True and False Seeking
John Kerr Campbell, D.D. 2 Chronicles 12:14 And he did evil, because he prepared not his heart to seek the LORD. I. There is what one may call NATURAL SEEKING. Seeking is the language of human want. The cravings of life will always demand attention. All the industries of the world, with their ten thousand beneficent developments, are the products of human wisdom to supply human wants. Human life is but a seeking in so many ways, from the cradle to the grave. II. SEEKING THE LORD. This is not born of nature, but of grace. Seeking the Lord implies a conscious sense of weakness and insufficiency. III. HEART PREPARATION. All true and successful seeking of the Lord comes of prepared hearts. The heart is always the part that makes our hearing, believing, praying, and doing right or wrong. As soon as the sun rises in the morning the birds are ready to go forth from their nests to sing. So it is with all the moral forces or faculties of the soul when the heart is prepared to seek the Lord. The heart is to the whole man what the main-spring is to the watch — it sets all the other powers in motion. "But as the bowl," says one, "runs as the bias inclines it, and as the ship moves as the rudder steers it," so man seeks as the heart prompts him. A prepared heart is a loving heart, "believing true and clean." It enters into the secret place of the Most High as a loving child enters into his father's home. Whence cometh this preparation? There must be some efficient cause to account for the differences we see among men. The difference between the common field and the garden to-day has been brought about by the application of human thought and manual skill. It is even so with respect to differences among men. As the garden did not enclose itself, or of itself become more fertile than the field, neither have men become different among their fellows or before God except by different resolutions of will and energy of character. Those who exercise no forethought or natural sagacity become as the man who built his house upon the sand. IV. THE EVIL OF NEGLECTING TO PREPARE THE HEART. Men may do evil by failing to do well. Mere neglect is sufficient to ruin a man. A man need not be openly profane or wicked to be excluded from God's presence; he has but to neglect the means of grace, or to prepare his heart to seek the Lord while He may be found, to call upon Him while He is near. (John Kerr Campbell, D.D.). Parallel Verses KJV: And he did evil, because he prepared not his heart to seek the LORD. WEB: He did that which was evil, because he didn't set his heart to seek Yahweh.