Do You Know Him, But More Importantly Does He Know You?
John 10:14-15 Amplified Bible (AMP)
14I am the Good Shepherd; and I know and recognize My own, and My own know and recognize Me--15Even as [truly as] the Father knows Me and I also know the Father--and I am giving My [very own] life and laying it down on behalf of the sheep.
I remember someone coming up to me saying, “I know you,” and all the while thinking to myself, “You do, because I don’t know you.” I have also had times in my life where people have used my name saying that they knew me, when in actuality, they were only a friend of a friend or they just knew of me, because they had been associated with something I had done or been involved with. It is often human nature to say that we know a celebrity or we take ownership of a song, and say that it is ours. It is easy to want to lay hold of something by saying we know it, when in reality, we don’t know that individual, any more than we know the President of the United States. We can recognize people without really knowing them, we can be familiar with them, because of the position and the office they hold, or because of their capabilities and not have a clue of the inner workings and details of the person.
This is the same with God. Many of us, are quick to say that we know God, but do we really? Can we tell you anything out of His Word, can we say that we have spent any time getting to know Him and finding out who He really is or who we are supposed to be in relationship to Him or the Holy Spirit or Jesus for that matter? We can tell people God is good, but is that something we have experienced and know for ourselves or are we going off of someone else’s testimony or just saying what we have heard others use? We can Know that God is all knowing, all powerful, and everywhere at the same time, but can we really say that this is something that we know for ourselves. Can we read “He shall supply all of my needs, according to His richest in Glory, by Christ Jesus, or is that, something that Grandma knew and we just have begun to repeat things as religious formality, instead of personal experience and testimony. My Grandmother used to say, “He is a way maker,” I found that when I began to live for God, I used to spout that, but it did not become my testimony, until He really made a way for me, and I really began to experience Him for myself.
Oddly enough God knows us. But the question is, would He want to lay claim to some of us. Many of us say we know God, but we are living for everything else, (especially ourselves) other than Him. We have “Our” thing going on and we have not placed God anywhere in it. Even when God is trying to speak to us, we have learned to ignore His voice, and we have learned to do it our way, in spite of anything that God may desire from us. I have heard my Bishop say, that many of us have done things and then, said “God did this,” and then when it falls apart and doesn’t work out it is not us that gets the black eye, it is God’s name. It is because we did not let God’s voice be heard and His will be done in our lives instead, it was us. For many others of us we say we are God’s but when people see us, they do not see the God in us, they see, spiteful, hateful, vindictive people, with attitude, anger, manipulation, truth twisting, revenge, wrath, fear, and definitely not treating people as God has commanded us to. I heard one young person say that Christians were hypocrites because THEY SAY THEY KNOW AND LOVE GOD but they can be the meanest, nastiest people, and that they are always judging you. What does that say about us knowing God, and following after His voice?
Our lives should be hidden in Christ when we really know Him. When His voice we recognize, we should show evidence of that, in some way within our lives. Many of us know of God, but we really have not taken the time to know Him personally. You see because when we know God personally, we begin to desire what is His; His character, His attributes, His heart and His people and creations. When we really fall in love with Christ we can’t wait to hear His voice and know what it is that the Father wants to say to us, through His living word through the example of His Son and through the operation and teaching of the Holy Spirit. I have learned that knowing God, hearing Him, very seldom makes me a part of the crowd, because it causes me to engage in behaviors that are not popular with the crowd. It causes me to leave situations when they are bashing people, or causing people to feel less than God created them to be. It causes me to have to forgive the unforgivable, and it causes me to have trust God even when it looks bleak and nothing makes much sense. Do you really know God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, or do you just know of them? But more importantly does your life and obedience say that “They” would know you?
No comments:
Post a Comment