seek

"Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, and He will have mercy on him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon".

~Isaiah 55:6-7

Seek the Lord while He may be found: The prophet Isaiah impresses a sense of urgency on God’s people. “This is the time. God can be found now. Seek Him now.” It isn’t that God is hidden, and can only be found infrequently. It is that He can only be found when our hearts are inclined to look for Him, and that inclination itself is a gift from God!

Let the wicked forsake his way: The prophet impresses the need for repentance among God’s people. Repentance is turning away and walking in the opposite direction...turning to God’s way. Simply, this is what it means to return to the Lord, and we can never walk in God’s way until we reject our own way. The Lord’s glorious restoration works in and through our repentance.

Isaiah makes an important point when he says, and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Wickedness may be demonstrated by our actions (our way); but unrighteousness can be found in our very thoughts. The battleground for a righteous walk with the Lord is often found in our minds, in our thoughts. Paul knew this also when he wrote of bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5), and how we must not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind (Romans 12:2).

And He will have mercy on him: What a glorious promise! When we turn to the Lord, He will have mercy on us! In fact, He will abundantly pardon! The problem is never that we turn to the Lord and find that He rejects us. The problem is that we fail to return.

~David Guzik, Blue Letter Bible