A transformational spiritual exercise to help you sense that God is your gracious Father
I want to share a helpful devotional practice I have been using in recent months. It has been spiritually rich for me, and it transforms my understanding of God and my feelings about him.
Normally I use this devotional practice first thing in the morning. I commonly wake up in the morning with the sense that I am unworthy, and that God does not feel good about me, probably stemming from the notion that I must earn my way with him and deserve his love. A few months ago I began intentionally focusing at these times on God as my gracious Father, and I meditate one by one on the qualities that constitute his gracious fatherhood.
Depending on how much time I have, I might do this for 10 minutes, or for an hour. But there is a sweetness to it always, and by the end of this meditation the negative feelings are gone.
Example
Here is what I typically say:
Gracious Father, your favor toward me is my treasure and delight.
Gracious Father, your benevolence [goodwill] toward me is my treasure and delight.
Gracious Father, your beneficence [good works] in my life is my treasure and delight.
Gracious Father, your generosity toward me is my treasure and delight.
Gracious Father, your love for me is my treasure and delight.
Gracious Father, your kindness toward me is my treasure and delight.
Gracious Father, your gentleness with me is my treasure and delight.
Gracious Father, your goodness toward me is my treasure and delight.
Gracious Father, your listening to my prayers and answering them is my treasure and delight.
Gracious Father, your forgiveness toward me is my treasure and delight.
Gracious Father, your mercy toward me is my treasure and delight.
Gracious Father, your adoption of me as your son is my treasure and delight.
Meditation
With each line I pause and meditate on that reality, letting the words sink in and do their work, giving the Holy Spirit room to reveal the truth of it. He does that time and again. The exercise is repetitive but has never been rote.
At the heart of what it means to know God is to know him as gracious Father. This devotional practice has transformed not just my mornings, but my experiential knowledge of God.
Theme: Eight Qualities of the Heart That Resists Error
God is true and reliable, but we are not. What can make us susceptible to error is the state of our soul. Exhibit A is the Pharisees. Today we begin an examination of eight soul qualities that make us immune to false teaching.
1. Devotion to the True God
The first and most important quality of the heart immune to false teaching is sincere love for God as he reveals himself to be in the Bible, not who you think he should be. The last half of that sentence is crucial. Most people want God to conform to the values they or their cultures espouse. If God reveals himself in the Bible to be different than they want, many people ignore or reject those disagreeable parts of Scripture to maintain their false beliefs. False ideas of God make us susceptible to false teaching.
The list of God’s qualities that people in Western cultures reject is growing longer. Westerners increasingly balk at the Bible’s clear teaching about God’s holiness, hatred of sin, wrath and judgment, sovereignty, authority to determine how we express our sexuality and order our marriages and families, and his choice to save lost souls exclusively through belief in his Son Jesus Christ, whom he loves. For many people, these truths are deal-breakers. They reject the God revealed in the Bible and gladly fall into the arms of the false teachers, whether they be religious leaders, journalists, scientists, Hollywood celebrities, self-help authors, or motivational speakers. They may believe in a God, but he is not the God revealed in the Bible.
The unbiblical God is a lie. That God is a false God, a deception. That God is an idol, just as surely as if it were a statue of Baal. Those who choose to believe in a false God will not be saved by the true God. It is not enough to believe in a God; we must believe in the true God as he reveals himself to be in Jesus Christ and in the Bible, which Jesus affirmed as God’s eternal words.
We must love God as he is. If we do not, we must realize our hearts are twisted by sin and this corrupt world. We are the ones who have it wrong, not God. He is absolutely righteous and perfect, and so he will not change. We are the ones who must change. God deserves adoration not just in spite of the qualities that trouble us, but because of these qualities. His holiness is as adorable as his love. His justice is as adorable as his mercy. His wrath is as adorable as his tolerance. His consuming fire as his compassion. His law as his grace.
And so, first, to have a heart immune to false teaching, you must heed Moses when he warned about the test brought on by false prophets. “You shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For the LORD your God is testing you, to know whether you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall walk after the LORD your God and fear him and keep his commandments and obey his voice, and you shall serve him and hold fast to him” (Deu. 13:3–4). Such devotion keeps you in the truth.
Next week we look at the second soul quality that makes us immune to false teaching.
We are puzzled that God would command Abraham to sacrifice Isaac because our conscience has been trained by God.
