One of the great promises given to us by the Lord in his word is in Jeremiah 29:13. “And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.” Something like this happened in my own life about twenty years ago, when I and some others were miraculously delivered from a very legalistic and pharisaical cult that taught all kinds of false doctrines. In our elitism and ignorance we persecuted real Christians continually in our hearts and with our lips. Yet God still shed His sovereign mercy on us, mainly no doubt as an answer to many prayers from real Christians for us, but also somehow I believe because He knew that some of us were becoming more and more troubled by certain things, and that we were still prayerfully seeking a real relationship with Him “in spirit and in truth” as honestly as we could in the midst of it all.
So one of the really encouraging things about this promise in Jeremiah, (which Jesus reaffirmed so beautifully in Matthew 7 and Luke 11 when He said “ask…seek…knock…”), is that even though people may search initially in all the wrong places and bang on all kinds of wrong doors, God still promises the sincere seeker that they will ultimately find Him, the true God, through being inexorably drawn to Jesus who is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”
Great examples from scripture include Saul of Tarsus, a devout Jew who thought he was on the right path in his great persecutions of Christians and the Truth. But God knew his heart and that he had a zealous and sincere desire to obey and please Him. Finally in His perfect time, Jesus revealed Himself to Saul (Acts 9), and then in His amazing mercy and grace transformed him into the great apostle Paul.
Cornelius on the other hand was a Roman Centurion who was a good and prayerful man and a generous giver, but who also did not yet know Christ. Again, God knew his motives and honest seeking heart, so when the time was right He sent Peter to his house to introduce him to the truth of Jesus Christ, and Cornelius then by faith entered into salvation through a living relationship with Him via the Holy Spirit. (Acts 10)
It appears that really anyone can actually know as much of God as they genuinely want to, because God looks at the disposition of the heart, even in the midst of pounding on the wrong doors. And at some point there are really no excuses because the sincere seeker is guaranteed to discover that God has also been simultaneously seeking and drawing them, making that divine rendezvous with Christ a certainty sooner or later!
Blessings, Bruce
picture courtesy of www.flickr.com by Todd
