Download The God Who Rewards the Search

Most Christians believe they are already seeking God. They attend when the doors are open. They read a verse or two before bed. They pray before meals and before sleep. And they assume this qualifies as seeking Him.

It does not.

Hebrews 11:6 does not say God rewards those who acknowledge Him, or those who attend Him, or those who remember Him on occasion. It says He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. Diligence is the operative word, and diligence is precisely what is missing from many religious lives today. Comfortable Christianity produces comfortable results, which is to say, almost none. Two accounts in Scripture make this impossible to escape.

A Woman Who Would Not Stay in the Crowd

Mark tells of a woman who had suffered a flow of blood for twelve years. She had spent everything she had on physicians and grown worse, not better (Mark 5:25-26, NKJV). By any reasonable measure, she had already done enough. She had tried, she had spent, she had suffered. No one would have blamed her for giving up.

She did not give up. She heard about Jesus and pressed through a crowd that, by law, she had no right to touch. Her condition made her ceremonially unclean and contact with others was forbidden to her. She pressed in anyway, reasoning within herself, “If only I may touch His clothes, I shall be made well” (Mark 5:28, NKJV). She did not wait for a convenient moment. She did not ask permission. She pushed through obstacles that existed specifically to keep her away, and she touched the hem of His garment.

Immediately the flow of her blood was dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of the affliction (Mark 5:29, NKJV). Jesus stopped, sought her out in the crowd, and called her “Daughter.” Her diligence was not incidental to her healing. It was the very thing Jesus commended: “Your faith has made you well” (Mark 5:34, NKJV).

A Congregation That Searched Every Day

Acts 17 describes the believers at Berea in very different terms than most churches would use of themselves today. When Paul preached to them, they did not simply nod along or take his word for it. Luke writes that they received the word with all readiness and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so (Acts 17:11, NKJV).

Notice what this was not. It was not a weekly habit. It was not a study reserved for the trained or the curious. It was daily, and it was done by the whole congregation, testing even an apostle’s preaching against the text itself. Luke calls them more fair-minded than the Thessalonians for this very reason, and the result of their diligence was that many of them believed (Acts 17:12, NKJV).

Two Different Kinds of Diligence, One Reward

The woman in Mark sought God in a single desperate act, refusing to let a crowd or a law stand between her and Christ. The Bereans sought God in a daily discipline, refusing to let even an apostle’s authority substitute for their own search of the Scriptures. One diligence was urgent. The other was steady. Both were rewarded because both were diligent.

Most comfortable Christians today do neither. They will not push through whatever crowd stands between them and Christ, whether that crowd is busyness, embarrassment, or simple inconvenience. And they will not search the Scriptures daily, content instead to let someone else do their thinking about God for them. This is not diligence. It is spectating.

What Diligence Requires of You This Week

Stop asking what casual effort might produce and ask instead what you have never been desperate enough, or disciplined enough, to attempt. Identify the one crowd standing between you and Christ right now, whatever keeps you at arm’s length from Him, and push through it this week rather than waiting for a more convenient day. Then choose one passage of Scripture and search it daily for seven days, not to confirm what you already believe, but to find out whether it is so.

God has never promised Himself to the comfortable. He has promised Himself to the diligent. The woman who pressed through the crowd found Him. The congregation that searched daily found Him. The only question left is whether you intend to seek Him the same way, or whether you intend to keep standing at the edge of the crowd, hoping proximity will do the work that diligence was always meant to do.

Keep Earnestly Pursuing God

Download The God Who Rewards the Search

Use this post as motivation to diligently search the Scriptures, starting today. Be all in for Jesus. If you search and have questions, contact us.

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