When it comes to seeking the Lord, we don’t have a hard time seeking His kingdom but what we have a hard time with and ultimately forget, is that when we seek His kingdom, we are to also seek His righteousness. The scripture reminds us, “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” out of Matthew 6:33.
People will constantly call out to the Lord, without understanding how deep calling on the one true King, the Holy God, Elohim is. When we call out to Him, we must understand that God cannot dwell with sin. When we don’t recognize His holiness, then we don’t necessarily understand the need to also understand His righteousness. When we seek His kingdom, we are seeking His righteousness, which in turn is seeking the face of a Holy God who cannot dwell with sin.
When we seek His righteousness, we see the sinfulness of ourselves because of how Holy God is indeed. So often we run once it comes to seeing the truth of the Lord’s righteousness because then it has us looking at things from a completely different angle and we start to see that we aren’t ‘good people’ like we’ve tried for so long to tell ourselves. We see we are rotten and filthy, and we see our NEED for Jesus when we don’t run from the first sting.
When you cleanse a wound, do you jump to avoid the sting and cause filth to stay, which later will cause infection? Or do you let it sting until the stinging is done so the full cleansing takes place?
The process of salvation and sanctification happens when we seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness. And just as salt stings, purifies, and heals, sometimes that’s exactly what we go through when it comes to seeking His righteousness. May we allow a Holy God to edify, renew, and purify us to lead to ultimate healing when we seek first His kingdom and His righteousness.
One question I asked earlier was, do we simply know God exists, or do we KNOW God? Have we sought out His Word to get to know Him like we do when we meet new people or get new friends or even have a new child? Or do we allow distractions to take over? Are we more concerned with other things, or just don’t want to take the time, feeling like there is no time?
Do we know the God in whom we serve? Do we know the God we are calling out to? Do we realize the depth and the realness of the Holy God we are calling on? Do we acknowledge our sinful self, repenting, and seeking His righteousness and kingdom in surrender? Do we realize how rotten we are and how pure and Holy our God is?
All the prophets acknowledged those very important factors when it came to facing the one true God. We could learn a lot from what the Lord has left for us with His Word.
Reflect upon:
Matthew 5:13-20
Matthew 6:33
(With some inspiration from the Holy Spirit and then a dear sister in Christ when she was recently discussing Matthew 6:33.)
Comments