How is it moral for God to command Abraham to sacrifice Isaac?
Notice we are not asking, “Is it moral for God to command Abraham to sacrifice Isaac?” It is a given that God only does what is right. “His works are perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he” (Deut. 32:4, NIV).
In fact it is evil to suggest otherwise: “Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing” (Job 1:22). God himself is the standard of what is right.
Reverence
Therefore, as we seek to understand how God could command Abraham to offer Isaac, we must do so with reverence, remembering that God does not answer to us; rather, we answer to him. God does not have to explain himself, and in this story he does not. He is perfectly righteous, while we have been corrupted in our thinking and cannot reason rightly unless God renews our minds. Therefore, we must beware of asking and answering questions accusingly as though we might be morally superior to God.
That is laughable arrogance and total delusion. On our own morally, we do not know our left hand from our right (Jonah 4:11). Morally, God is perfect and has always been perfect; he never had to learn morality, either on his own or from someone else. On the contrary, everything we know about morality came from God.
The conscience
Anything our secular culture correctly understands about morality also came from God. Over many centuries God has deposited moral truths in secular cultures through Scripture, through the conscience he gives everyone, and through wisdom he has given his church, which is the preserving salt of the earth. In his mercy God can even refine moral understanding in a culture through wise people who do not acknowledge him. But even they have had their consciences trained directly and indirectly by these godly influences.
Standing on the shoulders of all this good moral influence from God, limited still by our brief lifespans and miniscule knowledge of reality, and morally crippled by a sinful nature, no one should presume to evaluate God’s actions with the attitude that he knows better than God what is right, or what God should or should not do.
We find answers to questions raised by this test elsewhere in Scripture. God does not change or evolve; but, like raising the curtain on a stage, what he reveals about himself and his will in Scripture does increase over time until it reaches highest clarity in Jesus and the New Testament. When all is said and done, this test does not contradict anything God reveals about himself in Scripture. On the contrary, this test foreshadows the glory of God revealed in the New Testament.
The lover of life
Even so, this story shocks us—and it should. It is disturbing because the Lord has trained our moral sensibilities after his own. He does not enjoy death and does not want people to die.
Ezekiel prophesied, “As I live, declares the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?” (Ezekiel 33:11)
Life is God’s idea. It was he who “breathed into [Adam’s] nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” (Genesis 2:7)
It was God who warned Adam, “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Genesis 2:17)
God created life and loves life. His Ten Commandments say, “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13), and elsewhere in the Old Covenant he commanded the Israelites to protect and nurture others. (For example, Deuteronomy 22:8 and Leviticus 23:22)
Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).
God created mankind to live forever, not to die.
The lover of peace
In keeping with his love for human life, God also loves peace and abhors violence. “His soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence.” (Psalm 11:5)
In Noah’s time it was in particular the violence of mankind that grieved God’s heart and provoked him to do what he later told Noah he would never repeat: to destroy nearly all mankind with a flood. “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence…. And God said to Noah, ‘I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them.’” (Genesis 6:11–13)
At the end of King David’s life, when he wanted to build a temple for God, God refused him because, “You have shed much blood and have waged great wars. You shall not build a house to my name, because you have shed so much blood before me on the earth.” (1 Chronicles 22:8)
The Lord hates violence because he is “the God of peace.” (Philippians 4:9)
Although the evil in our world sometimes demands the violence of divine judgment, God does not enjoy such violence but judges people reluctantly.
Therefore, knowing that the Lord loves life and abhors violence, we are rightly confused when he commands Abraham to slay Isaac.
During the 2016 spring training of one Chicago baseball team, the big news was the sudden retirement of a veteran player. He said he was retiring because the team’s executive vice president had reneged on a promise given him when he signed with the club the previous year. He must have been popular in the clubhouse because his teammates did not just say goodbye and return to baseball. They met to discuss the situation, and the team’s star pitcher speaking with reporters afterward accused the team’s executive of lying. Finally the owner stepped in and prohibited everyone on the team from speaking further on the matter with the press, and the story eventually left the public eye. Most likely it did not quickly leave the players’ memories.
For, in any organization, members watch how management treats other members. Based on that, members trust management more or less. People do likewise with God. What happens to other people affects whether we think we can trust him. In particular we notice how God treats people in the Bible.
