Everyone that seeketh, findeth.
Jesus said that, and of course he has
reference to finding him, finding God.
You shall seek for me and you shall
find me on the day when you shall
seek for me with your own.
Finding God, why that's the very object of
our salvation, to be reconciled to God.
Salvation consists in knowing God.
How many, many people miss it, how very,
very few people know God.
You can tell it when you travel through
the world and meet with works.
The great complaint is like it was by
the Prophet Jeremiah, the priests knew not the
Lord.
How differently they would act and live and
minister if they knew the Lord.
How different our conventions if those in charge
knew the Lord.
But why don't we know him?
Jesus says, everyone that seeketh, findeth.
Findeth what?
Why findeth God?
Are we seeking God?
Are we really seeking God?
Then we shall find him.
God says we shall find him.
The very principle of faith is to start
out with that knowledge why God is.
When you seek for something that you want
very badly, you're not going to give up
until you find that thing.
Now the Lord talks about the woman who
lost a piece of money.
Well she's got nine pieces, he keeps counting
them.
Only nine, there should be ten.
Well that one must be some place.
Some place in this house must be that
one piece of money.
She knows that.
Cannot possibly be anywhere else.
She looks every place, in the wastebaskets, under
the bed, in the furniture, every place she
looks.
And sometimes she thinks she's got it.
She sees something glittering, but when she picks
it up she finds out it's only a
piece of silver paper.
She throws it away.
That isn't what she's looking for at all.
She is not satisfied until she has found
the thing that she's been seeking.
So it is with everyone that seeketh.
Oh how blessed are the people who are
not satisfied with anything.
Many, many things will come your way that
will look like it.
That's where most Christians get stuck.
They're satisfied with a little tinsel, a little
blessing, a little something.
And many times God seems to hide himself
purposely from people who seek him, to find
out whether they can be satisfied with something
short of himself.
But everyone that seeketh, findeth.
How wonderful God himself makes that statement, that
everyone, man or woman or boy or girl,
that seeketh, he says, he shall find me
in the day when you shall seek for
me with your whole heart.
It seems to me that there cannot be
any excuse for anything else for me to
do.
Why, that's my life job, to find God.
And if I really want to find him,
we read in the Old Testament time and
again how God complains about people, especially the
kings of Judah and Israel, because they did
not prepare their hearts to seek the Lord.
Then again he praises some who set their
face unto the Lord his God to seek
by prayer and fasting in sackcloth and ashes.
And he didn't give up until he found.
Now you know, nobody knows what it is
to find God until you find him.
You don't know.
But when you seek for him with your
whole heart, you'll find the way.
God will draw you.
You'll find the way.
Oh, in seeking God, the heart is emptied
of everything else.
Why, that isn't God.
How many Pentecostal people have gone astray in
seeking after God because they had a feeling.
Now they rest in their feelings.
Why, that isn't God.
I'm not going to get stuck there.
That isn't going to fool me, nor blessings,
nor anything of that nature.
That doesn't satisfy me.
Only God can satisfy my heart.
Only God himself, only Jesus himself.
How rare are the souls in comparison who
are only satisfied with God, who seek him
with their whole heart.
Now if we look back over our lives,
how much time have we spent seeking after
the Lord?
How much, maybe you found him, but tell
me, how much sooner you could have found
him?
How much sooner?
Oh, how stupid, how shallow we have been,
how easily satisfied.
But Jesus says, if you seek with your
whole heart, you'll find everyone that seeketh findeth.
Findeth God.
God is in secret.
God is waiting in secret to reward you
openly.
My God, what are you waiting for?
When I go to prayer, my chief prayer
ought to be to find God.
The chief object of my praying ought not
to be to get healing or to get
health, but to find God.
That's the wonder of the prayer life.
I meet God.
When I draw night to God, he draws
night to me, and time is no object
anymore.
God has been seeking for me for eternity,
and if I spend a little time seeking
after him, is that doing a great deal?
Oh, if people once get the thought, and
that the life, that eternal life doesn't consist
of joining the church, or being baptized, or
having a blessing, or having the baptism according
to Acts 2.4, but in knowing God,
the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom
he has sent, they're not going to be
stuck, and they're not going to be satisfied,
and they're not going to be fooled either
by things, and signs, and wonders, and gifts,
and graces, and blessings, and feelings, but they're
going to press through to know the Lord.
Oh God, that isn't you.
That's not you.
Oh my Lord, this is not going to
fool me.
I've had confessions from people who backslid when
they were blessed very greatly.
