Seek and Find

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE

SEEK AND FIND

Luke 12:27-31

27 "Consider how the lilies grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 28 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith! 29 And do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink; do not worry about it. 30 For the pagan world runs after all such things, and your Father knows that you need them. 31 But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.

NIV

Jesus just keeps on driving the same point home, this time using flowers and grass. He continues to keep up the theme that we should not worry about our lives. But this time he makes it a special point to show how the unbelievers, the pagans, the people who have not accepted him as their Lord and Savior live. These may be very nice people, even good people, but they are pagans because they do not know or love him and have eternal life. These people run after all such things. Those who do not know God run, which the Greek word means to search for intensively, to demand, to crave after the things of life, food and drink, clothes, meaning material things. We are not to set our heart on those things as God knows we need them and he will provide all of them for us but there is a catch. We have to seek his kingdom. This word seek means to look for until we find it, to seek after, seek for, aim at, or strive after. This implies we should set our hearts on the kingdom of God. That is our goal, which is the place we are striving to get to. Of course we ourselves cannot actually strive for it in the sense that we can do something, good deeds or actions in order to obtain or enter it. Our only seeking should be after Jesus, and then once we found him, accept him as our Lord and Savior, then we will have found this Kingdom of God. Jesus was telling them and us that we need to be searching intensively for him. He is the key to the kingdom. No one can enter except through him. If our heart is set on Jesus, following him and not the ways of the world, then God will make sure we have all that we need to survive in this world. Some would preach that because we are children of the King of kings, we should be living in absolute abundance, and so they run after the abundance of worldly things, missing the whole point. Jesus wants us to not only seek after him, but make him our number one priority as he is the only way we will ever see the kingdom of God. We need to make Jesus our lifestyle, the center of our existence. God will not allow us to neither starve nor go naked. He will provide and what he provides will be greater than even the splendor of Solomon, because it comes from the hand of God, rather than the hand of man. So it seems we can have both, eternal life as well as the things of the world we need to sustain our lives and those things are all good things because God gives them to us. God has not hidden it so that it is a game of hide and seek, but rather it is seek and find.