For that reason we will not yet leave behind the story of God’s command that Abraham sacrifice Isaac (read the story in Genesis 22. Read previous posts in this series starting here). Our aim is to know God better, and Abraham’s story raises three troubling questions. First, since the Lord only does what is righteous, how can it be morally right for him to command Abraham to kill Isaac? Next, how is this trial similar to and different from the way God tests us today? Finally, knowing that God tested his friend this way, how can we trust him enough to walk with him as Abraham did: in total surrender?
The answers presented in upcoming posts should not surprise you, for in this story God does not change from what he shows himself to be in Jesus Christ or in the rest of the Bible. The answers should enlarge you, though, for there is more to God than you realize. He is not just an extraordinarily improved version of you. He is not a creature. He is another order of being. He is God.
In Genesis 22 Abraham’s action shows the reality of his faith.
In the previous posts we have seen in Genesis 22 that God tested Abraham by commanding him to journey to a distant mountain and there sacrifice his son Isaac. We considered Abraham’s thoughts as he took that journey with attention to what Abraham knew about God that enabled him to obey. Below we see Abraham in the moment of truth.
What Abraham does
By the time they reach the mountain in Moriah, Abraham has concluded that God will indeed provide a lamb that will substitute for the sacrifice of his son Isaac. He stops short of the site for sacrifice and there leaves his two servants and donkey. He puts the wood on Isaac’s back and takes the fire and knife. As they walk to the site, Isaac recognizes the obvious and says, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?”
From the overflow of his heart, Abraham’s mouth speaks. “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” The Lord had not told Abraham that explicitly, but Abraham knew God, and based on everything he knew about him and what God had told him he concluded this was what God would do. He set his faith on it. All his life, including decades as a sojourner in the Promised Land, he had seen God provide everything he needed, and what he needed now more than anything was a lamb as a substitute for his son Isaac. Whatever he truly needed, he believed God would provide.
Building an altar
Meanwhile what he needed was to obey the Lord’s command, and that he does. Father and son arrive at the site for sacrifice. With solemn confidence Abraham builds an altar. On it he carefully arranges the wood. He turns to his son, his only son Isaac, and without delay proceeds to bind his hands and feet. His heart is settled; he will not withhold his beloved son from the Lord. He has already given him to God in his heart, and now he will give him as a sacrifice. He wraps his arms around his beloved son, trusting this will not be the last time he holds him close, lifts him, and lays him on the wood of the altar. God gives the old man physical strength to lift his son’s weight, some 50–100 pounds, and God gives him emotional strength to take knife in hand.
Isaac’s trust
Isaac is surprisingly passive. He did not resist as Abraham bound his hands and feet. He did not object. Isaac did not struggle to make it impossible for Abraham to place him on the altar. He does not twist and kick to roll off the altar, as he certainly could have. Why not? Did he have the same confidence as his father? Did he believe what his father had assured him, that God would provide a lamb? Had he surrendered himself to God in the same trusting way his father had surrendered him? Did he trust Abraham the way Abraham trusted God?
The story repeats an important sentence two times: in verse 6 it says, “So they went both of them together.” Again in verse 8 the identical words: “So they went both of them together.” This repetition is wrapped around the crucial interchange in verses 7–8, where Isaac said, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” and Abraham replied, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” Father and son are in this “together.” They both choose to trust and obey God.
Now that the knife is in Abraham’s hand, God has seen enough. He knows everything he wanted to know from this test. The Angel of the Lord cries out, “Abraham, Abraham!”—a twofold repetition, which conveyed intimacy.
Here am I
This interruption Abraham was expecting. Slowly, firmly, with reverence for the God he loves more than Isaac, Abraham replies. “Here am I.” This is the third time in the narrative that Abraham says, “Here am I.” The first was when the test began. God broke the silence by calling his name, and Abraham replied, “Here am I.” The second time Abraham said this was at the pivotal moment when he and Isaac were climbing the mountain. Isaac broke the silence: “My father.” And Abraham replied, “Here am I, my son.” And Isaac asked the million-dollar question: “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” The third time Abraham said these words is now, at the moment of salvation as God intervenes to answer Abraham’s faith and spare Isaac. “Here am I” reveals Abraham’s heart, that he is available to God his Father and Isaac his son, responsive not withdrawing, near not far, open not closed, listening not ignoring. Through the threefold repetition of “Here am I” the author of this narrative calls quiet attention to Abraham’s intimacy with God and Isaac, a closeness that withstood the sternest trial.
