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| Know His ways... |
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When you join a club you are generally offered certain rights and privileges of being a member of that club. There are also expected behaviors on our part.
Have you ever asked yourself what are the rights and privileges we have as Christians and what is required of us? I often find the honest answer to that question is, "No". Many believe that we just serve God to the best of our ability on Earth and then wind up in Heaven. That He really exists far from us in Heaven ruling on His throne, and that He has little time to be intimately acquainted with us. Scripture tells us nothing could be farther from the truth...God knit us in our mothers wombs, He knows the hairs on our head, he fashioned each one of our hearts AND he left us with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit after He sent his son to die for us. We belong to a great club of Christians with the Creator as the Head of that club. He knows us intimately and loves each one of us His children....
So what are some expected behaviours God has of us? I believe one is rarely talked about but it is peppered through scripture and that is to come to "know" God. Our Lord tells us His view on this fairly explicitly in Hebrews 3 and I like how the amplified says it best...First of all, the context of scripture is the Lord was addressing His view on the Israelites that fled Egypt...these were His children, just as we are...and this is what He had to say about them....
And so I was provoked (displeased and sorely grieved) with that generation, and said, They always err and are lead astray in their hearts, and they have not perceived or recognized My ways and become progressively better and more experimentally and intimately acquainted with them.
Hebrews 3:10 (Amplified)
It is clear here that the Lord wants us to become "more experimentally and intimately acquainted with His ways"...How AWESOME is that! I love that it is a clear intense desire of God that we come to know Him how it is described right here...it implies that in every day life we must keep our hearts set on Him. The parallel implication is to do away with things that focus our hearts away from God. What pulls your heart away from Christ? We can all think of things like TV, work, kids, a wife demands, a husbands demands, housework, but the truth is through all of these things we can still set our hearts towards God. What pulls your HEART away from God to me it is things like the wrong dogmas, a belief system that believes in Satan's power over God (most people believe the Devil hits spot on every time but the Lord you can't really count on), our own selfish desires, religiosity, working for the accalades of man, that God is only good when he feels like it or when it is justified...all those things take our hearts away from God....
It is clear what some of God's expected behaviours of us are according to this scripture in Hebrews and I admonish everyone to keep your heart set on God. I believe if you do that THEN you will become progressively, experimentally and intimately acquainted with Him. Keeping our hearts set on God, becoming experimentally and intimately acquainted with Him often times means we step out and away from the crowd and yes at times even the Christian crowd. This requires us to renew our minds and it is not as easy as just reading blogs, going to church, or even reading the Word and spending time in prayer. You can do all those things and never get to an intimate level with the Lord because if you do them out of obligation without heart involvement there is no relationship...there is just action. And if there is just action and no heart involvement then it becomes about works....
In the beginning of this New Year I encourage everyone to be resolute in a heart involvement with God...find Him in a new way, see Him in a different light, search for and find answers to your difficult questions, test His Word and see if it is true...lay it on the line honestly to Him, progress in your walk with our Father who dearly loves you and seek the Lord with your heart...find out for yourself that God is good ALL the time....
2:12 Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling;
Work out a salvation for yourself that when you finish the race God says... "This child knows and walked with me"
Blessings to you all...
In Him, Lori |
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| To add a comment to "Know His ways..." |
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| January 02, 2009 |
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That's a very good message Lori. Thank you.
I know that it is my desire to each day grow "more experimentally and intimately acquainted with His ways"
Ephesians 3:19 says:
And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.
That seems like a contradiction on the surface. How can we know something if it passes knowledge? I honestly believe this is speaking of knowing as in Abraham knew his wife Sarah and she conceived.
Knowing God on this level will indeed cause pregnancy. And a properly nourished pregnancy will indeed bring forth birth. Birth to a whole new perspective on the way we relate to God.
I think that's the point you are making here. Am I hearing you correctly? |
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| January 02, 2009 |
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Michael thanks for the compliment which I always regard as the highest praise...
Your absolutely hearing me correctly...I love that you bring up Abraham for this reason...We all know scripture calls Abraham a friend of God with that in mind I often think of his actions in taking Isaac to the alter and laying him down as a sacrifice...
Most the time we hear from pastors and wise people to look for the Word for guidelines, I hear all the time that God is not going to call you to do something you don't find in the Word, that you should have the support of your close Christian friends when stepping out...
Well, child sacrifice was a pagan ritual, I'm sure if Abraham asked Sarah or the "elders" of the church if he indeed should sacrifice Isaac at an alter, he would get from many that he was missing it, no way was that God...
Well, we all know it was the Lord calling Abraham to do that and I just wonder are we willing to step out and act on what the Lord tells us to do that seems odd or different and to others wrong. I'm not talking about living a cowboy life here but I am talking about knowing God so well that your willing to do something that doesn't always make sense in the natural expecting or knowing the spiritual will come out of that situation....
We all should know God experimentally and intimately to the point it can propel us to do things for Him out of the ordinary...this is often when we get extraordinary results in life and most importantly for Him... |
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