Jan. 26, 2025

                                                        2 Chronicles 15:1-4

                                                    “To Seek or Not to Seek”

January 26, 2025                                                                                     Dr. Don Bazal

      When Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn received the Templeton Award in 1983, he began his address with these words:

      Over half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia:  “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.” Since then I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval.  But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat:  “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.”

      When we forget God, bad things happen.  Even Christians can forget God.

      To seek or not to seek, that action determines whether we will be revived.  

 Ezekiel 22:30 – I searched for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand in the gap before Me for the land, so that I would not destroy it; but I found no one.

 2 Chronicles 7:14 – 3 actions ___________________, _________________, and _______________.

 Psalm 77:1-2 – My voice rises to God, and I will cry aloud; my voice rises to God, and He will hear me. ² In the day of my trouble I sought the Lord; in the night my hand was stretched out without weariness; my soul refused to be comforted.

  Isaiah 55:6-7 – Seek the Lord while He may be found; Call upon Him while He is near. ⁷ Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the Lord, and He will have compassion on him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.

 Jeremiah 29:13 – You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.

 Deuteronomy 4:29 – But from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find Him if you search for Him with all your heart and all your soul.

 Proverbs 4:23 – Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life.

 Mark 7:21-23 –  For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, ²² deeds of coveting, and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness.  ²³ All these evil things proceed from within and defile the man.”

 Hebrews 4:12 – For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

 Jeremiah 17:9 – “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick;
 Who can understand it?

 Revelation 2:1-5 –  “To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: The One who holds the seven stars in His right hand, the One who walks among the seven golden lampstands, says this: ² ‘I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance,  and that you cannot tolerate evil men, and you put to the test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false; ³ and you have perseverance and have endured for My name’s sake, and have not grown weary. ⁴ But I have this against you, that you have left your first love. ⁵ Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place—unless you repent.