The Blessings of Knowing Him More - Part 2

Dearest Blessed Saints, As a continuation of what we read about the Souvereignty of God and His awesome knowledge of all and foreknowledge on things to come, this is a great reminder that His love will always exceed our thoughts because He knows all the sins we will ever commit. Regardless, He still loves us immensely and desires a rich relationship with Him. It's as though He overlooks any of our transgressions we may yet commit and still desires for each of us to have a relationship with Him. I would like to now focus on the fact that He is "All-Powerful" and how that can relate to His immeasurable love for each of us and proof of His ability and willingness to care deeply for us. When you read Hebrews 1:3, He tells us that He establishes everything by upholding, maintaining, guiding and propelling the whole entire universe by the power of His Word. It's amazing to think that sand on the seashore should stop the mighty ocean waves from coming up unto dry land to destroy it (Prov 8:29), and when His voice tells the waves to only come thus far and no further. If there was no order in the universe, I don't think anyone could imagine the utter chaos that would take place if it weren't for the power of His Word to perform. When we think how Awesome in Power and authority He has, its amazing how much greater His love and mercies are because He could very well have wiped us all off the map when we have rebelled & many others continue to rebel against Him. And yet, He withholds and relents so much which is why He tells us that His Mercy exceeds Judgment (James 2:13). The book of Job 38 & 39 are remarkable chapters that identify His greatness that no man can answer what He questions Job with. Just imagine how many times we have rebelled against Him, and yet He always relented from doing what our sins deserved (Ps 103:10) and was always merciful towards us beyond measure. That in itself should cause us to have such awe, admiration, a thankful spirit & a greatful heart beyond measure towards Him. Every breath we breathe is His continual sign of Mercy towards us. When many people would disprove Gods love and care for them, I put these questions to them: Are we putting anything or anyone else in our lives above God? How can we prove our faith towards Him if we didn't have to be tested in the first place? Just like Jesus tells His Disciples: "What good is loving the lovely? Don't the pagans do that?" How can we prove our love for the Lord when only good things come our way? How can we prove our faith? He asks us when He comes, will He find faith? I have heard it said that the real "me" comes out of us when we are hard pressed. Have we taken the time to really know Him the way we should? Just like He questions Job, we have to ask ourselves: "How much do we realize our very lives and every breath are in His hands?" If we did spend quality time with Him and come to know His Greatness in all His excellencies, we would stop doubting and continue to have that strong confidence in Him because of His sustaining power upon our very lives each second we live. With this knowledge and revelation in mind, when we pray, we would pray with such boldness and confidence simply because we KNOW HIM and His love for us the way we should. The reason why He may not be able to do for us in our lives is because we have exalted our circumstances in our lives above His Majestic greatness who is souvereign over all the universe. Do we continue to make excuses rather then humbling ourselves before Him? We may have not adhered to His instructions. Do we remain a prisoner of holding on to unforgiveness? Have we forgotten to use His Word like a mighty Sword (Eph 6:17)? We literally stop the hand of God when we doubt and fail to trust in Him. Jesus could not do any miracles in His own hometown because their unbelief literally stops Him from doing what He can and what He wants to do (Matt 13:58). We should consider that when we ever doubt, worry or have unbelief in any way should be an abomination and a stench to us when we fail to truly trust in the Lord. This is why it is so important to spend quality time to understand His exceeding knowledge and awesome power and meditate on the fact that everything we see was created by the power of His Word. Men may have built, but God is the One who gives man the skills and ability to accomplish anything and everything in the first place. When we read Isaiah Chapter 6, Vs 1-5, this is a good description of how we would likely react if we were to see God, just like Isaiah did. When we develop true Godly Fear, there would be no room for any other fears to dominate our thinking. Proverbs 1:7 tells us that when we fear Him, this is just the beginning of having true wisdom. In other words, we fail to have any Godly wisdom at all when we have no reverentially Fear of Him. One thing I find troubling is that many people will only limit God to their way of thinking because they don't go beyond their own understanding (Prov 3:5). As an example, someone would question me: "How can God foreknow events?" If this person were to read the Bible, many prophecies that were written in the days of old are only coming to pass during