YOUR NEED TO KNOW GOD
"God made the human machine to run on Himself." ----
C. S. Lewis
What is the one essential thing you must know in
order to make life worth living? "Thus says the LORD: `Let not
the wise man glory in his wisdom, let not the mighty man glory
in his might, nor let the rich man glory in his riches; but let
him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows Me,
that I am the LORD, exercising lovingkindness, judgment, and
righteousness in the earth, for in these I delight,' says the
LORD" (Jeremiah 9:23-24 NKJV).
This ancient prophet speaks truth of timeless
importance! It is as up-to-date as today's newspaper. Truly
knowing God in a right, living relationship should be life's
ultimate pursuit. What this world supremely values is
ultimately a trivial pursuit. In 100 years, academic degrees, a
higher standard of living, money, material things, status, or
unbridled pleasure won't matter anymore to you. It is a dead
end street or just a side issue of our existence. In the end,
knowing God is the true purpose of our spiritual existence (1
John 2:13; Galatians 4:8-9)).
The ultimate question you should ask is: Do I truly
know God? A recent Gallup poll showed 96% of Americans believe
there is a God. Knowing about God is not the same as really
knowing Him in a life-changing, personal relationship. Many know
about the President, but who knows him well enough to be with
him like his family? The difference is a personal knowledge of
relationship. Knowing God is the good news Jesus Christ offers:
"And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true
God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent" (John 17:3). The
difference between just knowing about God and truly knowing God
is the difference between a religious fact and a life-changing
relationship.
THE ULTIMATE REALITY
"In the beginning, God created..." (Genesis 1:1).
The Bible begins by ascribing everything as God's creation. "We
are, because He is." The universe is not an "accidental dance of
atoms." The complexity and design of creation clearly attests to
the ultimate reality of a Creator. A Great Mind was at work
(Romans 1:19-20). Every effect must have an adequate cause
(Hebrews 3:4). God is that uncaused Cause, the eternal One
(Isaiah 45:22; 57:15). The universe bears the fingerprints of
God (Psalm 19:1-4).
"The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom,
And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding" (Proverbs
9:10). Someone has said, "He who does not reckon God into His
thinking cannot count." Wise living calculates God's reality
into all life's choices. Otherwise, you'll be way off in life.
He is the beginning point of ultimate reality. The Bible is the
self-revelation of God (Exodus 3:13-15; 34:5-7). When you think
of God, you can think no higher or greater. Someone said, "God
is a sea of infinite substance." Apart from God we could not
exist. God doesn't need you to exist, but you need Him to exist
(Psalm 100:3). He designed us and knows how to live life at its
best. We exist "for Him" and to "glorify Him as God"
(Colossians 1:17; Romans 1:21). He does not exist for us. You
are cruel to yourself to go through life without really knowing
God your Maker. He designed and runs this world. Without this
knowledge, you will wander aimlessly through life. It would be
like dropping an African bushman in New York's Time Square
without directions. How confused he'd be!
THE ULTIMATE DIMENSION
"God created man in His own image" (Genesis 1:27).
Man is unique from all other creation. We came from some place,
and we're going someplace. We alone are image-bearers, created
in God's moral and spiritual likeness. You have spiritual
dimension. "God is Spirit" (John 4:24). You have an inbuilt
capacity for a spiritual relationship with God. God is "the
father of spirits" (Hebrews 12:9). As a spirit being, you are
custom-fitted for this relationship.
You have a spirit will live on and on forever. We're
all on a journey to eternity. Where will it be? "God set
eternity in their heart" (Ecclesiates 3:11; 12:9). You have an
inbuilt spiritual need to reach out and connect with eternity.
We are built for another world. No society of true atheists has
ever been found. This world's physical dimension cannot satisfy
the spiritual need deep in our soul. You are not a body with a
spirit thrown in extra. You are a forever living spirit
temporarily house in a physical body. In time of trouble, people
often cry out, "O God!" Why? It is our inner being crying out
for God. Get in touch with the part of you that will live
somewhere forever. Then, you are on your way to knowing God. "He
gives to all life, breath, and all things. And He has made from
one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the
earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the
boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the
Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him,
though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and
move and have our being...'For we are also His offspring.'"
(Acts 17:25-28 ).
God made us for Himself. God is there. He can be
known. We all have a "God-shaped vacuum" only He can fill.