A heart of love
In the midst of this test Abraham could have closed his heart toward either God or Isaac in an attempt to maintain emotional consistency. One might think Abraham had to choose between them. But in his holy heart that was not so. Abraham did not close his heart toward either. His wholehearted love for and trust in God were so great that he was able to maintain wholehearted love toward Isaac even as he surrendered him. In relation to God, perfect love, trust, and surrender integrate one’s heart.
Although we know little in a divine test, we do know God can be trusted.
In the previous post we saw in Genesis 22 that God tested Abraham by commanding him to journey to a distant mountain and there sacrifice his son Isaac. Abraham acted without delay to collect the necessary supplies and depart with Isaac and several servants on the journey.
What Abraham knows
All the while Abraham is thinking. As he rides his donkey for three days to the mount in Moriah, as he lay each night under the stars—reminding him, no doubt, of God’s promise to give him offspring as countless as the stars—he tries to understand what is happening. He pieces together clues from what God has revealed about himself. Abraham knows that the Lord wants committed relationships, for God had made a covenant with him. That means he is a faithful God who would not revoke his promises. Abraham never forgot his vision in which God appeared in the form of a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch and followed the human practice of covenant-making by passing between the sundered halves of slaughtered animals (see Genesis 15:17). By this God said that if he breaks the covenant, let the same happen to him that happened to the slaughtered animals. Abraham knows beyond doubt that the Lord is not betraying him.
God understands your situation
He also knows that his other son Ishmael, who is the offspring of his union with Sarah’s servant Hagar, is not the son through whom the chosen people would come. God told him years before, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named” (Gen. 21:12). So Abraham knew God had chosen Isaac alone as the line of descent through which he would fulfill his promises to Abraham. When God commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, he even called attention to Isaac’s crucial role by calling him “your son, your only son Isaac” (Gen. 22:2, italics added), although Abraham also had Ishmael.
This was God’s subtle reminder that he had not forgotten what he said about Isaac. As Abraham rode his donkey for three days to the mountain in Moriah, perhaps God’s words repeated in his mind, like a clue to a puzzle, “your only son Isaac…your only son Isaac…your only son Isaac.” By these words Abraham knows that somehow, despite this sacrifice, Isaac must live.
God can do anything
He knows more. He knows nothing is impossible for the one who enabled him and Sarah to have a child in old age. God told him that when he appeared to Abraham one year before Isaac’s birth and announced that the promised child was soon to come. Sarah overheard the announcement and laughed, and the Lord took issue with her. “The LORD said to Abraham, ‘Why did Sarah laugh and say, “Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?” Is anything too hard for the LORD?’” (Gen. 18:13–14, italics added). Abraham now reasons that the one who can do anything can raise the dead.
The New Testament actually provides an inspired glimpse into Abraham’s mind during this test:
“By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, ‘Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.’ He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.” (Heb. 11:17–19, italics added)
God only does what is right
He knows more. He knows the Judge of all the earth does only what is right. Abraham himself had said that to God many years earlier when the Angel of the Lord came to him and revealed his intention to investigate the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham interceded for the cities in order that his nephew Lot and his family would not perish with them. He asked God to spare the cities if 50 righteous people could be found in them and appealed to God’s nature: “Far be it from you to do such a thing, to put the righteous to death with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” (Genesis 18:25)
Knowing that God only does right, Abraham knows that in this current test God is doing right. Abraham is not suspicious of his purposes. He does not entertain the preposterous notion that maybe God is not entirely good, for that would mean we humans are the standard of goodness, knowing better than God what is moral. No, the fallen creature of Adam’s race is not morally superior to the perfect and unchanging Creator. There is much Abraham does not know in this test, but what he does know with certainty is he does not need to question the goodness of God.
In a test, things turn upside down
Abraham knows one more crucial thing that enables him to navigate this situation. Knowing all the above, he had to realize this is a test. He knew God had tested him before. If we know God is testing us, then we understand why the situation is upside down, and we do not lose our bearings. In a test, the Lord’s normal ways with us are temporarily suspended in some way, though not in every way. Instead of peace, there is trouble. Instead of full provision, there is lack. Or instead of health, there is sickness. What the Bible says is the normal portion of God’s people suddenly departs. Though God does not change, his way of working in us might change for a season.
