Today’s text comes from 1 Chronicles 22:19. “Now set your heart
and your soul to seek Yahweh your Elohim.”
This verse is one of the main themes of the Bible. All throughout the Old Testament and even in
the New, Yeshua tells us to seek Him (Matt. 7:7).
“Set your heart…”
Your heart is the seat of who
you are. Your hopes, your dreams, your
love. "As water reflects a face,
so the heart reflects the man." (Proverbs 27:19). The heart, therefore, speaks of one’s life. Their values, their beliefs, their actions,
their words. The heart is more than
love, it is who you are. It’s Strong’s
number 3824, the same word used in one of my favorite passages of all time,
Psalm 73:26: “Though my flesh and my heart may fail, God is the strength of
my heart, and my portion forever.”
With the context of our
“heart” as our “life”, we see our “heart may fail”, could perhaps mean that we
may fail in our values, we may fail in our language, we may even die, but God
is the strength of our life. He is the
hope of our eternal life. Setting
your heart, therefore, means turning the rudder of your life toward God. Changing habits, changing routines. Just as exercise and eating right are
lifestyle changes, so, too, is seeking God with all of your heart.
“…and your soul…”
Here, we have another
entreaty, to seek God with your soul.
Strong’s number 5315, this is the same word in Song of Solomon 3:2: “I will seek him whom my soul loves.”
This word in Hebrew is “nephesh”, and means your “self, life, creature,
person, appetite, mind, living being, desire, emotion, passion.” More than just our heart, we seek Him with
our soul, our very spiritual desire to be with the One Who created us. This is more than a fleshly desire, this is
an spiritual one. It is a desire that
God Himself placed upon our souls from the foundation of the world. Everyone desires happiness. Wholeness.
Approval. Love. Acceptance.
Joy. All too often, those of the
world fill this spiritual void with “stuff” and with earthly relationships that
cannot possibly satisfy.
With this in mind, “and your
soul” means to seek Him with that deep spiritual desire only He can fill. Don’t try to fill it with booze, sex, money, or the things of this world, lest you set yourself up for disaster. Fill your soul with God alone.
“…to seek Yahweh your
Elohim.”
I find it interesting that
“seek” is a present-tense verb. It never
ends. We are forever seeking our
God. There will never come a point, no
matter how deeply rooted your faith, when you have “found” God and had enough
of Him. God is bottomless. Infinite.
He is a Treasure that has no end.
Yeshua likened the Kingdom of Heaven as a treasure in a field (Matthew13:44). A man found it, covered it back
up, and sold all he had to obtain that field.
Within that one parable, we see this entire verse.
The man was digging. He was searching, seeking. He must have heard of the treasure and was
trying to find it. He DID find it. He went and gave his entire heart and soul to
purchase that field. All his
possessions, all his money, perhaps even his relationships, for that
field. In the buying, he is still therefore
seeking this treasure for his own.
But as anyone who’s purchased
that field will tell you, the Treasure doesn’t stop where the man found it in
the dirt. Seek a little more, and there
is gold dust in the soil. Dig deeper,
and there are jewels in the clay. Go
farther down than you ever dared dream, and you find your field is on an
endless gold mine!
Why does God wish for us to
seek Him? Because it keeps the romance
alive. Remember wooing your spouse? How exciting it was to learn their favorite
color or movie or anything about them?
You were elated to talk to them, to spend time with them. You wanted to know them, what they loved, who
inspired them, if they felt the same way about you… You were seeking their heart, seeking who
they are!
With God, our seeking never
comes to a close. He goes on and
on. The more we seek, the more we
find. The more we find, the more we want
to find. The more we want to find, the
more this seeking becomes an obsession.
It is within the seeking, dear reader, that the life-change
happens. I cannot fathom anyone, who has
found a nugget of gold, would not wish to go back into the mine to get the
rest!
But seeking our God isn’t
merely study. Oh no. We seek Him in prayer as well. How many times has He been elusive to your
petitions? How many times have you come
into His manifest presence? He wants us
to LONG for Him. To PANT after Him. He wants us to so LOVE Him, that the entire
focus of our very being is on HIM.
Not only is seeking God a
main theme in the Bible, it is also one of God’s most precious promises. “Seek” is Strong’s number 1875, which is
found in Deuteronomy 4:29: “You will seek Yahweh your Elohim and you will
find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your
soul.”
God promises that He WILL be found. But we must seek
with ALL of our hearts, ALL of our soul.
This means with our entire life, our entire love, our entire being, and
our entire passion. There is no room for
wiggle. God wants all – or nothing.
He asks you now, tonight,
what is keeping you from Him? Get rid of
it. What is more important? Him?
Or that thing? To what are you
giving your heart and soul? If you’re
not seeking God, what you are seeking is futile.
Our Lord is elusive, like a
young stag upon the mountains of spices.
He delights to reveal Himself to those who take the time to actively
seek Him. It is in the SEEKING,
believer, that our passion and delight in Him grows. The more He reveals, the more we want to know
as He pulls back the veil to His Holy of holies. He whispers His love for us throughout the
pages of Scripture. He beckons us to
come forth, through the temple veil. He
grins at us to follow in His magnificent Footsteps and find a Love as strong as
death, with flashes of consuming fire.
What could possibly hold us back from falling desperately in love with
Yahweh, Lord of Hosts?
I suppose the true question,
Christian, is thus: Are you
willing to cross that veil into His glorious, unshakeable Love and leave this
wretched world behind?
“Now set your heart and
your soul to seek Yahweh your Elohim.”
Yeshua beckons you… RUN to Him.
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