Tag Archives: seek

Keep on (Luke 11:9-10) November 2, 2016

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Today’s Podcast

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Today’s Bible reading plan:

Read it in a year – Psalms 125-127

see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)

Today’s Devotional

Luke 11:9-10
Jesus So listen: Keep on asking, and you will receive. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened for you. All who keep asking will receive, all who keep seeking will find, and doors will open to those who keep knocking.

What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?

Aren’t those great words from Jesus we’re considering today? Keep asking and you’ll receive. Keep seeking, and you’ll find. Keep knocking and the door will be opened for you. Just keep on and it will happen for you. Be persistent.

We have a problem in today’s society, though. We have too many fast food restaurants. We have get too many television channels. We have 24 screen movie theaters. We have 300 mega bit per second download service at home. We have interstates with 70 and 75 mile per hour speed limits. We fly across the country in jets traveling at near super sonic speeds. We have meals ready to pop in the microwave and whole sections at the grocery with vegetables and fruits already pealed and sliced for us. Our cars even start before we get to them and the doors unlock a few feet before our arrival so we don’t have to worry about fussing with keys. Everything is instant.

We want what we want now. I can’t wait until tomorrow. I need it now. Amazon has made a fortune because they can deliver anything in two days. Even on Saturday and Sunday thanks to UPS and the Post Office agreeing to our unreasonable demands for instant delivery of those things we just have to have now. We are an incredible society, aren’t we? What ever happened to patience? Isn’t that one of those virtues we’re supposed to be developing as Christians?

God, you mean I have to ask twice, or even three times for something? You mean I have to look in more than one place for the thing I’m seeking from you? You mean I might have to wait for the blessings you want to give me? I don’t know about this. I don’t know if I’m ready for this faith thing that says I have to be patient and wait on God’s timing. How do I know He’ll answer if He doesn’t answer my prayers right now? Doesn’t He know I have a life I need to get on with? I don’t need to be wasting my time asking twice or three times for the same thing, do I?

How much do we miss because of our impatience? What does God want to do for us that we let slip past us because we are just not willing to spend the time and effort persistently seeking God’s will and going to Him in prayer seeking His will? What opportunities go untouched because we just don’t slow down enough to see them or pull the door handle once and find it closed and never try the door again?

Jesus told us to ask and keep on asking. He told us to seek and keep on seeking. He told us to knock and keep on knocking. How long are we supposed to keep up those efforts? Until our prayers are answered. Sometimes God does say no, but so often in our Google search, instant answer world, if He doesn’t give us what we asked for within ten minutes of our prayer, we assume the answer is no when God hasn’t answered yet.

Sometimes God takes His time answering and we don’t like that much, but God’s time is perfect. Sometimes He does say no, but sometimes, He says yes, but on His timeline, not ours. Remember time means nothing to God. He existed before time began and that wristwatch you wear means nothing to Him. His days are not measured in minutes and hours and days. His time expands across eternity and just can’t be measured in any way.

So if God waits a day or a week or a month or a year to answer your prayer, what’s that to Him in terms of time? It means nothing to Him, only to us. He still cares, but sometimes He uses that space that that we measure by the ticking of the clock to help us get to know Him and ourselves a little better. Sometimes He lets us mature and understand His ways a little more before He gives us what we ask for our lets us find what we are looking for or opens that door we’re knocking on.

However, the promise is still true. God does answer our prayers. Keep on asking, and you will receive. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened for you. All who keep asking will receive, all who keep seeking will find, and doors will open to those who keep knocking. Jesus made that promise to His disciples and if you belong to Him, you are one of His disciples. 

The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.
In accordance with the requirements for FTC full disclosure, I may have affiliate relationships with some or all of the producers of the items mentioned in this post who may provide a small commission to me when purchased through this site.

The Father’s will (Matthew 7:7-8) January 30, 2016

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Today’s Podcast

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Today’s Bible reading plan:

Read it in a year – Matthew 11-13

see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)

Today’s Devotional

Matthew 7:7-8
Jesus: Just ask and it will be given to you; seek after it and you will find. Continue to knock and the door will be opened for you. All who ask receive. Those who seek, find what they seek. And he who knocks, will have the door opened.