Augustine said 1500 years ago, "We are restless until we find
rest in You." You cannot get a handle on life without knowing
the Life-Giver. Yet, He is not found accidentally. "And you
will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your
heart" (Jeremiah 29:13).
THE ULTIMATE NEED
Our greatest need is to first know what our greatest
need is. Wise king Solomon looked life over "under the sun." He
did and saw and had all there was to this life (Ecclesiastes
1:1-2:26). He came up empty and discovered that life without God
is unbearable "vanity" . Here is his conclusion of the
bottom-line of man's existence: "Let us hear the conclusion of
the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, For this
is man's all. For God will bring every work into judgment,
Including every secret thing, Whether good or evil"
(Ecclesiastes 12:13-14). We are accountable to God and not He to
us. God made us to "fear" (respect, honor, worship) His Person
and obey His Word. No one can avoid this final, inevitable
interview with God. Only God can meet our deepest needs and
quench out spiritual thirst. We need something solid and
unchanging to anchor our lives.
Life is a test. We make choices and those choices
make us. Life is not a staircase leading nowhere. Only God in
the Bible can answer life's ultimate questions: Who am I? Where
did I come from? Where am I going? Why am I here? Life is for
our moral learning and development. Only God is big enough to
give your life to. God designed us to take on His holy
character: "Be holy, for I am holy" (1 Peter 1:16). This is how
you can reach your inborn potential. It will fit you to live
with God forever in heaven.
THE ULTIMATE PROBLEM
If God seems far away, who moved? Man's ultimate
problem is not crime, stress, cancer, economic recession, or
pollution. It is sin! "All have sinned and fallen short of the
glory of God" (Romans 3:23). A machine brings glory to its maker
when it works right. When man chooses to sin, he falls short of
his purpose of being all God designed him to be. "Sin is wanting
your way above all else" (Ralph Earle). This is rebellion to
God's rightful rule over every aspect of our lives. It is an
attempt to live independent of God. Sin is defined by actively
transgressing God's law (1 John 3:4) or failing to do the good
we ought (James 4:17). Yet, it is more than breaking some
impersonal rule. It ultimately breaks God's loving heart
(Ezekiel 6:9). Living in sin is rejection of God as the most
important Person in your life.
Sin is a selfish substitute for God. It seeks
satisfaction in all the wrong places. "For My people have
committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of
living waters, And hewn themselves cisterns; broken cisterns
that can hold no water" (Jeremiah 2:13). Sin becomes an
addictive habit to fill a spiritual void with things that will
never fully satisfy. Satan offers to fill a legitimate need by
an illegitimate or perverted way apart from God. That's why
people fornicate, have extra marital affairs, get drunk, do
drugs, lie, steal, work themselves to death for more stuff or
always pursue pleasure. It is coping with life independent of
God by seeking fulfillment in wrongs ways. Sin deceives you by
promising much but delivering little (Hebrews 3:13; 11:25). Sin
defiles and separates your spirit from God, the source of life
(Isaiah 59:1-2). Sin leads you into the devil's dungeon of
darkness, away from the God of light (1 John 1:5). It blinds and
distorts our spiritual perception (2 Corinthians 4:3-4). Sin
enslaves to Satan, a cruel taskmaster (John 8:24; 2 Timothy
2:24). Sin kills and destroys our soul (James 1:15). Satan is
the enticing mass murderer of the human race (John 8:44).
God's justice demands that the guilty be punished.
"Wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23). The burden of guilt and
futility of sin are unbearable. Can we find our way back to God?
THE ULTIMATE SOLUTION
God's holy justice is mocked when sin's debt is
overlooked. God's "dilemma" is that he still loves you, because
He is all love (1 John 4:8). He seeks your highest good. How can
He extend fellowship to erring mankind without violating His
holy justice? Everything is wrong until God makes it right.
His solution is in a substitute love offering to pay
the demands of justice and redeem us from the curse of sin
(Isaiah 53; John 3:16). "Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away
the sin of the world!" (John 1:29). God is not hiding from us.
Jesus left heaven's glory to "bring us to God" (1 Peter 3:18).
He is the central character of all Scripture and all history.
The year we live in is reckoned by His birth. Why did Jesus
Christ come to earth? Look in the mirror and you'll see one good
reason. He came to do for us what we could not do for ourselves.
We wonder if anyone really cares about me for just being me.
Some has said, "He loves us everyone as if we are the only one."
You may think about many of things, but God thinks about you.
