1 ¶ My son, if thou wilt receive my words, and hide my commandments with thee;

 2  So that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom, and apply thine heart to understanding;

 3  Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding;

 4  If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures;

 5  Then shalt thou understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God.

 6  For the LORD giveth wisdom: out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding.     

 ( Proverbs 2: 1- 6)

This portion of scripture has always intrigued me and in particular verse 4. In another translation we read:-

Search for them as you would for lost money or hidden treasure. (Prov. 2: 4 NLT )

How does one look for hidden treasure? Let us look at a couple of illustrations pertaining to exploration for valuable natural resources.

R. U. Darby

During the California gold rush a prospector named R. U. Darby helped his uncle mine a vein of gold that his relative had discovered. It appeared at first that they had a prosperous find. Yet the vein soon disappeared, and Darby and his uncle searched frantically for the spot where it continued. Finally, they concluded their prospects were hopeless and sold their equipment to a junk dealer.

The junk dealer consulted an engineer, then began mining the shaft again. He quickly discovered the elusive vein and a supply of gold worth millions of dollars--just three feet from where Darby and his uncle had stopped digging. ( 1 )

Wildcats ( 2 )

Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr. ( 3 ) stated that several years ago they studied the successful versus the less successful wildcatters in the oil business. They concluded that if you had the best geologists, the latest in geophysical technique, the most sophisticated equipment, and so on, the success rate in wildcat drilling in established fields would be about 15 %. Without all these pluses, the success rate would dip to around 13 %. That finding suggests that the number of tries is a most important parameter.

I may add that I worked in the oil industry for a number of years and another way of adding recoverable reserves is simply buying them from other companies.

Parable Of Lost Coin

 In addition the Bible has help on how to search and find lost money. In Luke 15: 8 -10 we read :-

8  Either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it? {pieces...: drachma, here translated a piece of silver, is the eighth part of an ounce, which cometh to seven pence halfpenny, and is equal to the Roman penny}

 9  And when she hath found it, she calleth her friends and her neighbours together, saying, Rejoice with me; for I have found the piece which I had lost.

 10  Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.

Lost Keys

A number of years ago I lost my keys ... I was sure they were somewhere in my flat/ apartment. I made a cursory search but to no avail. I then started to clean the flat meticulously. During this process I explained the situation to a Christian friend and in the anointing he believed the keys were in a big old armchair. The keys were definitely not under the chair because it had been moved in the cleaning process so we turned the old piece of furniture upside down and sure enough the keys were caught in the springs. Obviously the keys had fallen out of my pocket, gone down the side of the chair and became  entangled on the springs below the seating upholstery. Praise The Lord.

Conclusions

The most important step we can take in resolving the question is to get the best counsel available to us. Had R. U. Darby merely sought expert opinion, as the junk dealer did, he would have found that he didn't understand the fault lines in the mine shaft, which indicated that gold was present just a short distance away.

Obviously the best counsel is that from the Lord ... " his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor ..." (Isa. 9: 6 ) .

In the testimony of the "Lost Keys" I may have been wondering to this day where my keys were if we had not prayed and received a word of knowledge from the Lord.

In the Parable of the Lost Coin Jesus said "Does she not light a lamp ... ?" The lamp here signifies the word of God ( Ps. 119: 105, 130 ) which is used by the Holy Spirit to direct the search.

Jesus also said the woman sweeps the house which means that we have to go down on our knees to sweep the floor for the lost!

And He also said that, a diligent search has to made until the missing is found.

In this article we started considering the search for materials considered valuable in the world e.g. gold, oil and gas, etc but it becomes very obvious quickly that there is one thing much more important and that is souls.

36 For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

37 Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? ( Mark 8: 36, 37 ).

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1. Smith, B., "The Triumph of Simple Persistence Winning Life's Battles In Horizontal Time"  www.nehemiahministries.com

2. Wildcat  means  "  an exploratory oil well." ( Oxford Dictionary ).

3.  Peters, Thomas J.  and Waterman Jr., Robert H. " In Search of Excellence" Harper and Row ( 1982 ).