Week 1: Day 7: Seek Him

As I was spending some quiet time with God, I leafed through an adult colouring book about the promises of God. I finally landed on a page with Jeremiah 29:13 on it – “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” Cool. That’s exactly the reminder I need right now so I set about colouring it. Later, I turned to a very old Beth Moore devotional study that I had barely started years ago. The very page where I had left off was looking at Hebrews 11:6 “Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” Hmm. Ok God. Seek him earnestly. Message received. But what does that mean?

Now I am far from a Biblical scholar but Beth goes into an amazing dissection of the definition and verb tense of the Greek word for “seek” in Hebrews 11:6. The Greek word can be defined as “to seek out for one’s self, beg, crave, to demand back, require”. It gets better. The Greek word for “seek” in this verse is written in the present-active-participle verb tense. A Greek instructor explained to Beth that basically you can add the word “continually” before the verb. So, could we rephrase the end of Hebrews 11:6 to say

 …anyone who comes to [God] must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly, continually, actively crave Him?

It kind of brings a whole new intensity to a word that I would tend to associate with the game “Hide and Seek”…casually look around for hidden people, maybe you’ll find them, maybe not. It’s just a game.

This Christmas, amidst all the emotions that may envelope us regarding COVID…the opinions, the facts, the news, the regulations, the protests, the “cans” and the “can’ts” may we all choose to seek/beg/crave THE ONLY ONE who has all the facts, all the answers and all the power over all things. 

I can think of no greater Christmas gift to give to the King of all kings…and even to ourselves and on top of that, God promises to reward us in our earnest seeking!