Knowing God

Jeremiah 24:7

English Standard Version (ESV)

7 I will give them a heart to know that I am the Lord, and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart.

Jesus sent His son, who gave his life, that we might be able to know God, to have relationship with Him. Why do we settle for less?

We seem willing to know “about” God. We shun first hand knowledge. Even with His word, we prefer to hear interpretations of what it means, shying away from reading it for ourselves and letting it speak to us directly. We don’t seek His face. We would rather hear from folks who say they have seen His face and get their interpretation of who He is.

Man has long had this problem. The children of Israel wanted Moses to go up and get the word from the Lord. They wanted a King. We want an intermediary. We want to forget that the temple curtain was torn and we have direct access. We are comfortable with other men as priests. We are happy sitting in pews and being told about God. As long as we seek intermediaries and go betweens, there are men willing to fill the role. But them we get a filtered God, not the real deal, often not even anything close to the Creator of the universe.

Perhaps we can’t handle looking directly in the face of God. He is awesome, but why deny ourselves the relationship we were created for. Because we have avoided direct knowledge of Him, we live with a lesser God. We rely on the “favorite” bible verses that make Him less awesome, less holy. We have a God who is an answer man when we have questions and a rescuer when we have fouled up things beyond our ability to repair. Like everything else in life, we want what we want, and not what we need.

We know, deep inside, that really knowing God will change us, and that we really need to change.

There is available to us a pearl of great price. We need to be willing to sell all that we have to get it. To get all of God we need to be willing to give up all else. We can know God, but with a relationship that potent, all else pales. Are we willing to give up all that we have to get all that we need? We know, deep inside, that we are settling for less than what Our Lord died for.

A farmer once was walking along the road when the King approached. He was carrying a bag of the wheat he had grown. The King stopped and asked him for some of his wheat. The farmer opened his bag and pulled out a single grain and shyly handed it to the king. The king opened a bag he was carrying, full of gold coins. He pulled out a single coin and gave it to the farmer. What if the farmer had given up his whole bag?

Our bags seem so valuable, but they are really not compared to what has been already purchased for us, Him.

Nick

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