Word Nerd Wednesday – Seek First Matthew 6:33

Happy Wednesday, my friends, and welcome to another Word Nerd post! My mind was absolutely blown by this on. It’s so good! Will likely make you think about a famous Bible passage in a completely new way. Hope you enjoy!

The verse – Matthew 6:33

I’ve been following along with Illustrated Faith’s yearly Revival Camp project this year and loving it! One of my favorite parts is the frequent livestreams that they’ve been doing on Instagram. I have yet to catch one as it happens, but I’ve caught up with them all in the replay. This week, I was watching the scripture dissection session from the month of June and it was so good! This is the verse that was studied during the live:

But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided to you.

Matthew 6:33 NASB20

There were so many excellent take-aways from this study, but I’m just going to be focusing on one today. I highly recommend that you watch/study for yourself here : ) You can also find a tool to do some word studying on your own here : ).

The study

My mine take-away from this livestreamed Scripture dissection was the word study we did on the phrase “Seek first.” In the original Greek, the word translated as seek is zeteo, which means “to seek in order to find; seek by thinking, meditating, reasoning; to enquire into; to seek with expectation, crave, desire.” I’ve actually done a word study on this in the past, but enjoyed a refreshment of what I learned.

You can read that post here : )

The part that really got me though is the word first, which in Greek is proton. This word has the idea of “first in time or place; first in rank, position, or order; at the first, at the CENTER.” That’s the coolest part to me! Because the word proton is what we now use for one of the particles at the center of the atom, the most basic building block that we know of for life, the universe, and everything. In the context of the verse, this word tells us that we should not only put Christ and His kingdom in first place in our lives, but that He should be at the very center of everything we do. I’ve heard it described like planets in a solar system; He is the Sun, and my relationships, my goals, my career, my routines, all orbit around Him. So cool!!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this Word Nerd Wednesday post analyzing the words “seek first” from Matthew 6:33. Do you like to do word studies? What’s something you’ve learned recently? I’d love to know!

Happy studying!