Oh, how many have done that.
You often see it in ministries.
They'll seek the Lord until they have a
ministry of their own.
Be surprised how selfish we are, how many
ministers seek to have a ministry.
When they have that, then they let others
pray, and let others seek the Lord.
Blessed is the minister who realizes his need
of God more greatly as God begins to
use him, who realizes that without him he
can do nothing.
A minister who, like the Apostle Paul, says,
I count everything but refuse for the excellency
of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord,
for whom I have suffered the loss of
all things.
My father, Paul, was a busy minister, an
accomplished apostle, full of the power of God,
full of fruitfulness, and at that period, he
says, I count every one thing I do,
forgetting the things that are behind and pressing
toward the mark.
But look what God did with Paul.
He displaced him so fully, that when you
think of Paul, you don't think of Paul,
you think of Jesus.
Jesus Christ came forth in the life of
Paul, in all his majesty and power, and
is still coming forth.
Paul still lives in the church.
He is still a pillar in the house
of God.
We don't see him, but he is.
Of course, his body is in heaven.
He's with the Lord.
But his ministry is still with us, because
he found God.
And here you're listening to me saying some
things that are vital.
If you take them to heart, if God
can inscribe them upon your heart, it will
make a difference throughout the ages of eternity.
That's important.
Paul is different from all the other apostles.
Throughout eternity, he says, henceforth there is laid
up for me a crown of righteousness, which
the Lord, the righteous, judge.
He's judging righteously.
What does it mean to Jesus to find
a heart in this meeting, this morning, who
seeks him with his whole heart?
I have seen some, during the years of
my short life, that separated themselves from all
others, to seek the Lord with their whole
heart.
They were so different.
They were like speckled birds, like lone sparrows
upon a housetop, even in deep life conventions.
Be surprised how many in deep life conventions
let their belly be their gut, and the
coffee gets hot, and dinner must be ready.
That dominates their thinking and their whole attitude.
But I've seen a few people that sought
God with their whole heart, and I've been
able to see how God came to them.
What a change!
How different they are today from everybody else
that I know.
They've sought God, and God united them to
himself.
They're different.
Their thinking is different.
Their discernment is different.
Nobody understands them.
They have the discernment of God.
They do things by the will of God,
and by the power of God.
God has come into their lives, and while
the natural man can't conceive of it, the
day will come when they'll shine like the
sun in the of their father.
What a privilege I have upon this earth
to count everything but refuse, to brush everything
aside, to let my heart be attached to
nothing.
Just one thing I do, just one thing
will satisfy my heart, and that is Jesus.
Heaven and earth may fade and flee.
Nothing interests me.
Nothing can satisfy my soul.
Do you realize that that's what our hearts
are made for?
They're made for God.
They're made for Christ.
We are his workmanship.
God wants this heart of mine as a
shrine, as a temple to dwell in.
God wants this body of mine to be
a vessel sanctified and made for the Master's
use.
Why can't you do it?
Oh beloved, we don't seek him with our
whole heart.
If we did, the 24 hours of our
day would be occupied looking to him, paying
attention to him, seeking for him, seeking for
him, and you don't have to go to
Rome or to Jerusalem to find him.
You don't, in fact, you don't find him
there.
Rome is the great heart.
Jerusalem is Sodom and you can't find God
in any of those places.
You've got to find him in your own
heart.
That's where he is waiting to have your
attention.
When you guard your heart with all diligence,
when you give your heart to Jesus, he
will take his great power and he will
reign supreme.
Oh the change that comes when you find
God, the wonderful change.
You become changed.
You become transformed.
Your natural tendencies are swallowed up by his
love and his power and his righteousness and
his holiness and where the flesh reigned and
was so strong, Jesus reigns.
Jesus Christ reigns.
Oh we don't know how near God is
this morning.
So near that your miss him.
You, I tell you, you will miss him
unless you seek him where he is.
A constant attention, constantly abiding, thinking of him
all the time.
No, you can't find him if you go
out of your own heart.
You've got to enter into your own heart,
into your own soul.
That's the reason we sat here silently this
morning.
Jesus was speaking to us.
He was drawing us.
He's pulling us in, bringing us in.
Oh Father, so few people know anything at
all about it.
It's because they don't seek the Lord.
They're satisfied.
Oh they're satisfied.
Look into the Christian magazines today.
I looked at Christian Life magazine.
What a conglomeration of voices.
What a tin can alley.
Excuse me, I say reverently.
Glory to God.