Under the Heavens? – The Kingdom Curriculum XV (7)

Under the Heavens?

The great commandment

And He said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and the first commandment.” Matthew 22:37, 38

“And you, Solomon, my son, know the God of your father and serve Him with a whole heart and with a willing mind, for the LORD searches all hearts and understands every plan and thought. If you seek Him, He will be found by you, but if you forsake Him, He will cast you off forever.” 1 Chronicles 28:9

Ours Is a Seeker-Friendly God.

“If.” That’s the kicker, isn’t it. “If” we seek Him, He will be found by us. “If” we don’t, especially while He is near, we may miss Him more than we’ll ever know. God commands those who profess to love Him to seek Him. He has given us His Word, and He promises to meet us there. He is revealing Himself in creation and tells us that, if we’ll just pay closer attention, we can’t miss Him. He promises that if we seek Him with all our hearts, earnestly and early, He will be found by us!

Solomon certainly followed up on that promise. As we read in Ecclesiastes, he devoted himself to the calling of searching out everything in his experience “under the heavens,” that is, with a view to understanding his life and all the world as God sees and intends them. What he learned he translated into proverbs in order to train others to discover the wisdom of God in creation and to seek Him there. Solomon gloried in his role as leader of the assembly of Israel–the meaning of qohelet, which is the Hebrew title of Ecclesiastes. In prayer, in His Word, and in the creation, Solomon knew that God’s promise was certainly true, and that knowing Him through such diligent seeking “is the whole of a man” (Eccl. 12:13).

“If.” That little conditional particle can play a determinative role in your life. Right now a choice is before you. God promises to meet you and show Himself to you, to fill you with satisfaction and delight, to light your way and relieve your every burden. But He won’t impose; you’ll have to seek Him out. “If.”

Why are we so stubborn? We know that God commands us to seek Him, and yet we allow all kinds of silly distractions to get in our way. O, may the Lord put such love for Him in our hearts that not another day will go by without our earnestly, eagerly, early, and ecstatically seeking Him.

Learn to love God more by meditating in His Law daily. You can order your copy of The Law of God today and take up this discipline with joy. Go to www.MyParuchia.com, point your browser to “Publications,” then click on the drop-down option, “Waxed Tablet Publications.”

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In the Gates is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T.M. Moore.

T.M. Moore is editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001,2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Editor’s note: The use of a translation other than the Authorised Version in an article does not constitute an endorsement in whole or in part by The Christian Observer.