"Missing It" in Scripture

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

I'm amazed that sometimes when I'm meditating on a subject, and do a search to see what the Bible says about it, it doesn't appear in scripture at all, or only rarely.

"Honest" (and "honesty") was one such surprise.  It's a quality which seems cognate with, or the foundational heart-attitude of, "righteousness:" which scripture enjoins as one of man's primary duties. But the word only occurs once in the New Testament, in Jesus' parable of the sower, where He explains that the "good soil" on which the seed falls is "an honest and good heart" (Luke 8:15).

More recently, I had that experience when I was looking to see what scripture says about "unrepentance," or the "unrepentant."  Scripture often speaks of  "repentantance;" again, a primary duty of all men.  So I was sure the Bible had some trenchant comments about the contrary attitude and action.

But those words don't appear in scripture at all.  To find what the Bible says about unrepentance, I had to re-think my search-terms: what would the Bible call that attitude ?  And when I mentioned this quandry to my wife, she came up with the same scriptural terminology I'd settled on: "stiff-necked."

That search-term opened up some scriptures: and I'm still pondering what scripture says.

My take-away was, again, that God's thoughts and God's ways are not our ways and our thoughts  (Isaiah 55:8): sometimes not even our search-terms of God's thoughts.

I was reminded of the point my teacher Derek Prince emphasized in his seminal teaching on "Agreeing With God:" to hear, and comprehend, what God is saying, we have to think in God's definitions and God's categories.  Experience shows me that I often do not, even when I think I AM. That even when I believe I'm thinking in the right "religious" terms, I can miss God's ways and God's thoughts.