this day and age. He even tells us that He knew us before we were knit in the womb (Jer 1:5). I am so glad God knows the future for me which means that I can totally trust in Him to lead and direct my future simply because we understand His love is so great when we see He is so great. David says in Ps 139:14, that he is fearfully and wonderfully made. How can anyone think that we were not created by such an awesome intelligent designer when you see how just the complexity of the human eye alone is created. I want to encourage each one (including myself) to take some time each day and consider how everything we can see (and the unseen) that God has placed into existence and everything is held together and moves around in proper order by the power of His Word. When we meditate on these concepts, meditation is mentioned in the Bible (KJV) 20 times, so its not a mystical cult in the far eastern religions, but is Biblical. Meditation means to take time to do the following: Review; Repeat what you have read; reflect; think about what you read and analyze how His Word applies to us and our lives today. Taking time to meditate is where it becomes a powerful revelation that gets from the mind to the heart where our faith becomes more solid. Understanding His Glorious excellencies is just the beginning of wisdom. Who in their right mind doesn't want the wisdom that comes from above? His wisdom is always available to those who are humble enough to see their need and ask of Him (James 1:5). Let's receive the Grace of God to ask Him to give you a heart to know Him more and more each day so we can be the people He can use mightily for His glory. In the Matchless Name of Jesus Richard Associate Director Answers2Prayer http://sites.google.com/site/greatestbuilderforourlife http://www.answers2prayer.org/

Need to Know Him More - Part 1

Dear Blessed Saints, We have all heard many people say that God loves us. Nothing else could be more true that has ever been spoken. However, when I examine myself, I often have to be aware of the familiarity of these truths. In other words, when we sing about His amazing love, hear these familiar passages over and over again or read the Word, does it just become another familiar passage that we just recite? Does His Word fail to become fresh revelation that would energize our spirit and inner-man? I understand for many Christians, we often have very little peace about certain circumstances and we end up worrying and fretting over some present conditions and future events that has never yet happened. But yet, we worry about them. Even circumstances that we face we may react with disgust and hostility because things didn't go our way as planned. If/when we get angry that does lead to sin (because not all anger is sin), I have to ask the question: Am I angry or increasingly upset over certain situation(s) or is there some other underlying reason why we may react ungodly? I think for most of it, if we can understand more about God (who He really is; knowing the truth of His rich love towards us, our desperate need of Him and His help for us, knowing what He has redeemed us from, the immeasurable pardoning of our sins and Grace towards us, knowing the eternal inheritance He has prepared for us), this would allow us to live our lives with confidence and maintain that joy, inner peace, even though circumstances may not dictate so. When we can come to the place by spending much quality time to get to know God more and more, we will be able to live above our circumstances, not below them (Deut 28:13). If we take a deeper look of how GREAT our God is, the greatness of His love for us, the greatness of His wisdom He wants for us, the greatness of His care He is able to give us, He wants to bless us richly to the point that we will gladly come to the place to fully surrender our lives unto His total care and control in every detail. I believe it is very important to go back to the basics that for a new believer in Christ, or us seasoned fellow Christians, to spend quality time understanding the Sovereignty of God. The God we serve who is All Powerful (Omnipotent); Always Present (Omni-Present); All Knowing (Omniscient); All Wise (Omni-sapient) and totally Pure and Perfect in LOVE (1 John 4:8) loves us to that same unlimited measure. We can gain a much greater understanding of who He is when we humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God and continue to come to a quiet place because He tells us to "Be Still and know that I am God" (Ps 46:10). The end result of living the most blessed life is actually living a surrendered life to God. But for that to happen, we need to take quality time to know Who God is ever more-so. When we can get a deeper understanding and love for Him, we will want to live that surrendered life. When we continue to develop that deep revelation knowledge of His love for us, we are able to have that strong confidence in Him which would remove every fear (1 John 4:18). Because we know He is ever present with us, we can walk through the valley of the shadow of death and still not allow any fear to have any dominion over us when we know this personally for us (Ps 23:4). Having this revelation knowledge of His deep