I seem to be always busily looking for something. I’m looking for a bargain and the perfect birthday gift. I’m looking for the name of a good dentist. I’m looking for a new car with the highest safety rating and fuel efficiency that I can get. Looking for things like this used to be a lot harder than it is today. Access to the internet with so much information immediately available means things I look for are much easier to find.
I look for things because my husband can’t find anything and I look for countless things my kids lose. I am fairly organized so I can usually find misplaced things if I’m looking around my house. For those more challenging searches I can recruit help to look for things. When my kids were little the tv remote would occasionally disappear and my husband would have the entire family involved in a whole house search and no one rested until that which was lost had been found! I can certainly relate to the poor dear woman who searched her whole house to find a lost coin. It was precious to her! Luke 15:8-9 (NASB) “Or what woman, if she has ten silver coins and loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? “When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin which I had lost!’
I will look for something until I am convinced it is truly irretrievably lost, not just misplaced. When I have nowhere else to look and no one else can help me search I start looking for some way to make sure that doesn’t happen again. I look for the reason and how it became lost. If I find a hole in my clothes pocket that caused me to lose a coin I will repair the pocket, stop using the pocket or throw away the clothes. I won’t just continue to wear the clothes and continue to put things in a torn pocket and continue to lose things important or valuable to me.
Our Christian walk is like that. If you have a sin in your life that you want to conquer but seem to keep repeating, or a problem in your life that keeps reoccurring and is interfering with your obedience to God, are you looking for the reason? You have access to God’s Holy Word and I must say it makes solutions much easier to find with so much information, advice and counsel immediately available. 2 Timothy 3:15-17 (NASB) and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.
Is there something in your life that you need to patch or avoid or is there something you need to throw away and rid yourself of? Is there a change you need to make in yourself? Is there bad company you need to avoid? Look around yourself for outside influences that cause you to stumble, look inside yourself for weaknesses that you may need to face and deal with. Find the source of temptation, find the weakness within yourself that threatens your Christian walk. These things can be holes in your life, holes in your heart, holes that need to be patched or something that needs to be thrown away before you lose the blessings and the promise of heaven from God to his faithful children. Please know that you don’t have to search alone and if you find something you can’t face alone, you have a loving, listening God and you have a Christian family to help you.
If you know of someone caught in a repetitive cycle of sin or problems I pray you will make yourself available as a non-judgmental Christian friend and confidante. Offer your love and sympathy but don’t stop there! Offer to help them prayerfully look for the answer, look for the stumbling block in their life. Help them look for the reason they continue to stumble. Help them look for the peace they long for. Telling someone they have a problem and telling someone you have the answers is probably not well received. But help them read and study and discover God’s answers for their life.
My Lord expects me to look for His lost children. He wants me to knock on that door. He wants me to make that phone call or send that encouraging card or make a meal and take it to the home of a lonely, sick, or suffering child of His. If I sit at home with that remote I was so happy to find and don’t help Him look for his lost children, then I must admit to myself, that I am His lost child. While I probably would not react well if you told me that to my face, I would be happy to be invited to share personal time together talking and sharing while we baked and cooked a meal we could deliver together for someone who has need. Jesus led the people with a gentle hand and taught by example and sharing experiences. He touched heart, not nerves. He drew people to Him because they felt His love, not His judgement. What are you looking for? Let us all be looking for loving and gentle ways to bring the lost to Christ. Luke 15:6-7 (NASB) “And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!’ “I tell you that in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.
By Darlene Beeler | Freelance Writer
Darlene Beeler is a Christian woman with a passion for topical Bible research and compiling scripture-based lessons for Women’s Bible Classes and Workshops
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