Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect,but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.
— Philippians 3:12
?Thou art to know that thy soul is the center, habitation, and kingdom of God,? says Miguel de Molinos. ?That therefore, to the end the sovereign King may rest on that throne, thou oughtest to take pains to keep thy soul pure, quiet, void and peaceable; pure from guilt and defects; quiet from fears; void of affections, desires and thoughts; and peaceable in temptation and tribulation. Thou oughtest always then to keep thine heart in peace, that thou mayest keep pure that temple of God, and with a right and pure intention thou art to work, pray, obey, and suffer, without being in the least disturbed, whatever it pleases the Lord to send unto thee.? To enjoy this growing knowledge of God will require that we go beyond the goals so casually set by modern evangelicals.
We must fix our hearts on God and purposefully aim to rise above the dead level and average of current Christianity. If we do this Satan will surely tempt us by accusing us of spiritual pride and our friends will warn us to beware of being ?holier than thou.? But as the land of promise had to be taken by storm against the determined opposition of the enemy, so we must capture new spiritual heights over the sour and violent protests of the devil. As we move farther up into the knowledge of Christ we open new areas of our beings to attack, but what of it? Remember that spiritual complacency is more deadly than anything the devil can bring against us in our upward struggle. If we sit still to escape temptation, then we are being tempted worse than before and gaining nothing by it. ?Ye have dwelt long enough in this mount . . . Behold, I have set the land before you: go in and possess the land? (Deut. 1:6, 8).
thought
Christ Jesus took hold of us for what? Are we pressing on for it? Are our goals set high enough?
prayer
Father, I am fearful to pray 'to know You whatever it pleases You to send me.? But You are my Father and You love me, You LOVE me. I can trust You. Through Christ my Lord. Amen
But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen.
— 2 Peter 3:18
The experiential knowledge of God is eternal life (John 17:3), and increased knowledge results in a correspondingly larger and fuller life. So rich a treasure is this inward knowledge of God that every other treasure is as nothing compared with it. We may count all things of no value and sacrifice them freely if we may thereby gain a more perfect knowledge of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. This was Paul?s testimony (Phil. 3:7-14) and it has been the testimony of all great Christian souls who have followed Christ from Paul?s day to ours. To know God it is necessary that we be like God to some degree, for things wholly dissimilar cannot agree and beings wholly unlike can never have communion with each other. It is necessary therefore that we use every means of grace to bring our souls into harmony with the character of God.
thought
Growing in the grace and knowledge of Christ is not automatic. We must make it the foremost life priority. To know Him!
prayer
Lord, today may I grow in knowing You. As I go through the day's routines I want to recognize Your presence and walk close to You.
For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men?the testimony given in its proper time.
— 1 Timothy 2:5
How two wills set in opposition to each other, and both free, could be harmonized was God?s problem and His alone; and with infinite wisdom and power He solved it through the redemptive work of Jesus Christ our Lord. Because Christ is God and man He can properly represent each before the other. He is the Daysman who can stand between the alienated man and the offended God and lay His hand upon them both. ?For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus? (1 Tim. 2:5) . All this is such a familiar part of evangelical theology that it may safely be assumed that the majority of my readers know it already.
That is, they know it theoretically, but the experiential aspect of the truth is not so well known. Indeed large numbers of supposedly sound Christian believers know nothing at all about personal communion with God; and there lies one of the greatest weaknesses of present-day Christianity.
thought
Christ mediates between God and us. He draws us to God who wants all to be saved. Christ has done this by giving Himself as our ransom. You and I may know God! Are we presently knowing Him?
prayer
O Great Mediator, You have scrubbed clean my heart and mind. You have paid my sin-debt in full. I want to know You, intimately know You!
Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden.
— Genesis 3:8
That first picture of God and man at the time of the creation shows them in close and openhearted communion. Adam listens while God explains how it is to be with him in his Eden home and lays down a few easy rules for his life on the earth. The whole scene is restful, relaxed and altogether beautiful. But the communion did not last. Adam?s very likeness to God, viz., his freedom to choose, permitted him, though it did not compel him, to make a choice contrary to the will of God. So sin entered and the wondrous fellowship was broken.
Seen from our human standpoint redemption must rank first among all the acts of God. No other achievement of the Godhead required such vast and precise knowledge, such perfection of wisdom or such fullness of moral power. To bring man into communion with Himself God must deal effectively with the whole matter of justice and righteousness; He must dispose of sin, reconcile an enemy and make a rebel willingly obedient. And this He must do without compromising His holiness or coercing the race He would save.
thought
Adam and Eve rejected their option to experience God. They exercised their God-given freedom to turn away from God. We have all inherited their "spiritual DNA." We choose sin and darkness. In Christ God calls us to come to Him, to know Him.
prayer
O God, how often have I exercised the freedom You have given me to turn away from You to sin. That freedom I now use to flee to You and life in Christ!
. . . As God has said: "I will be their God and they shall be my people."
