Devo 14
1/23/00 - 2/3/00
"Knowing God"
Well, hopefully, with this one, I can get back to writing on a weekly basis...hopefully (if you'll look at the date above, you'll see I've already failed this resolution!). By the way, I mentioned this last time, and for all of you who actually read to the end of my devo, you already know this and thank you, but all my devos can now be found on my web page. If you would like to know my address, send $4.95 plus $1.46 S&H to:
www.crosswinds.net/~bfranklinz/devhome.html
...please, no credit cards, but chocolate chip cookies are also accepted. Now that the commercial is over, it's time to return to your "regularly" scheduled email...
The scene: Thursday night, the middle of nowhere. The moon is full--or rather, what's left of it. For the past hour or so I had been with three friends sitting in the frigid air watching the moon slowly pass into the shadow of the earth. After an hour the cold had started numbing our toes, so we all climbed into the car and turned on the heat and sat for another twenty minutes or so watching the moon. Of course, the evening was not passed entirely in silence and while talking in the car, one of my friends asked the following question (in approximately these words), "Why do people want to get to know God better?" And then a bit later, "We're going to heaven anyway." Given the context (we were all Christians in the car) I took the question to be directed towards Christians in general, "Why do Christians want to get to know God better? We have our salvation, what more do we need?" Though I didn't have an answer right at that moment, what follows are some of my thoughts regarding the question...
How many of you, the last time you went to an amusement park, stopped to have a 'get to know you' conversation with the ticket taker? I doubt any of you. After all, the ticket guy isn't what you came to see, you came for the rides and the thrills. Who cares about the boring guy with the plastered smile when insidious devices designed to cheat death lie ahead. In Christianity, I think a lot of people tend to think of Jesus as the ticket man...just an insignificant formality on the way to the wonders and joys of heaven. Sure they recognize that without Him, admittance to heaven is impossible, but what they are thinking about are the streets of gold, and the big, big, house, and the big, big, yard etc. In essence, their view of heaven seems to be of a giant playground where money is not an object and work is no longer necessary and where God plays the polite host and quietly observes from His corner. With this kind of thinking it's easy to see why people would wonder at the use of a deeper relationship with Christ. It sounds as silly as taking time to get to know the grocery store clerk. Jesus, in this thinking, is nothing more than a middleman to be used once, and then forgotten. I think the situation is just the opposite in reality. God is not merely a ticket taker admitting people to all the fabulous attractions of heaven. God IS the attraction.
Any of you who have witnessed to someone, or have heard the gospel presented know why God created us. He wants to have a personal relationship with us. He wants us to glorify His name. He wants us to praise Him for who He is. Look at the universe and the very fact that we are alive and you can see the purposeful design of our habitat. The stories in the Bible all seem to indicate that God wasn't interested in being merely a bystander. He wanted to be part of the action. He wanted Pharaoh to know who it was taking the Israelites out of slavery; not Moses. When God gave the Israelites their law, the point was clear; He wanted them to be a race like no other. And finally, if God wasn't interested in our lives, He would not have let Himself be killed at the hands of lowly humans.
But be careful here. God doesn't want a part in our lives to give us everything we ever dreamed for, God wants a part in our lives so that others can learn about God and praise Him also. This is a point I think a lot of people miss. God's purpose in creating the universe was to glorify Himself. God's purpose in creating man was so that we could glorify Him. Our purpose, then, should be to glorify God in all we do. Notice that all the attention is on God. Once we start thinking about how we benefit through this, though, things get confusing. The hard truth is that sometimes God's glory will come at our expense. I have a hard time writing this, and no doubt many of you are objecting to this, but I think it is the truth. Because if I am committed to glorifying God, I must first of all realize that only God knows how best His name can be glorified.
This life was never meant to be about us, it was meant to be a discovery of who God is. Just like any learning process, there will be some hard lessons to learn. But God has promised an eternal rest for those who persevere. So why do we want to get to know God better? Mainly, so we can give the praise to God that He deserves. But also, the better we know God, the better we will be able to handle those situations that defy explanation. It is this kind of attitude which enabled Paul and Silas to sing praises while in prison, that allowed Joseph to put up with slavery and imprisonment on his way to becoming second in command.
I hope some of this made sense...