We have all heard the phrase "looking for a needle in a haystack". Right now I am looking for that preverbal needle in trying to figure out why the website is automatically putting the second quotation mark I use in backwards. I am not at all a technically savvy person so I am living with backwards quotation marks until I can talk with the web company to get that fixed.
I have also been looking for a needle in scripture. Or it has become that as I have searched for something concrete to point to regarding faith. Now that is an oxymoron.
My journey on this needle hunt started in Matthew 7:7-11 after reading about the positive results of asking, seeking, and knocking. Having a specific thing I have been praying about for a very long time I had personal reasons to do this search. I want to understand. I want to be able to point to something and say with certainty that this is that and that is this...and that ability to do that regarding faith and asking, seeking, and knocking is slipping away from me the harder I search. Why? Because faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Hebrews 11:1. Not seen. But I want to see it. I want to know that the situation I am praying about will happen and happen as I want it to. So I am going through my Bible's Concordance and looking up scriptures regarding faith and asking and seeking and knocking...and I am wearing myself out. Picture a person (me) sitting at my desk with my head in my hands and my mind spinning like a person who has one foot nailed to the ground spinning around. That is the true image of me in the quest to be able to say definitively what faith is and how it works.
So I decided that I was having a hard time because of possible error that has crept in to me regarding faith being in Charismatic Churches in the 1980's and 1990's. So I started to research some doctrine that sprang up from Word of Faith churches. Quickly I decided that I was doing what the disciples were doing in Mark 9:38-41 when they were tattle-telling on people who were not with them but had the gall to cast out demons. So I let that search end.
But I am still sitting here without the original answer I was searching for. And that's ok and I will tell you why. I am taking my own hands off my drooping head and looking up to the Almighty Father who has indeed heard my cry and who isn't as a man to decide what to do as a man. And I find myself in a place of rest, not in futile searching to feed my mind.
In Isaiah 30:15-18 I have found a portion of scripture that speaks to me regarding this search of mine for certainty - and I am sharing it with you, below. Essentially, it tells me stop, wait, and be blessed.
God is great, and worthy to be praised!
For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel. In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength. But you were unwilling, and you said, "No! We will flee on horses"; therefore you shall flee away; and, "We will ride upon swift steeds", therefore your pursuers shall be swift. A thousand shall flee at the threat of one; at the threat of five you shall flee, till you are left like a flagstaff on the top of a mountain, like a signal on a hill.
Therefore the LORD waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the LORD is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.
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