness of mind. They wanted to grow, they wanted to keep learning, and above all, they wanted to know the truth from the lies. Many teachings float around in churches, Christian bookstores, Christian websites, etc., and the only way to know who is telling the truth is to go to the Scriptures and by faith search them out. We can trust the Holy Spirit to do as He has promised to do and guide us into all truth (John 16:13). God delights in His children seeking Him out and asking Him to learn more, to gain wisdom, and to grow to maturity.
Biblical seeking is not done callously or half-heartedly. Jeremiah 29:13 says, "You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart." The key in asking God to help us grow in Christ is to ask with all of our hearts. Hearts that truly want to know the truth and who ask accordingly will find it. This is why I believe, for example, that a godly marriage between two believers can indeed be faithful until death because the Holy Spirit will lead both partners into all truth if they truly seek it. This is why I believe that in the church no doctrinal disagreement should stop unity from progressing because the same Spirit in each believer will eventually get each of us in line with what the Bible truly teaches. Of course, patience and forbearance is required, but the Spirit’s promise is sure.
So let us seek God with all of our hearts, continuing to grow in truth by the Spirit Whose job it is to lead us into all truth. May God give us the desire to know great and mighty things about Him through His Word, and may He use us to teach the truth to true truth seekers.
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