I have a ListView (with setTextFilterEnabled(true)) and a custom adapter (extends ArrayAdapter) which I update from the main UI thread whenever a new item is added/inserted.
If I understand your problem well - do you call the notifyDataSetChanged() method? It forces the listview to redraw itself.
listAdapter.notifyDataSetChanged();
just use this whenever you do something (for instance: lazy-loading of images) to update the listview.