— 2 Corinthians 6:16c
Without doubt the greatest need of the human personality is to experience God Himself. This is because of who God is and who and what man is. God is the essence of intelligent, self-conscious life and man is created in His image. God is love, and man is made for God. God and man exist for each other and neither is satisfied without the other. Though God is self-sufficient He has sovereignly willed to have communion with the being He made in honor next to Himself, and He takes every means to secure this communion short of coercion, which would be a violation of man?s free will. Were God to override our wills He would be forcing Himself upon us and by so doing would make us a little less than human and so a little less than the being He made for Himself.
thought
By creating us in His image, God has opened to us the possibility of communion with Him. Through Christ we may experience God. It is an option we exercise, reject or just neglect.
prayer
Lord, You have made me so that I may experience You. Teach me to walk with You.
Whatever keeps me from the Bible is my enemy, however harmless it may appear to be.
Whatever engages my attention when I should be meditating on God and things eternal does injury to my soul.
Let the cares of life crowd out the Scriptures from my mind and I have suffered loss where I can least afford it.
Let me accept anything else instead of the Scriptures and I have been cheated and robbed to my eternal confusion.
The secret of life is theological and the key to heaven as well.
We learn with difficulty, forget easily and suffer many distractions.
Therefore we should set our hearts to study theology.
We should preach it from our pulpits, sing it in our hymns, teach it to our children and make it the subject of conversation when we meet with Christian friends.
verse
Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.
— John 17:3
thought
The secret of life is not only knowing about God but knowing Him. Life in its fullest is knowing Him! That is life today and life eternal.
prayer
Thank You, Father, for the Bible in my language. Through it I hear Your voice and know Your will because of Your Spirit who illumines me.
https://cmalliance.org/devotionals/tozer/
Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.
— Colossians 3:2-3
It is precisely because God is, and because man is made in His image and is accountable to Him, that theology is so critically important. Christian revelation alone has the answer to life?s unanswered questions about God and human destiny. To let these authoritative answers lie neglected while we search everywhere else for answers and find none is, it seems to me, nothing less than folly. No motorist would be excused if he neglected to consult his road map and tried instead to find his way across the country by looking for moss on logs, or by observing the flight of wild bees or watching the movements of the heavenly bodies.
If there were no map a man might find his way by the stars; but for a traveler trying to get home the stars would be a poor substitute for a map. Without a map the Greeks did an admirable piece of navigating; but the Hebrews possessed the map and so had no need of human philosophy. As one not wholly unacquainted with Greek thought I state it is my belief that but one of Isaiah?s eloquent chapters or David?s inspired psalms contains more real help for mankind than all the output of the finest minds of Greece during the centuries of her glory.
thought
Theology is the study of God. It reveals who I am and who I can become because of who God is, what He has done and what He continues to do.
prayer
Open my eyes, Lord, open my mind to grasp more of who You are and who I am in You. In Jesus' name.
The fool says in his heart, 'there is no God.' . . .
— Psalm 14:1
It has always seemed to me completely inconsistent that existentialism should deny the existence of God and then proceed to use the language of theism to persuade men to live right. The French writer, Jean-Paul Sartre, for instance, states frankly that he represents atheistic existentialism. ?If God does not exist,? he says, ?we find no values or commands to turn to which legitimize our conduct. So in the bright realm of values, we have no excuse behind us, nor justification before us.
We are all alone, with no excuses.? Yet in the next paragraph he states bluntly, ?Man is responsible for his passion,? and further on, ?A coward is responsible for his cowardice.? And such considerations as these, he says, fill the existentialist with ?anguish, forlornness and despair.? It seems to me that such reasoning must assume the truth of everything it seeks to deny. If there were no God there would be no such words as ?responsible.? No criminal need fear a judge who does not exist; nor would he need to worry about breaking a law that had not been passed. It is the knowledge that the law and the judge do in fact exist that strikes fear to the lawbreaker?s heart. There is someone to whom he is accountable; otherwise the concept of responsibility could have no meaning.
thought
Without God there is no right or wrong, good or bad. Somehow we have evolved from something causeless. Why are we here and for what purpose? There is no answer for the one who has said in his or her heart, "There is no God."
prayer
O God, You are! Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I worship You and give thanks to You.
I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.
— John 17:26
We being what we are and all things else being what they are, the most important and profitable study any of us can engage in is without question the study of theology. That theology probably receives less attention than any other subject tells us nothing about its importance or lack of it. It indicates rather that men are still hiding from the presence of God among the trees of the garden and feel acutely uncomfortable when the matter of their relation to God is brought up. They sense their deep alienation from God and only manage to live at peace with themselves by forgetting that they are not at peace with God. If there were no God, things would be quite otherwise with us. Were there no one to whom we must finally render up account, at least one big load would be gone from our minds. We would only need to live within the law, not too hard a task in most countries, and there would be nothing to fear. But if God indeed created the earth and placed man upon it in a state of moral probation, then the heavy obligation lies upon us to learn the will of thought
If God is, who is He? What is He like? How do I relate to Him? What is His will? Foolish questions if God isn't. But if He is I must know all I can about Him ? that becomes my theology.
prayer
Lord, without You there is no reason for me to be and nothing for me beyond death. But You are! Through Your Son, You and Your love are made known. Thank You!God and do it.