"He who seeks the Lord will find knowledge with righteousness, and those who seek Him rightly will find peace." Proverbs 16:4This proverb suggests a progression.
The first part of this proverb talks about the beginning of a life of faith. In the beginning, we will find out about the bible, the different stories, some of the lessons, and maybe a bit about theology. We will learn how to pray with the favorites selected from different parts of the bible and from tradition. All of it, at first, is knowledge. And this is great for all of us. We need our minds to be filled with good knowledge, for the mouth only speaks drawing from what the mind and heart know. Think about a dialect of a spoken language. The people who speak different dialects do so because of what they are surrounded by. If there are many people saying "y'all" as a second person plural, then you probably will, too, over time. I know of many foreigners who adopt "y'all" after living in the South for a while.
The latter part of the proverb gets to a core message. When we seek the Lord rightly, we will find peace. Today, we all need more peace in our lives. We are being bombarded with society telling us what we need to know, how much money we need to make, what job we need to do in order to make said money, whom to marry, what to buy, what house to live in, how to speak, how to live "well". That's a lot for us to handle. But, the last thing we need is to go to church, or even to approach the bible, or God, and come out even more stressed than before. That's not why we are Christians. We are Christians because Jesus came into the world to bring us peace. We don't need to worry about what's going on around us. We don't need to concern ourselves about so many societal rules because our salvation has come for us. We have a place prepared for us in heaven!
Our faith will progress from knowledge to peace. The good thing, though, is that we don't have to wait for years to get this. We can do it now. We can find peace through our religion. It all comes down to how we live our life. We have to live knowing that God is in control. We have to pray knowing that God is taking care of us and hearing us, and - more importantly - God is speaking to us. We need to read the bible knowing that there is wisdom that we can apply to everything in our lives. We have to go to church knowing that God is great and that we will achieve peace through our prayers, our praise, and our love. We have to take the love that God has given us and spread it all over our lives so that we can make the world that much better. When we live our faith, we will find peace.
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