What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?

Jesus moves back to the topic of prayer. He tells us to just ask, but does He mean we can get anything we want? Does He portray the Father as a cosmic Santa that will give us whatever we want? “Just ask and it will be given to you…” It might sound like it if you lift that verse out of His sermon like a lot of name it and claim preachers try to do. But go back and look at the model prayer He gives us earlier in His sermon and remember that He never contradicts Himself.

Ask and it will be given to you. Ask for what? Remember Jesus’ model prayer? Father in heaven, I ask that your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Ask and it will be given to you. Seek after it and you will find it. Find what? Find the Father’s will. You see, I think we get the wrong idea about what to ask for in the first place. We get ourselves mixed up into the equation and let that selfish desire poke its head up and try to grab all the attention instead of listening to what Jesus says to us in the rest of His discourse.

Remember what He told us just a few verses before this? “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.” Don’t worry about all that other stuff. God knows what you need and He’ll see that all that other stuff is taken care of. Just seek Him first. Don’t let your greedy self get in the way of looking for Him. Be like David and “let your soul pant for God like a deer pants for water,” he writes.

We get too anxious to snap up this one verse and let it manipulate our selfish desires instead of putting it back into the sermon where it belongs and understanding that God must be first. Seek first God. Seek first His will. That means don’t even worry about what His will is for your life. Just find His will and then go get on board with it. You’ll find your place in the world, just by going and doing His will, not yours. Did you ever think about doing things on those terms? Jesus did.

Jesus went about not asking what God’s will was for Him, but asking what is the Father’s will and doing it. Period. Maybe it’s time we start asking that question. What is the Father’s will? Stop the question right there. Don’t add any other identifiers to it. Don’t ask what is His will for my church or my life or my organization or my family or my anything. See, when we put “my” in there, we begin to let self get into the equation and open the door for something other than God’s will.

Just ask, “God what is your will?” Then go jump on board. Do whatever you can do to further His will. Now what does Jesus’ command mean. Let’s think about it a little deeper.

Just ask for God’s will and it will be given to you, He’ll show it to you. Seek the Father’s will and you will find it. You won’t have to look hard, but you’ll need to look because Satan and the world’s clamor will try to drown it out. But look for it and you’ll find His will in His word. Continue to knock and the Father will open doors of opportunity for you to walk through so you can be a part of furthering His will on earth when you ask Him earnestly and sincerely.

All who ask Him what His will for humankind really is will know what His will is. He doesn’t hide from you. He wants you to know Him, just ask and He’ll tell you. And everyone who wants to work for Him in furthering His purposes and His plans will find doors of opportunity opened for them. All you have to do is be obedient to His voice and walk through them. But understand they are His plans, not yours. Those doors progress His purposes, not yours. The opportunities provide for His glory, not yours. The will you seek and the doors of opportunity all belong to the Father, not you.

Until you begin to operate with that frame of mind, don’t expect to find the Father acting as a cosmic Santa. He’s not. He cares about you, but He is God. We are not. It’s His will we should long for, seek out, grab hold of, spend as much energy and effort as we can muster following His will.

In that frame of mind, Christ shared His sermon. Totally sold out to the Father, Jesus made His statement. Committed wholely to His heavenly Father, Jesus tells us a truth we can stand on, “Just ask and it will be given to you; seek after it and you will find. Continue to knock and the door will be opened for you. All who ask receive. Those who seek, find what they seek. And he who knocks, will have the door opened.” Find the Father’s will, not yours.

The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.
In accordance with the requirements for FTC full disclosure, I may have affiliate relationships with some or all of the producers of the items mentioned in this post who may provide a small commission to me when purchased through this site.

Don’t wait to start the hunt (Matthew 6:31-34) January 27, 2016

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Today’s Podcast

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Today’s Bible reading plan:

Read it in a year – Psalms 9-11

see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)

Today’s Devotional

Matthew 6:31-34
Jesus: So do not consume yourselves with questions: What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear? Outsiders make themselves frantic over such questions; they don’t realize that your heavenly Father knows exactly what you need. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and then all these things will be given to you too. So do not worry about tomorrow. Let tomorrow worry about itself. Living faithfully is a large enough task for today.