In Abraham’s current test, God certainly suspended what was normal. With God, normal is not death, but life; not taking, but giving; not losing what God has promised, but keeping what God has promised. Above all, normal is not sacrificing one’s beloved son. So Abraham knew this was a test, and he was determined not to fail. To pass, he knew he had to trust God with childlike simplicity and do precisely as commanded. Obedience and trust are always the keys to passing a test, especially the daunting, once-in-a-lifetime sort of trial Abraham was navigating.
God supplies what we lack
All things considered, Abraham reaches a conclusion. If God wants him to go through with the slaughter and fiery offering of Isaac, God will raise him from the dead, even raise him from ashes. God the Creator will resurrect the one and only son.
But by faith Abraham also foresees another way, for he knows something else about God. Abraham knows God accepts a substitute. Abraham had offered animal sacrifices before, and he knows what they represent. The lamb was a substitute for the one making the offering. Burning a lamb on an altar was a way of saying, Lord, I give my life to you. Abraham reasoned that God could give a substitute for Isaac that made his death unnecessary. God could provide a lamb for the offering.
Waiting on God in the dark is possible when we know the truth about God.
In the previous post we learned from Joseph that we can wait a long, long time for God with seemingly nothing happening, and then God suddenly acts to fulfill his Word. In this post we learn from Abraham more about waiting on God in the dark.
Barrenness tests Abraham and Sarah
In Western culture we value the ability to make things happen. We say things like, “I’ll find a way or make a way.” “He’s a mover and shaker.” “They’ll run through brick walls if necessary.” “She stirs the pot.” “Manage by objectives.” “Just do it.”
But God often does not cooperate. In fact you can count on it that he will allow something in your life that no amount of will power and effort can change, something that requires you to wait on him.
Why
He does this because waiting develops spiritual muscle, in particular muscles of faith and hope, in which he delights. Scripture says, “Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently” (Rom. 8:24–25, NIV). And, “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for” (Heb. 11:1–2, NIV). Faith and hope thrive when we must wait.
The benefit of waiting does not end there. Scripture says, “The testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (Jam. 1:2–4, NIV). Situations that require steadfastness work like the barbells and machines of a fitness center to develop all aspects of godliness. So if we could fulfill every desire instantly, we would be spiritual weaklings.
The disappointment of barrenness
Abraham and Sarah could not fulfill their desire. They wanted a child but for about 50 years remained barren. By human standards they were a power couple: Abraham was wealthy, and Sarah beautiful. But no matter how much they yearned for a child, they could not conceive. In the culture of that time, children signified the favor of God, and barrenness brought shame. So Abraham and Sarah endured the daily frustration of unfulfilled desire.
When Abraham was 75 and Sarah 65, however, their prospects suddenly improved. God appeared to Abraham and promised, “I will make of you a great nation” (Gen. 12:2). Surely that meant they would soon conceive a child. But for the next 24 years they waited, without knowing how long the wait would last. Since God knows the future he could have told them how long their wait would last, but he did not because being in the dark intensified their test, requiring more trust.
The frustration of not knowing how long the wait will last
Not knowing how long a wait will last makes waiting much harder. When, for example, you wait on the phone to talk with a customer-service agent, patience comes easier when you are told approximately how long until an agent takes the call, even if that will be 45 minutes. But when you do not know what to expect, even a 5-minute wait is frustrating.
Scripture tells how Abraham was able to pass the test of waiting in the dark for almost 25 years:
“Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’ Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.” (Rom. 4:18–21, NIV)
This Scripture reveals five things about how Abraham was able to wait on God (we will note one principle now and four more in coming posts).
The decisive power of hope
First, he could wait because “against all hope, Abraham in hope believed.” He had hope, not despair. If you have hope, you can wait not only for 25 years, but for 250 years. If you despair, you cannot wait 25 minutes. Hope and despair have enormous power for good or harm. One or the other decides your future. Even though Abraham’s circumstances argued for despair, he had hope.
Hope drove his belief: “Abraham in hope believed.” We cannot believe in God’s promise when our hearts are governed by despair. Bring the candle of God’s promise into a room dark with despair, and despair blows out the flame. Light the candle again, and again despair blows out the flame. Light the candle of God’s promise as many times as you want, and despair will blow it out again and again. Despair cannot believe because despair does not want to believe. The despairing heart wants to believe untrue thoughts about God because it resents the circumstances God has allowed.
