A mantra for today

Apr 28, 2026

You Will Seek & Find the Lord

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But if you seek the Lord your God from there, you will find him, if, indeed, you seek him with all your heart and soul.

Deuteronomy 4:29 (NET)

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There’s a tension to salvation.

Specifically, I’m talking about the tension in sanctification (the process where God is maturing us, making us more and more like Christ).

It’s a work that God does -- but we also have work to do.

I suppose that’s less tension and more of a paradox.

How can God be doing the work but we also have to do the work … but also (also) we are saved by God’s work and not our own?!

Well…

I don’t know “how” this can be.

I just know that God has an expectation that we honor Him with our efforts.

That probably should be enough for me.

But I’m a curious man and want my questions answered. I like to know how things work.

The basics of this formula -- if you want to reduce it down to a simple formula -- is seeking God with all my heart and soul. Then He allows me to find Him.

How much is “all?”

I suspect there’s a special working of the Holy Spirit in that too, because I have zero confidence in my own flesh honoring God this way with all my heart and soul.

I’m just not good enough.

I need the Lord’s intervention to pull this off.

(Almost like it’s impossible with man, but with God all things are possible.)

In the end, the only things I can control are the things I can control.

Not a typo -- a mantra for today.

— Ricky Ketchum

Scripture quotations marked (ESV) are from the ESV®Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright© 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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