What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?

What are you chasing? Is your career at the top of your list? Are you wanting a better car or a bigger house? Are you trying to prepare for retirement? Are you looking for a spouse? How about love from your kids? Are you chasing a relationship that seems to elude you? What are you spending your energy on? If someone looked at your calendar or better yet your checkbook, what would they think you are chasing?

Jesus told us not to consume ourselves with trivial questions that seem to consume the world today. All those questions that have to do with material things. He mentions questions of what will you eat or drink or wear, but it goes much further than that. These are basic necessities of life God knows every person must have for survival, yet He says don’t every worry about these. So why should we spend so much energy on things that are so much less meaningful than food, water, clothing, and shelter? Why should we listen to the world and chase the baubles society proclaims important when all of them are fleeting?

Jesus tells us to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all the other things will come into place. Living faithfully is a large enough task. Just do that and you’ll do well. It takes a moment to begin the chase for God’s kingdom. A decision to live for Him. Yet it also takes a lifetime to chase after God’s kingdom. He changes us continually. He never leaves us in the state we are in. He always makes us better, more like Him as we delve into His word and learn more of Him with each conversation we have with Him.

So the question for us is, “What does it mean to seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness?”

God doesn’t play hide-n-seek with us. He wants to be found. He wants a relationship with us. I think that’s the first thing we need to remember about God. But He also expects us to put some effort into our relationship with Him. He doesn’t want our relationship to be one-sided and until we accept His forgiving grace and let Him become Lord of our lives (which means continual obedience to His will), our relationship is one-sided. He puts out all the effort.

We all have a God-sized hole in us that needs filling. We try to fill it with all those things Jesus doesn’t talk about but implies in His sermon. Money. Houses. Careers. Things. Sometimes even good things like family and friends. But when they take the place of God. When they become more important than seeking after God and knowing Him, we’ve lost the battle. We don’t have to lose the war if we will come back to Him and let Him take the throne of our life, but we’ve lost those battles.

God wants first place. In fact, God wants more than first place. He wants to be the only place with nothing else coming in at even distant second. When we do that with Him, He says He will take care of all those other things. They come along with the journey if we seek God first.

How do we find Him? A good place to start is in the scriptures. It’s His word to us. It’s the written record of how He wants us to live and act and think. Pick your favorite translation. As long as the translation is true to the original manuscripts, it really doesn’t matter much which translation you choose. That’s one of the beauties about what God has done for us. As I’ve read and explored and used various translations over the last forty years of my diligent search for God (before that I wasn’t diligently searching for Him, I was just stumbling along with what others would tell me), I’ve found that every one of those translations talk the same way about what’s important to get me to heaven. Every one of them have the same formula for pleasing God. Every single one tell me that Jesus is the Son of God, born of a virgin, died on a cross for my sins and the sins of the world, rose from the tomb on the third day, sits at the right hand of the Father interceding on my behalf for all those who believe in Him for salvation. Every one of those translations tell me that Jesus will return again and all humankind will face a final judgment based first on whether Jesus is Lord of our life. Every one of them tells me that salvation comes through faith in Jesus alone. But also that faith with the subsequent demonstration of that faith by doing good works for others is not really faith, but just words.

So start with His word. Read it. Meditate on it. Let it soak into your brain. You’ll find God there if you desire to find Him. Then confess that He is God and you are not. Confess that you need His forgiveness for the wrongs you have committed against Him as laid out in His instruction book to us. Then let Him become the Director of your life. You’ll find Him. He will impart His righteousness on you. He will begin to transform you by the renewing of your mind. He will make you over again until those around you before you gave yourself to Him will barely recognize you because of your changed behavior, attitudes, demeanor, love for God and others.

Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. It’s a challenge that will take you the rest of your life to complete no matter how old or how young you are today. But begin today if you haven’t started on that treasure hunt. It is so worth the effort, you won’t understand why you waited so long to start!

The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.
In accordance with the requirements for FTC full disclosure, I may have affiliate relationships with some or all of the producers of the items mentioned in this post who may provide a small commission to me when purchased through this site.