The hope that enabled Abraham to believe God’s promise came from somewhere. He was not hopeful because of a sunny personality. He was hopeful because he had true thoughts about God. Abraham was “fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.” He did not bitterly lower his view of God and resentfully withdraw from him because of Sarah’s barrenness. Rather he chose to believe truth about God, and because he believed truth about him he was able to believe his promises.
Waiting on God in the dark by knowing God even in the dark
Anyone who believes the truth about God’s nature always has cause for hope. That is because, not only does God have power to do what he promises, he also has the grace and love to do wonderful things for those who believe him. The better you know God, the more you have hope; and the more you have hope, the more logical it is to believe even his most amazing promises. With hope and faith established in your heart, you can wait for God as long as necessary.
In the next post we will explore two more principles about successfully waiting on God in the dark.
Jeremiah 9:23–24: “Thus says the LORD: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.’” (ESV)
Hi, here are some happenings and memories of the last few
months.
I took this fun photo at Morton Arboretum recently, where an artist has created several giant statues like this.
Nancy and I took a day for an outing to one of our favorite restaurants, the Grande Luxe Cafe, and the Planetarium.
Can you imagine being sealed into this tiny Apollo spacecraft for days and never leaving your seat?
News:
At our church we recently had a wonderful
experience with prayer for seven weeks. Several people had critical needs
related to work and visas, and so the Lord led us to fast and pray on seven
Sundays for the moving of mountains in our lives. We invited people to fast from
lunch, or breakfast and lunch, and then after our Sunday morning worship
service we went to one of our homes and prayed for a couple of hours together.
Then we ate together. God answered a number of our prayers, and our
relationship with him was deepened. It was a powerful and life-changing
experience.
I have several months more writing to do on the
theme of God’s love. Thinking long about God’s love has changed my life, and I
hope yours as well.
I’m still writing my book on holiness. This is a
labor of love. I revel in the subject of God’s holiness, and I love sharing
with others about it, partly because it is so little understood or cherished in
our world today. God’s holiness has become lost knowledge.
The ministry of this blog has grown to 91 readers
who have signed up to receive my weekly email, which is free. If you have not
signed up, I invite you to join and belong if you enjoy reading my writing, if
you think others could benefit from it, if you want to foster the knowledge of
God in as many others as possible, if you want to support this writing ministry
and message. One benefit of your signing up, for example, is that it may please
God to publish the content of this blog not only online but in the traditional
world of book publishing, and book publishers are much more willing to publish
a writer who has a “built-in” readership (measured by the number of email
subscribers). You can sign up in the
upper-right column of my site, craigbrianlarson.com. Thanks, and welcome to the
Knowing God village!
Favorite new website
and mobile app: I have known about the free BlueLetterBible.org site for
years, but recently I started using it as my main Bible-study resource. Surprisingly,
I now prefer it in most ways over my PC’s $350 Bible-study application.
The most interesting mobile app I’ve recently come across is
“Read Scripture.” I haven’t used it a lot yet, but what I’ve read has impressed
me.
Questions: How can I make this site more valuable to you? How can we have more community and interaction among readers? What are your questions about God and his ways? Please send me an email with your feedback:
Prayer request: I
am seeking a publisher for a manuscript I’ve written on the subject of divine
testing.
Knowing God: What
do you most want to know more about? What are you most curious about? Over
time, that is what you will gain understanding in. Curiosity leads to
knowledge, for it leads to motivated reading, to conversation and connection
over our shared interest, to love of what we study, to the ability to see what
others overlook, to further meditation.
God wants us to be curious about him. He wants us to think
about him, to meditate on him, to talk with others about him, to ask questions
and sing songs and report what we have learned about him. He wants us to have a
sense of wonder about him similar to the wonder that scientists and explorers
have in their field of study. Not so that we can control or master God, but so
that we can know and praise him and relate to him as closely and deeply as
possible.
God is deeper and more profound than the greatest questions
and theories in mathematics or physics, for he created mathematics and the
material world and understands every aspect of it completely.
God is more beautiful and pleasing than a collection of the
world’s most beautiful music. He created music. He created Mozart, or whoever
writes the music you regard as most wonderful. God could write and play a
million songs more beautiful and delightful than any you have ever heard, and
the next day write a million more, and the next day a million more. Just for
starters. But all these beautiful songs are simply an expression of his own
beauty, the music of his own heart and mind, of who he is.
