Seeking God Like Silver
By Dennis Pollock
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The idea of "seeking God" saturates the entire Bible. The word seek means to look for, to go on a quest of discovery, to pursue. It might seem a little strange that we should need to go looking for God, to go on some kind of major quest to try and discover Him. We might suppose He would surely make Himself known to one and all, in such a way that nobody would ever miss Him. But strangely God does not do this. Isaiah writes: "Truly You are God, who hide Yourself, O God of Israel, the Savior!" What a strange thought – a God who hides Himself, and then commands people to come looking for Him.
God not only hides Himself; He hides His ways and His wisdom as well. There is a veil around God and everything about Him. We can see through that veil and discover amazing things and receive fantastic blessings if we pursue Him, but if we are too casual, too unconcerned, too busy seeking our own little kingdom, we'll never see a thing. There is a way to seek God; there are divinely mandated protocols to this process. We find the heart of this in the Book of Proverbs, where the Holy Spirit tells us:
Yes, if you cry out for discernment,
And lift up your voice for understanding,
If you seek her as silver,
And search for her as for hidden treasures;
Then you will understand the fear of the LORD,
And find the knowledge of God. (Proverbs 2:3-5)
The Divine Pattern
Here is the divine pattern for seeking and finding God, His ways, and His wisdom. It starts with discernment, the ability to separate the good from the evil, the holy ways of God from the selfish and carnal ways of the world. One definition defines discernment as "acuteness of judgment and understanding." Notice that we are not told that this comes because of reading philosophy books or getting an advanced degree. We are told to "cry out" for discernment, to ask God to give us the ability to distinguish between the beautiful and the vile.
We are told that we must "lift up" our voices for understanding. Once again, we are to ask God for this. This is not referring to understanding complex scientific truths or brilliant philosophical insights. The subject at hand here is God. We are being told how to know God, His ways, and His wisdom, and to learn His expectations for human beings. Ultimately, we want to begin to see life the way God sees life, to approve of the things that He approves, and to be repulsed by those things and activities that He considers abominations.
We are not only told that we must cry out for understanding and discernment; we are told how we must seek. The Scripture says: "If you seek her as silver, and search for her as for hidden treasures; then you will understand…" We are to seek understanding as a man would seek for treasure.
Backyard Treasure
Suppose you became convinced that a wealthy friend of yours had buried a chest of gold bars in his backyard. He then tells you that if you can find and dig up this chest, you can keep it and that it is worth many millions of dollars. How would you search for this chest? Would you dig casually? Maybe once a month you would go out into the yard with your shovel and dig randomly for about fifteen minutes. Or would you dig every day, and even in the evenings, methodically uncovering every square foot of earth in that yard? Of course, the answer is you and I and nearly everyone else would dig furiously and constantly until we uncovered the chest of gold. Our televisions would get a lot less of our time, we would spend much less time talking casually to friends on the phone, and randomly surfing the Internet would be a thing of the past, until the treasure was found. Nearly every aspect of our lives would be put on hold, in the frantic quest to find the gold and become a millionaire.
God tells us that this is how we must seek Him for His wisdom and understanding, and for the knowledge of Him – not casually, not with indifference, not when it's convenient, not if we happen to be in a spiritual mood, and not occasionally. We are to seek God the way a man would seek for hidden treasure. Through Jeremiah God says the same thing: "And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart." (Jeremiah 29:13). And in Hebrews, we are told: "He who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him." (Hebrews 11:6). Not those who casually seek Him, or barely seek Him, or sometimes seek Him, but those who diligently seek Him.
What God offers to those who seek Him diligently is worth far more than a chest full of gold bars. He offers Himself! First, He offers forgiveness and adoption into His family as sons and daughters. The ultimate understanding to which any person can attain is the knowledge of how to become a child of God. Over fifty years ago, as an agnostic and not at all sure that God existed, I decided to read through the New Testament. When I started in the first chapter of Matthew, I was an unbeliever, but by the time I finished the twenty-second chapter of Revelation, at the end of the New Testament, I was a believer and had given my life to Jesus. At the time I was a college student, not especially mature and rough around the edges. But within the space of a couple of months, I gained the greatest wisdom any man or woman can ever achieve – I discovered God through His Son Jesus Christ. Along with every other person who finds and embraces Jesus Christ as Savior, I had, in a very short time, become wiser than the greatest unbelieving philosophers, inventors, historians, mathematicians, and scientists in the history of our world. I found the pearl of great price, by God's grace. I uncovered the treasure above all treasures and became fabulously wealthy in the ultimate sense. And this is true for every disciple of Christ, whatever their IQ or however many degrees they may have, or even if they dropped out of high school at 15, and do not possess a single degree.
Lifelong Quest
But this is just the beginning. Once we are safely planted in God's family, we spend the rest of our days on earth seeking from God wisdom and understanding for our lives, for our families, for our ministries, and for pressing problems and struggles that we experience. God is faithful to grant us the wisdom and understanding we need in every situation. The Proverbs passage I shared at the beginning says that if we do seek the knowledge of God like a man searching for hidden treasure, "Then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God."
So how do we seek wisdom? The two basic means have never changed. We seek God through prayer, lifting our voices for understanding, and through reading His holy word, the Bible. Through these means, we become a member of the most important and valuable group of people that can be found in our world. We become God-seekers. And as our Lord has declared: "Everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened." (Matthew 7:8)
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