With God there are no insignificant lives. You are just as
important to God as anyone who has ever lived. The coming and
death of Jesus on the cross forever proves His undefeatable love
to you (Romans 5:5-8). "He loved me and gave himself up for me"
(Galatians 2:20). On the cross, Jesus showed the greatest love
the world has ever seen. The innocent died for the guilty and
undeserving -- you and me. It tells you that there is no price
that God was not willing to pay to win you back. Who cannot
come to know and love a God like that? Your life is not futile.
Your sins need not be ultimately fatal.
In Jesus, we have a perfect revelation of what God
is like. He is God with skin on (John 14:9). In Him we discover
all of God we need. "And we know that the Son of God has come
and has given us an understanding, that we may know Him who is
true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ.
This is the true God and eternal life" (1 John 5:20). Jesus is
the key to knowing what really matters in life. . He is the key
to our search for meaning. Jesus said, "I am the way, the
truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through
Me" (John 14:6). As "the way," He alone shows us back to God,
out of this doomed world. He shows us the path to purpose. As
"the truth," He embodies all that is right and real, in contrast
to the world's deceptions. His words open our eyes to the truth
about our sinful selves and the truth of salvation. As "the
life," He offers the greatest quality of life known to man (John
10:10). He is the solution to our spiritual deadness and
aimlessness. You may dismiss religion, but you cannot dismiss
life. You must choose what to do with your life. Jesus is in the
people changing business. Many have found a friend in Jesus,
someone who is always there to depend on in time of need. He
will always care. Read Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and come to
know the greatest life ever lived. He is the key to knowing God.
THE ULTIMATE CHOICE
A 1988 Gallup Poll revealed that 74% of Americans
have a belief about Jesus as God's Son. Yet, Jesus taught a
majority of people will be lost, because He did not know them
(Matthew 7:13-14,23). Why? "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord,
Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the
will of My Father in heaven" (Matthew 7:21). Knowing God is not
lip-service but obedient life-service. "Now by this we know
that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. He who says, 'I
know Him,' and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and
the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps His word, truly the
love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in
Him. He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk
just as He walked" (1 John 2:3-6). Knowing God makes a daily
difference in how we live. In Jesus, we see the perfect model of
a true human being. He became as we are to make us like He is
(Romans 8:28). A close relationship to God is proven by
following Jesus in daily obedience to the New Testament
Scriptures. The ultimate test of loving God is obeying His Word.
"For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And
His commandments are not burdensome" (1 John 5:3). His Word is
not a riddle, but it is the perfect revelation of God's mind (1
Corinthians 2:9-13).
For God's viewpoint, read the Bible. Knowing God is
walking "by faith" (2 Corinthians 5:7). Faith that we are
walking in His will comes by hearing Christ's Word (Romans
10:17). All faith and practice must be measured by Scripture (2
Timothy 3:16-17). Our imperfect intentions can lead us astray.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, But its end is the
way of death." (Proverbs 14:12). Don't buy the line: "It doesn't
matter what you believe or do, as long as you're sincere." What
we believe determines how we act and what we become.
We read the Bible to discover the saving knowledge
of the truth (1 Timothy 2:4). To become a child of God, you are
to:
(1) put your whole belief in Christ as God's Son
(John 20:31; Mark 16:16),
(2) repent (penitently change your mind) toward your
past sinful life (Luke 13:3; Acts 2:38),
(3) confess Jesus as the divine Lord and Son of God
(Romans 10:9-10; Matthew 16:16),
(4) be immersed into Christ for the forgiveness of
your sins (John 3:5; Acts 22:16; Romans 6:3-5). These are the
steps to knowing God in a saved relationship. You can then know
that you are God's child, "raised to walk in newness of life"
(Romans 6:4). You continue to grow in this knowledge (2 Peter
3:18).
"The only time God cannot use us is if we make
ourselves unavailable" (E. G. Neal). The Lord does not seek
great ability but availability. Are you willing to change
anything in your life in order to know God? You must choose for
yourself to respond to heaven's invitation. God has no
grandchildren. Too many are trying to make it on secondhand
knowledge of God. Your eternal destiny is at stake. Heaven is a
prepared place for prepared people. There God will receive to
Himself those who came to truly know Him in this life. Are you
ready for the most important day in your life -- meeting God in
judgment? You can can be ready and look back over a life
well-spent with no regrets. Life's ultimate question is: Do you
truly know God? Let us know if we can help you in your spiritual
quest.
Contact us at: WFrankWalton@juno.com.
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