We Must Know Him

"... and instead come to know HIM."

ONE MAN received revelation of one thing that God wanted him to know, and that man preached it to a congregation, reveling in this thing he now understood. The next man, listening, took that one thing the first man had spoken about concerning himself, and preached it as an example in his own sermon, which was heard by many others who repeated it, and others after them, until generations now spoke of the first man’s revelation not as personal to him and freedom to him but as a point of doctrine to all. Now this thing which was God directed and Spirit anointed became rule of law, breakable and in breaking it, a detriment to faith in God’s goodness, when, in fact, it was not applicable in that fashion.

We see this in the modern church in many points of doctrine. The Holy Spirit is not within us and among us to set rules nor to redefine Scripture. He is our Teacher, who Guides us into truth, and speaks to us continually of Jesus (John 14:17, 26). He convicts men of sin without there being any condemnation. Conviction and condemnation are not the same thing. We see this in the behavior of the Pharisees and other religious scholars in the Gospels as well. One commentary explains that the Pharisees were formed following Babylon to restrict and uphold the Old Covenant law. They were not formed by God but by men and, as such, by Jesus’ day were lost in reasoning and education of the mind and not the words of the Spirit. They didn’t recognize the Spirit in and upon Jesus, their Messiah, at all. They were, instead, consumed by hatred of Him and strife and madness which, eventually, justified His death.

Don’t you think if they’d been listening to God, as their history bid them to do, as their physical ancestor Abraham had done, and Moses after him, they would have celebrated instead of pushing Him off a cliff? As it was, they protected themselves in order to honor the Passover celebration while crucifying the Passover Lamb on Calvary. They missed the point entirely.

“So that you are witnesses against yourselves that you are the sons of those who put the prophets to death.” (Matthew 23:31 BBE)

And we have missed the point of faith. God bids us to put down our directories, our glossaries, and dictionaries, and instead come to know HIM. For there is no faith until you know who you have faith in. Faith is not a verb tense, nor thing obtained which we polish for use. Its measure, weaker or stronger, is only so that we can grow further and know God fills in where we lack with His kindness and mercy. We can know our Father, our precious Savior, and the gentle Holy Spirit have the best planned for us. They will supply all our needs, heal all our diseases, protect our children. We need not worry about anything in this life but live it successfully and to the full.

“We know full well that we don’t receive God’s perfect righteousness as a reward for keeping the law, but by the faith of Jesus, the Messiah! His faithfulness, not ours, has saved us, and we have received God’s perfect righteousness.” (Galatians 2:16 TPT)

But it will not be because we defined faith or because of the repeated doctrines of men, but because our union is with God. He is the sunrise, the beauty in the temple at the morning hour, the glories at midday, and the evening’s meal and our night’s rest. When He consumes our day then we will find all we need supplied. Not because we will have worked enough to earn it. No, we cannot earn God’s grace at all. It is a gift. But because we won’t need to wonder if it will happen. We will know Him well.

“One thing alone I ask from the Eternal, one thing do I desire, a vision of the Eternal’s goodness in the temple at the morning hour.” (Psalm 27:4, Moffatt)

We treat the gift like it still requires us to do something good enough. We base it on attendance at church, on hours of study, on knowledge gleaned, on enough time in prayer, and we subtract from our worthiness based on our appearance (on their dress and culture), on our self-godliness. Instead of trusting God entirely because He is generous and faithful and He promised to care for us, we are trying to survive. Except this time we goofed so there’s a penalty to pay. No, there isn’t. I heard this stated this way: We give the sinner latitude in his behavior. God loves him and sees past his mistakes. But because we are children of God, we don’t get this same forgiveness. Nothing is more wrong.

Jesus is a man who lived among men. He heard epithets. He saw sin. He traveled through cities where there were sinful businesses, men of cultures steeped in idol worship. He saw the demonic glorified. I’m always amazed to read that a man filled with an unclean spirit was standing there in the synagogue and no one did anything about it. Jesus called him out and set the man free. The Spirit of God knows all things. He’s aware of everything ever written, knows the intents of men’s hearts. Psalm 139 tells us you cannot escape His presence even in the depths of hell. Where hell is on earth, in each demonic power, He knows who they were when He created them (there is no other Creator on this earth but Elohim), and how they rebelled and fell to where they are. Because He did not create them that way. He is love. He is good.

We’ve padded God and called it holiness. I’ve said this many times in recent days: God does not need our defense. We learn from Him. We are strong because He is in us. We love others because He’s enabled us to do so. We can be healed because we know He loves us. Our minds are cleansed of wrong thinking because His life is within us (2 Corinthians 10:4-5). It isn’t that He has expectations for us, but that we place all our expectations in His hands. Refusing to pick them back up and make them ours is faith. Living like we are whole and God has made us so is trust in His faithfulness.

“We will not be afraid of God if we truly love him, because those who love God completely cannot possibly be afraid of him. We would be afraid only if we thought that he would punish us. So those who are afraid of God certainly are not loving God completely.” (1 John 4:18 T4T)

Refusing the thoughts of the enemy that condemn us to failure at any level is belief in God’s goodness. When I made death a “so what,” I was healed. When fear formed in my gut, but I chose to praise Him, fear left. When depression gnawed at my mind, but I dug up laughter, depression dissolved into nothing. I felt them, I heard them, I tasted them, I said, “No thanks.” I listened to the Spirit, and He taught me. I chose to believe Him over what some men taught in error. I made the Word truth and Jesus accessible and placed myself in the Father’s loving hand, and they spoke loudly.

I honor those who went before me, who preached the truth of God’s Word, the words of the Gospels, the revelation in Acts, those who understood Paul’s epistles and had knowledge I lacked. I love them for their sacrifice, for their stand for righteousness. I covered their mistakes with the love of the Savior. Without eating the tares in their grasp. God’s love covers them with His blood and so do I. When we all get to heaven, there won’t be separations anymore but one body in unity. This is the desire of the Father which Jesus died for, and the Spirit of God is sent to us to fulfill knowledge. So that what we write and what we speak comes from God and not from us.

We must know Him.

“I pray that God, who is the glorious/wonderful Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, may cause his Spirit to make you wise, and that his Spirit will reveal God to you so that you may fully know him.” (Ephesians 1:17 T4T)

Image by Olena from Pixabay


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com