God is more loving than the kindest, most sacrificial person
you know. He doesn’t just do love; he is love. Love is his nature, his being,
his constitution, for love gives. God upholds all things and gives existence to
all things as a continuous expression of his will. He is love, for all things
are from him, through him, and to him. He gives and gives and gives as who and
what he is.
Therefore, for good reason the Lord says, “Let not the wise
man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the
rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he
understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love,
justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight,
declares the LORD” (Jeremiah 9:23–24 ESV).
For good reason he commands, “You shall love the Lord your
God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with
all your strength” (Mark 12:30). He knows this brings the good life, the very
best life, the ultimate and most satisfying life.
There you have it, my reason for being, my reason for writing,
and the purpose of this blog. May you grow in the knowledge of God today. And
thereby, may you have the good life.
For several weeks I thought about what should be the prime focus of this blog. I settled on this: I realized my great passion is knowing God and his ways.
That has been my pursuit since I surrendered my life to Christ at age 19. I immediately began devouring the Bible. The idea that this book had the ultimate truth, about what mattered most, captured my soul. Since then I have been thinking about this book and the God who wrote it on a daily basis.
The Bible is not a simple book, and God is not a simple person. The more I read, the more I saw the challenge of fitting everything in this sacred book together. For example, sometimes God is the most merciful and forbearing person imaginable and at other times he seems quick to anger and quick to judge. How does this all fit together? Making it all fit is my passion.
Knowing God in an experiential way
Because I want to know God, not just about God. I want to know God like I know a person I spend time with, not like a person I read a systematic theology about. I want to know God relationally, knowing him as someone I communicate with, rely on, follow, and love all throughout the day. I want to know his ways based on experience with him, not just principles. I want to know how to pray in a way that pleases him and receives answers.
I want to know how faith works, the kind of faith that is powerful and effective (see James 5:16), especially because faith and unbelief were the qualities Jesus commented on most often in his interactions with people. Teachings about faith have been abused, but that does not mean we should avoid the subject. Faith matters.
And so I’m persistently trying to learn how faith works because I want to depend completely on God, put all my weight on his words, take his words seriously, and live as though they are true—because they are. This is what it means to know God and his ways.
I have been trying hard for years to practice God’s presence, in the manner described in the book The Practice of the Presence of God, by Brother Lawrence. This is at the core of how I know God. It has helped me enormously.
The Crucial Role of the Holy Spirit in Knowing God
I have been trying hard for many years to learn how to work with the Holy Spirit and his gifts. I have been trying for a long time to learn how to “hear God.”
(I put “hearing God” in parentheses not because I don’t think it is possible to hear God. Rather, normally when we use that phrase we mean something less than hearing God audibly, or even hearing words in our minds that we think are God’s words. I believe that God does guide and give his thoughts, just not very often in a conversational, “he said” “I said,” sort of way. At least that is my experience.).
I believeZechariah 4:6 expresses God’s heart: “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit says the Lord of hosts.” God wants kingdom work to be Spirit-powered. As I see it in the Bible, God’s method of church growth and ministry is through the gospel, through the Word, and through the gifts of the Spirit.
I believe this, but I fall a million miles short of seeing that happen the way I think it can. I am on a huge learning curve and have been for many years. I want help on this. So I hope the community of people who read this blog will help me and each other through comments and prayers.
Knowing and walking with God means working with him. I don’t relate to God just so he’ll help me in “the work of the Lord.” I work for God because it’s part of how we walk with him, love him, and know him.
I am enthralled that God is infinitely superior to me in every imaginable way. I am interested in any person who is superior to me in any way, even two steps beyond me. Well, God is infinitely superior to me and in every way! How could I not be interested in him? God is fascinating. He is interesting, creative, strong, intense, passionate, good.
Think about that last adjective. God is good; Jesus said God alone is good. I want to be as near as I can to any good person, and God is perfect goodness, infinite goodness. As Psalm 73:28 says, “It is good to be near God.”
In summary, this blog on Knowing God and His Ways will regularly engage these subjects:
Practicing God’s presence
Walking with and working with the Holy Spirit
Prayer and faith
Walking with God experientially like you relate to a person
Understanding what the Bible reveals about God
God’s infinite superiority
This post is approaching 1,000 words, so it’s time to stop. Normally I plan to write 300 to 600 words.
For more information about this blog and my writing, see the About page.
Knowing God and his ways is the greatest adventure! I invite you to join me every week in the journey. I plan to post weekly on Mondays.
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