Finders are Seekers

Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart. (Jeremiah 29: 12, 13)

I want us to look at one reality with God. And it is simply this; you can never look for God and fail to find Him, wherever it is you are looking.

Simply speaking, once a heart determines to seek God genuinely, there is simply no possibility of it finding anything or anyone else, or getting lost in the process.

What am I saying? I know someone is wondering.

God is the creator and owner of everything. It simply means that everything is under His management, so to speak. And that to the minutest detail.

In Psalm 139, we find out that there is nowhere we can hide from His presence or person. Death and hades is not hidden from Him.

Another fact I want us to note is that He knows the state of each heart and mind; meaning that our smallest instinct is an open book to Him.

How then can someone look for God and find some other god? Unless God is not the being we read of in His book, the Bible. He can’t be all those Omnis we have always been taught if finding Him is akin to a maze.

I dreamt as I started writing this.

A friend came to me completely amazed about the way God can change men. He was explaining how this politician has become transformed who was earlier known for all the bad things.

As he was telling me, I remembered hearing about this friend’s transformation, as amazing as what he was talking about the politician. I even wanted to ask him about it but then he asked me something.

He had a knotted piece of wood. He had been trying to chop it but the axe hit something hard. He wanted me to help him know what it was as I was the only one with tools.

I got the tool. By then, the timber appeared to have been taken from a pile where charcoal is made. It was therefore charred in many places.

I started probing.

Interesting enough, the first thing I removed was a piece of timber longer than that wood. And it was very clean and sawed very well.

Then I removed charcoal, a lot of it.

Then I removed a Kenya shilling. And then another.

Then I hit something hard as I was probing. On removing it I found a great pile of coins; ten Kenya shillings, one shilling, and other coins from many countries.

I got to think.

This many times is the state of a person’s heart. That is the way God sees a person’s heart. And He values that heart, even seeks to redeem it to Himself. And God can sort between the treasure and trash each heart contains. He can probe and remove the trash as well as perfect the treasure.

God knows the state of each heart. He also is intricately aware of the hearts of those seeking Him wherever they may be. And He will direct them to Himself whichever labyrinth the devil may have wrapped them in to shield them from God.

I have read quite some and know that God has rescued people from the strangest of places.

I remember this child who discovered God in an atheism class. Their search for God started with a class explaining that there is no God.

How many terrorists come to Christ on the way to their final assault, all wired up to die as they kill the infidel.

Haven’t you known of how many find Christ in Mecca as they pursue God according to Islamic revelation? Or who do so during Ramadhan?

But I know someone is asking where I find this argument in the Bible. Incidentally almost everywhere you may care to look.

Where was Abraham picked from? Was he not from an idolatrous background?

What sorted between Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau?

Who was saved when Jericho was destroyed? Was it not a harlot?

Compare Deuteronomy 23:3 with Ruth, the foremother (is there such a word?) of King David.

What about 23:1 and Jeremiah 39: 15 – 18?

Remember the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts?

The clear fact is that God will put aside His laws when He finds a person who genuinely seeks Him, wherever it is he may be coming from.

But it is not a casual or academic searching. A study of any of those characters I have mentioned will make this very clear.

For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him. (2Chronicles 16:9a)

This makes it clear that He does not restrict His search to places where His name is named.

Just as the devil deceives people that he is God, many who seek God following after that deception will be rescued from that deception because God can never allow anybody seeking Him to get lost. That is unless He is not the God who created everything. Yet He really is.

I respect anyone who is groping in the darkness for God because he will find Him. I respect the one in a cult who is genuinely seeking God. I respect someone in a secret society seeking God. Because he will find Him.

How many have found Christ reading the Quran whose main purpose is to shield us from Him? How many have found Christ in atheist publications whose only purpose is blocking people from God?

The reality is that God will be able to bring anything, even any fact to serve His purpose.

Another fact I think it is important to state is something that has become the single calling of some believers, corruption of Biblical text.

Again I know for a fact that it is the Holy Spirit who gives life to scripture and not the other way round. The text of the Bible is just a text, like any other text. It is the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that gives scripture life.

Like I always say, a believer who reads the Jehovah’s Witness Bible is better than the one who does not read the Bible, however accurately translated his may be.

You see, the Holy Spirit can only breathe life to the scripture hidden in our hearts. He will never bring to life scripture on a shelf or wall, however prominently it may be positioned. It is therefore more dependent on the state of the heart of the recipient than the accuracy of the translation.

Again I will ask; if God can use someone’s reading of the Quran to lead him to Christ, how much easier is it to use a Bible, corrupted as it may be, to lead another one to faith in Christ? If God can use a book whose purpose is to block faith in Christ to point people to Christ, how much easier will it be for Him to use a Bible with slight alterations to do so?

Of course I know the world has sought to corrupt the scriptures since ancient times. And I seek to get the most accurate translation to read so that I understand what it is that God is telling me.

We limit God with our logic. And it is important to remember that the most logical people even in Christ’s time lost His drift. And that has been the same through the millennia. The Gospel, in fact all God’s things, are simple and free. That is why over the centuries the people who have basked in God’s revelation have been the illiterate, the undesirable, the rejects even as the elite and learned became the enemies of the cross.

The problem is that many times a reversal occurs and those who receive the Gospel overtake those who reject it, then they become the new elite, especially if discipleship is not done properly.

Do we have a responsibility to those who respond to Christ outside our narrow confines of church and mission? What will we do when someone comes to us from the darkness of idolatry and witchcraft wanting to know about the Christ we believe? What will we do with someone coming with the wrong book or Bible seeking to know Christ? What will we do with someone who saw some light as he was thinking about God and wants to know what it is?

Do we have the Gospel for people who have never been exposed to the Bible or church?

But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear: (1Peter 3:15)

We have refused to take the Gospel to the nations yet God must have His harvest. He will therefore bring that harvest to us. Are we ready to make that harvest of seekers into His disciples?