love and care for us will allow us to be freed from all fears and remove any shame or guilt the enemy tries to influence us with. We will be able to walk in total Peace instead of pacing back and forth fretting and worrying about our present and future lives because we know He is ever present and He genuinely loves us. I would rather be strong and confidence in the Lord and have total Peace then to live under fear, worry, guilt, shame, doubt and being anxious about so many things. Sadly, this is often the case for many Christians. Having this Peace exceeds all the riches this world could ever afford to offer. God tells us in Hosea 4:6 that His People perish for lack of knowledge. He didn't say that the sinners in this case would perish, but the believers who lack knowledge would in fact perish because we don't spend time alone with God by getting to really KNOW HIM and not just "about Him". As an example, when we see that He is All-KNOWING, we need to understand that He was ALL KNOWING from the beginning to the end and the thought that there is nothing in all its existence in the universe that God did not already know. His foreknowledge is an example in Jer 1:5 when He foreknew us before we ever existed. When we start meditating on the fact that He foreknew what trouble, persecution and type of death He was going to face, we have a deeper admiration for Him. He was completely obedient to His Father to leave the comforts of the Highest Throne Room in Heaven to come down to earth so He can redeem us from the perils of sin, hell and the grave because He loves us beyond our comprehension. He knew all along He would have to suffer greatly and was by no means accidental or coincidental. How anyone would dare do this for a friend? Yet, He did this to every rebellious sinner (Rom 5:8) that ever came into the world (1 John 2:2) so that all may be saved. If I were to make a comparison, it would be like me being willing and obedient to leave my "human-ness" to become a slug in its lowest form and eating dirt all my life. To me, that would be an example of how much He truly loves us. When we spend time to meditate on how He never retaliated when He was beaten, bruised, rejected, mocked, slapped in the face and receive punishment after punishment finally being nailed to the cross with those big spikes, He did this for our eternal benefit with us on His mind. We need to personalize this and see that He did this for ME!! The God of the Universe would come down and bear the greatest punishment just for me (insert your own name)! It makes me realize we only scrape the tip of the iceberg when we think and say that we know He loves us. No wonder it is so vital that we spend quality, quiet time with Him and meditate on His immeasurable love for each of us. We CANNOT afford to ever think we know enough of God when in fact He is so Big that we often only scratch the surface of knowing His greatness because He is so GREAT. God tells us that when we think we stand, we need to take heed lest we fall (2 Pet 3:17). It is vital that we have the mindset of our need to know more of Him no matter how long we have been a christian. When I think of my past and was often rebellious towards Him, He still loved me enough to look past my faults, see my need and drew me unto Him to save me and give me a blessed eternal hope that I don't think we can ever truly comprehend. And to also forgive me over many many times, yet He is so patient and longsuffering towards me because I am an example of how He continues to use me despite my many faults and failures. A person could write about God every minute for the rest of each ones life and it still would not cover what He has done. John 21:25 tells us that all the books can never contain of what He has done for us. We need to ask the Holy Spirit who is the Godhead that is ever present with us to Help us in every detail of our lives. He is the One who is our Advocate, Teacher and the One who will Stand-by us (John 14:16 Amp Vers). He is the One who is our Counsellor, who empowers us with might and knowledge (Isa 11:2; 1 Cor 12:8). Who gives us wisdom, insight & revelation (Eph 1:17). We need to be honest before God and confess our desperate need of Him in every area of our lives. Gods Holy Spirit is always here with us, but how often do we neglect to personally invite Him to help us in everything He wants to be a vital part of. Christ says, for without Me, we can do nothing (John 15:5). It always comes down to continue developing that deep relationship of being totally dependant upon Him. The Spirit is so gentle, yet most powerful and He only comes in and works on our behalf to the measure that we allow Him to do so. God promises us that when we draw close to Him, He will draw close to us (James 4:8). Therefore, how close He draws towards us and live blessed with His presence in our lives that brings Joy and Peace will always depend on us. How close are we willing to draw to Him? How much of our lives do we really want to surrender to Him? I will continue in this series in the following weeks. In the Matchless Name of Jesus Richard Associate Director Answers2Prayer http://sites.google.com/site/greatestbuilderforourlife http://www.answers2prayer.org/