Comfort in Seeking God

We live in a world where the righteous, that is the morally right and virtuous, are in the minority. For those who seek the Lord and His Righteousness in their lives, the story in Genesis 18 is certainly a relief in this immoral world. When speaking to the Lord about the sin in Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham asks a series of questions as to the sparing of the city according to how many righteous versus unrighteous live there.

When Abraham gets to the least amount of righteous the Lord would spare the city for, the Lord still replies in verses 32 and 33, “Then he said, “Let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak but once more: Suppose ten should be found there? And He said, “I will not destroy it for the sake of ten.”  So the Lord went His way as soon as He had finished speaking with Abraham; and Abraham returned to his place.”

In the world we live in today, we take some comfort that the Lord won’t destroy it due to the small percentage of righteous folks. Of course in our time, man is coming closer and closer to being able to destroy his neighbor, which could set off a chain reaction with man destroying the world, this wonderful gift from God.

Since we have little or no control over what the rest of the world will do with their lives, we are called in Matthew 6:33-34, “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” We certainly hope that others will follow this advice as well.

Assuming we are not as morally right and virtuous as we should be, we must have a plan. The Lord may not destroy a city with as few as ten righteous, however, we must seek Him and His Righteousness daily to understand His path for us in this life.

Now we begin to think about bad things happening to good people and how that fits into the greater picture of living and the promise of eternal life. While God said He would not destroy Sodom and Gomorrah if there were only ten righteous people there, He wasn’t saying that people wouldn’t have bad things happen to them whether righteous or unrighteous.

We must seek God in our lives so we will know Him better and He can communicate with us in His Will for the world and for our part in that. We do not live our lives on our own until we die and then hook up with God. We should be seeking communication with God daily if not minute by minute. When we do this, our relationship with God carries us through all things, even the bad things. When our skin and bones drop off at what we call death, our spirit continues in the relationship that we have been seeking with our Creator God on into eternity. We can’t be certain how that will work out if we never get to know Him in our natural lives.

In Jeremiah 29:13 God reveals to us, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” Our relationship with our Creator is not meant to be a casual affair. We can’t afford to get into the “put off” mode. There may be many things in life that we can “put off”; however, seeking God in our lives continuously is not one of them. God leaves it up to us to make that decision. His love for us, His children, should be enough to draw us to Him.

In Psalm 121:1-2 the psalmist says, “I lift up my eyes to the mountains—From whence comes my help? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.”  Exodus 15:2 further exclaims: “The Lord is my strength and my song; He has become my salvation. He is my God, and I will praise him, the God of my father, and I will exalt him.”

In Proverbs 28:9 we are a bit shaken by God’s strong words: “If one turns away his ear from hearing My teachings, even his prayer is not heard.” Let’s hope we can all seek the Lord our God in our lives and profit from it.